But Really, It's ME That Has No Desire To Let Mattel Define What Is Hot

When I knew for sure Olivia was to be a girl, I was thrilled. The nine full months of sick was assuaged by my visions of dresses and make-up, jewelry and nail polish, Jane Austen and baking. Lily Pulitzer mother-daughter dresses were in my future, and I was at peace to know I would have a compadre with whom to discuss whether or not Marc Jacobs had pumped new life into the House of Louis Vuitton or defiled it.

My diminutive sprite had other plans. She looks like one hundred percent girly-girl. She starts out in the morning with great ovarian-driven intentions. "Put my hair up," she commands, tricking me into participating with a brush and one lovely ponytail holder. After I have complied, she whips out five more from her pocket, and wants them placed, randomly, all over her head, signifying that Pippi Longstocking has arrived. She does love, love, love wearing her tutu (or any costume), but--whoah, Nellie! I had better have Shout in my holster because it just isn't the same for her without sporting something very red to eat in one hand and an Expo Dry Erase Marker in the other. Fourth position, for you ballet-challenged, is running--screaming--from Simon who apparently loves the texture of tulle.

She prefers to play with the boys at school. "Because all the girls want to play is fashion show," she told me one afternoon. "And I don't like to play it much." Well I do, I thought. "They kept asking me today to play it, so I did." I asked her how she had liked it, and she laughed that it was okay, once she had laid out her terms. "I told them I would only do it if I could run down the runway."

Do not imagine that I do not adore this about her. Unlike Mr. Grant, I like spunk, and I enjoy it filling the atmosphere around me.* And I do get my stolen quiet moments of girl-dom. The other day we were sitting in her room. She was wearing a tiara (askew) and we were playing Barbie, dressing her in every outfit in the toy bin.

Olivia is easy to have fun with, so nothing could mar this moment. Even when--as she looked at naked Barbie in her hand, then at me, and then back again at naked Barbie--she said, "Y'all have waaaaaayyy different bodies."

*Jake, it turns out, does not.