Kallie's ears....

Kallie has been after us, her parents, for a while now about getting her ears pierced. We've sort of been putting it off thinking it was a phase or something and she'd change her mind. We had orginially told her she had to be 6, but in the last month or so, she's REALLY been talking hard about it.

One day last month, we were all in the mall together so Shawn and I took her to 'check things out', we explained it was like getting a quick shot in her ears, and yes, it would hurt for a little bit, but she'd have to be a big girl and doctor her ears on her own.....otherwise her ears would get 'sick'. We let her look at the earrings she could choose from, she found a pair fo pink sparkly daisies that she loved. We thought she was going to go through with it that day, but quickly changed her mind.

I came home Tuesday night and this was ALL she could talk about. Shawn and I knew this must be something that had been a point of discussion among her little group of friends at school. We told her we'd think about it and talk about it later. We've had a ton of things going on lately and knew it just wasn't the right time.

However - yesterday morning, she was more convinced than ever that today was THE day....I told her we'd talk about it when school was out and I picked her up. I had no more walked into the door at her school when one of her teachers told me that ALL Kallie had talked about all day was that 'my mommy's picking me up today and taking me to get my ears pierced'. Miss Robin said that there had been nothing else on this child's mind but getting those ears pierced.

Of course, I had talked to Shawn several times over the phone during the day about this and he was on the fence - mainly because he didn't want her to grow up too fast. But we got in the car, she was so excited - you'd thought she'd won the lottery or something.

I kept telling her she could change her mind and I wouldn't be mad at all and if she was scared, we didn't have to do this.....she was adament. However, when we started to walk into the mall, I could see some fear in her eyes and her little chin quivered. If I told her 10 times she didn't have to do this, I bet I told her at least 40 while I filled out the paper work. We talked about it would hurt for a second and if she didn't want to do it, she certainly didn't have to. She put on a fearful grin and said she wanted it done. Okay....but, her only rule was that mom couldn't take pictures during it....had to save it for afterwards - 5 minutes later - my daughter's a 'big kid' with pierced ears. She made an excited phone call to her Neenee to tell her all about it. She was afraid to talk to her daddy because she thought he'd be mad. She knew her grandma would be upset and didn't even want to disuss telling her.

But even still this morning - she was beaming light a bright spotlight with excitment to show her friends at school. I was very proud of her. There were only a few tears.....briefly. I was very impressed.