Our budding teenager

First, a soundtrack. For those of you who are older or feel like listening to something that is completely silly:

But for those looking for the real deal:


Margaret has not had a haircut yet. We've put that event off to make sure that we eventually avoid issues of gender confusion that appear to be inevitable with infants. Even when Maggie is dressed head to toe in pink, people often ask "How old is he?" The lack of a haircut has led to two developments regarding her hair. First, curls in the back and sides. We're not sure about the genetic source of her curls as both Abby and I have really straight hair. (My brother, Dan, did have curls in the back when he had his wicked soccer mullet, so there is some precendent in the family.) Second, her hair in the front has started to fall into her eyes. This gives her a pretty hip, almost Beatlesque, look. Something that teenagers really work to develop, I'd wager (although my sense of what the kids find hip these days is lacking.) When will she get her first haircut? I dunno, but rest assured the readers of this blog will hear ALL about it.

Her further teenage tendencies are as follows. (1) She likes to bellow when we try to keep her away from her pacifier. They don't use it in the toddler room, and she seems fine with that, but put her in the stroller and it's a litany of loud demands for her nuk-nuk. Can't have what you want? Object vociferously! A teenage tendency if I've ever seen one. (2) She's developed a persistent "smoker's cough" (as the people at the dog park call it), probably due to her exposure to lots of great new germs in the toddler room. (3) She wears jeans a lot since Papa has been dressing her lately in the morning. Tends to look fairly grubby leading Mama to question Papa's sense of style. (4) She's becoming oh so independent, something that the toddler room teachers, for better or worse, like to encourage.

My feeling is that this just foreshadows our experience 15 or so years from now. But I do know that her curfew will never be later than midnight since, as my maternal grandfather has always said, nothing good happens after midnight. Oh, the battles we'll have....