Glamour Girl Goes to School

"It's just me and you, mommy," Sean-Peter said after school, waiting for Olivia's bus to bring her home. Then, "Now it's just me, and you, and Olivia, and we're waiting for Conner!" Sean-Peter has a distinct choppiness about his speech, if you can imagine a deliberate pause between every other word or so.

It was a shock to the system, everyone going back to school and work and real life after so many days hanging out with no real agenda. We were all ready, truth be told -- Olivia sprinted to her bus this morning. Sean-Peter's comments just reminded me that this little boy doesn't always adjust so quickly to changes and voicing a play-by-play was helping him adapt to our new (old) schedule.

I must admit that, as Perry Como croons, "Mom and dad could hardly wait for school to start again." And the last thing I really felt like doing was fulfilling my commitment to volunteer at the kids' school today. I really just wanted to sit at home and stare into space...

But alas, duty calls, and a good thing it did. Because after I finished my time in Sean-Peter's class I caught one certain little girl in the hallway walking past her classroom door with her little friend (let's call her Rita) with her little satchel thrown over her shoulder -- and yes, she was wearing her sparkly new dress. Only that wasn't all!

You see, Olivia wanted nothing more for Christmas than some makeup and a vanity where she could sit and look at herself and preen. Never in a million years would my five-year-old self have wanted some makeup, let alone known what to do with it if I got it. But Olivia is a girly-girl if there ever was one so makeup she got and preen she did. With strict instructions that this was for play and dress-up only at home and not for anywhere else, even for fun.

But she couldn't resist taking some to show Rita, her friend on the bus she looks up to in all her mature first-grade worldliness. When I work at the school Olivia always chooses to take the bus instead of going home with me, "Because I don't want to miss Rita." Whether the two met later that day by happenstance in the girl's restroom I don't know. What I do know is that Olivia and Rita were walking down the hallway side-by-side chatting like a couple of high schoolers, and Olivia had on dark pink lipstick bigger than life.

When I called her name she turned and ran to me for a hug so excited to see me as usual. When I called her on the lipstick she immediately acted sheepish: she knew she was caught. Of course she knew I was going to be at her school today: she may be sneaky, but at least she's (not yet) savvy.

I escorted Olivia into her classroom where her teacher had noticed her straying. "Got a little distracted coming back from the restroom, did we Olivia?" Ooh-wee. I'm afraid we may be in for it with this little one. Lipstick in kindergarten ... what's it going to be in fourth grade? A little black book?