Saturday afternoon, as Mary Clare, McCanless and I were hand-in-hand skipping out of Magnolia Mall, it hit me.\u00a0 I realized that I had just experienced a major rite of passage with my oldest daughter.\u00a0 McCanless did it.\u00a0 She got her ears pierced.\u00a0 I was in tears as I looked down at my big six- year- old smiling like a Cheshire cat.\u00a0 I had no idea I would be so emotional.\u00a0 I didn’t feel quite so weird when we later called my sister and she also cried upon hearing the news…<\/p>\n
It was a beautiful sunny day and the girls team decided to put those Christmas gift cards to good use and go shopping.\u00a0 A few shops later, we were in line at Target and McCanless looked at me with a sly grin.\u00a0\u00a0 “Mom,\u00a0 I want to go get my ears pierced.”<\/p>\n
I nearly fainted.\u00a0 She has wanted real earrings for a while now, even going so far as to wear magnetic and stick-on earrings daily, but wouldn’t dare put herself through the pain of the real deal<\/em>.\u00a0 I told her after her sixth birthday she could do it.\u00a0 But still, she refused and said she would never, ever, ever really have her ears pierced,\u00a0 so it came as a huge surprise that she seemed ready.<\/p>\n We immediately took off for Claire’s boutique in the mall.\u00a0 I didn’t have my camera,\u00a0 Mary Clare was in dire need of a nap and we only had 20 minutes until I had to be home for a party with Daddy.\u00a0\u00a0 I knew we would have lots of consideration and contemplation to do.\u00a0 This is McCanless we’re talking about.\u00a0 Lots to do in little time.\u00a0 I was skeptical.\u00a0 We walked in as another little girl was in the piercing chair.\u00a0 Great.\u00a0 As soon as the little girl began to scream I knew we would be leaving soon.\u00a0 No ears pierced.\u00a0 I told McCanless we could go home.\u00a0 No big deal.\u00a0 (Actually, after seeing the little girl scream, I didn’t really want McCanless to have it done.\u00a0 My heart ached as I knew she would soon feel the same pain. ) I encouraged her to wait a while.\u00a0 Maybe even bring Daddy with us next time. Later. Maybe in a month.\u00a0 Or two.\u00a0 This summer, even.<\/p>\n I think it was the allure of the shiny, sparkly earrings all around her, but she was more determined than ever.\u00a0 She chose “diamonds” and it was over in a matter of minutes.\u00a0 My baby girl cried for a moment and a diamond-studded big girl emerged\u00a0 from the hot pink vinyl chair eager to see herself in the mirror.<\/p>\n Immediately, Mary Clare threw herself in a rage onto the floor screaming to have her ears pierced, too.<\/p>\n McCanless perused the big hoop section and chose a multi pack of pink, purple and turquoise hoops.\u00a0 I had to.\u00a0 I couldn’t tell her that after going through all of that, that mom and dad had a few rules<\/em> about types<\/em> of earrings. \u00a0\u00a0 We’ll get to that later.<\/p>\n So my big girl has her ears pierced.\u00a0 I have no photos of the monumental event, but I will never, ever forget the smile on her face, bursting with excitement, as she looked in the mirror for the first time to see her beautiful “diamond” earrings.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Saturday afternoon, as Mary Clare, McCanless and I were hand-in-hand skipping out of Magnolia Mall, it hit me.\u00a0 I realized that I had just experienced a major rite of passage with my oldest daughter.\u00a0 McCanless did it.\u00a0 She got her ears pierced.\u00a0 I was in tears as I looked down at my big six- year- […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3266"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3276,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3266\/revisions\/3276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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