What You Can Expect

Dooce posted something today about how her darling daughter has been exposed to Barney--arguably, a worse fate than being exposed to head lice--and it occurred to me that, being a little further down the road, motherhood-wise, in the raising of girls, that I could alert her to Coming Attractions. So here, in no particular order, is a sampling of what she, and any other mother of a pre-school daughter, can expect in the years between, say, five and nine:

1. Sooner or later, somebody will expose your little girl to the Disney Channel. This brings you to a flock of screaming teenage vixens named Hannah and Hilary and the like, who wear their jeans just barely above their pubic hair and moan terribly insightful lyrics such as, "WHATYOULIKEABOUTMEIS WHATI LIKEABOUTYOUYEAH!YEAH!YEAH!YEAH!" She will want to imitate them, and for the next five years or so this will mean an incredibly irritating off-pitch nasal sound emanating from the back seat of the car, with your little girl lost inside her headphones.

 

2. Toenail polish.

 

3. The horse thing. (There is something proto-sexual going on here, with little girls' cravings to have something Big and Powerful between their legs, but that's as far as I want to go with this.)

 

4. Eyebrow makeup which involves sparkles.

 

5. Fart jokes. More of them than you will ever, ever want to hear. Also, up-to-the-minute notification of the passage of gas, as in the sudden announcement at dinner, "I just farted." No amount of lecturing, pleading or tears will dissuade them from sharing this news.

 

6. Inexplicable refusal to perform basic acts of personal hygiene even though it makes them all sore and itchy Down There, which will lead to (if it hasn't already) your child's first yeast infection, which you will have to treat because your husband will suddenly develop a horror of being caught within 5 miles of his child's naked genitals, even though he has been seeing them since she was born.

On the plus side, you will have finally gotten rid of the Diaper Genie, and you won't be sinking your life savings into pull-ups anymore.