public service announcement

I now know why people get their baby's ears pierced. It's not that I was ever against it. I just thought it would be fun to wait until the girls wanted it done. You know, like a special treat.Lucy picking her studs out...

...Audrey in awe of the thousands of earrings that could soon be her very own
Oh and we've been down this road before. Audrey has sat in the piercing chair on more than one occasion only to chicken out. "I think I'll wait 'til I'm 5" turned into "I really should wait until I'm 6". The thought was never far from her mind. One more part of her body that could sport a fashion accessory - seriously what could be better? The problem was that I wasn't willing to lie about the fact that it hurt. Because it does. And because it wasn't a necessity like a immunization I thought it was only fair for her to make the decision on her own. She'd talk about it sometimes like "maybe tomorrow" and I'd always tell her that I'd take her whenever she wanted and move on knowing that tomorrow would be a different story but never letting on that I doubted her plans. Then something happened. Lucy started talking about her earrings too. "Where's my earrings mama?" she'd say, or "look - Dora has earrings". You think peer pressure is hard well little sister pressure is like 10 times worse. At least.

One evening we were sitting in the rocking chair about a week after the dreaded flu shot. The "but the nurse said my kindergarten shots were the last shots I'd have to get" flu shot. Agggh. Audrey turns to me out of the blue and says "does getting my ears pierced feel like that flu shot?" and I said "yes it sure does Audrey, it hurts pretty bad but then it's all over" and to that she replied "oh, I can do that, let's go tomorrow". As usual, I agreed and went about like normal. Then the next morning she woke up and said "guess what today is?!?!?!!!" uh? oh, you mean we're really doing this? Well, ok, let's go then.

Then we walk in the door and she says "Lucy can go first".

Nice.

Trav pulls Audrey aside and tells her "If you make your little sister go first then I'm telling you right now that there will be NO chickening out"

"ok, whatever Dad"

Has no clue what is about to happen"wow, she's so calm" the lady kept saying.......and this would be me dropping the camera because they just pierced my baby's ear wrong when she jumped...
...and this would be Audrey FLIPPING OUT because she just witnessed her sister get pierced, picked apart, and re pierced again...
...and this would be me accepting my mother of the year award when I still made Audrey go through with her promise while she was screaming and I was holding her head so she didn't jump too...
...and this would be Audrey's face 3.25 seconds after it was over......and Lucy still not quite sure what the heck just happened in there.Seriously, like the longest 15 minutes of my life in there. All is well now. Audrey, that's just pretty much how she is. I'm pretty confident that she would have screamed just as loud if she would have waited until she was 12. Maybe louder. I think the right thing to do was to just get it over with. She is anxiously counting the days until she can get her hands some hot pink cheetah sequin feather earrings (or any other hideous combination that she can think of). And Lucy, well, let's just hope that she's young enough to not remember. Some special treat huh? :)