My Favorite Martian (dateline July 2006)

My youngest daughter Alexandra came out of the bathroom recently with a totally new hair ‘do. She had taken her bangs, put a ponytail maker around them and glued them straight up with water so it looked like she had an antennae sticking out the top of her head. She walked around the house impressing everyone with her style sense, and all her sisters were eager to try it out for themselves. Must be an age thing. I thought it looked like she was trying to communicate with the Mother Ship (right about the time THIS Mother Ship was heading out the door to work).

Aren’t kids fun? Must be another time and another place, but I don’t remember growing up being all that interested in foofing with my hair, adorning myself with play jewelry or wearing dresses. I do remember getting black patent leather shoes around Easter time every year, and wondering if they were really so shiny that someone could see my underwear. (Remember that?)

All my daughters are passionate about wearing dresses. Around my house, the emphasis is always on wardrobe issues - dresses or skirts, pink or red, frilly if possible, and tights, tights, tights. It doesn’t matter if it’s 110 deg in the shade, or –40 deg below zero, dresses and skirts are the end-all, be-all of fashion. I have to admit they do seem to have a better grasp on fashion than I do. I’m still trying to figure out what my color scheme is, but my girls can get dressed in a dark room and still come out looking like they had professional help. Fuchsia socks with orange sneakers? No problem. Pink shorts with a teal green sweater? Bring it on. Three pony tails sticking out the right side of the head? Too last week…it’s antennae time now, or did you miss that one?

But try buying girls dresses these days. My girls are all under 10 and have no need to emphasize their chest area (I mean really, they’re flat as boards). But most little girl dresses have a shirt wrap to be tied underneath what will eventually become a chest (five years from now). And the length! (Or should I say “What length?”) Better double tight them up, because they have underwear longer than some of these things.

Of course my daughters can accessorize with the best of them. I eventually gave in one year and bought them all small wooden jewelry boxes to keep their “jewelry” in. Things such as strings of very large wooden beads from Kindergarten, with an occasional bell tossed in for variety; bead projects on white elastic bands to hand out to friends at school; Strawberry Shortcake bracelets worn as chokers around their necks. Makes going to bed a real work out – I do a FOD (foreign object on deck) walk-down on each kid every night to ensure they aren’t wearing things around their neck or extremities that will make their hands and feet fall off by the next morning.

And somehow the jewelry always migrates back to me. Every couple of weeks I dump out my top desk drawer and parcel it all out again. But every night it miraculously floats back, ending up in my desk drawer by sunrise each morning. I occasionally clean out the drawer and storethe googaws in my hope chest. I save all sorts of things there - first shoes, clothes they came home from the orphanage in, kindergarten baubles, drawings of alien looking people with pointed heads…I mean pictures of Mom and Dad drawn by a three year old. I have a ton of stuff, and someday I’m going to go through it all, and wait for just the right moment to bring it out. You know, first boyfriend, first date, first engagement…something really special.

In the mean time, I have a new ‘do to try. Think the Mother Ship delivers pizza?

As always,
Love from Buckley
Where the girls are beautiful,
Mom wears combat boots,
And the Alien Invasion is expected any minute.