I posted a while ago about a great quote Maria Shriver had, about how a big part of parenting is raising kids who are self confident and comfortable. I totally agree with that though fear I have perhaps gone too far. I think I mentioned that my almost 4 year old insists on wearing NOTHING but princess dresses, at all times. Luckily, she has a grandmother who can sew like the dickens and has been churning out a full line of satin and tulle wonders, which are in non-stop rotation around our house. I am BARELY able to wrestle her into a tutu for dance class, and typically if we have to go to a store, after the inevitable argument and tantrum about having to change, she will manage to maintain some air of “princess-ity” with accessories.

Case in point: we went to buy our Christmas tree and we always go to the same place, with a bunch of 20 something guys who man-handle your tree onto your car for you…they are pretty focused on their work, and not necessarily the kind of guys that might notice little kids in crazy outfits. You’d think. But our princess in training got out of the car in a fur coat (I am to blame for this as I purchased it–for one of her sisters, but still, I did bring it into the house–faux of course) and a wedding veil. This wasn’t any wedding veil–it was one made for a halloween costume when I was young and wild and single and dressed up as “Shotgun Wedding Barbie” so it had sparkly pipe cleaner hearts attached with bright pink flowers. She strutted through the Christmas Tree yard–one of the guys said “That’s quite a veil” and I said “It’s tame by the standards of what she WANTED to wear. I later heard him telling another of the guys “There’s a little kid over there wearing a VEIL”…which made me laugh as her outfit was obviously so preposterous that it penetrated their sort of overall indifference to little kids.

And not two days later she busted out same fur coat but paired it with a pair of pink-with-diamond-accents and pink lensed SUNGLASSES to go to Target. I delude myself into thinking “Aren’t all kids doing this?” but I think NO because people stopped their busy Target shopping to turn and look at her because she looked, to be honest, like a pint-sized P-Diddy.

She is totally self confident and totally (it appears) without a “taste filter”, as the sparklier and more diva-like, the better. But I did think to myself, as I looked at her familiarly pudgy little self the other day, GOSH. I hope she can always stay so self confident. And not to get on my soap box but this goes into how I hope that the work-world changes, even a bit, so she doesn’t have to sacrifice herself one day and not feel good about the career decisions she’s making. Because when you start to feel down on yourself at work (admittedly some time away for the princess-to-be and budding Cinderallas may face a different set of challenges, ie limited job availability) it’s pretty easy to digress into feeling kind of all the way down and “un-self-confident”.

But as far as self confidence goes–DOVE is running a great campaign for women’s beauty…very inspirational. And almost-4 shows no signs of backing down in her quest to continue to delight Christmas shoppers near and far with crazy outfits…and there’s another princess dress in the mail, as we speak.