the pig tail war

My friend, Emily, recently posted on her blog about wishing she could put pig tails in her daughter's hair (our daughters are almost the same age), but her hair is still too short. I commented on her blog and said that I'd love to do pigtails too, but it's a battle I usually choose not to fight. She hates having her face or head touched to clean, brush, comb, wipe, etc, and makes it abundantly clear to the perpetrator (how do you spell that word, anyway?? I can't get my spell check to work!). Washing her ears, face, and hair is a daily battle I do choose, because, hello, she needs to be clean!

But anyway, until today she'd only had pigtails (successfully) two times, and that was because Daddy held her arms away so she couldn't grab her hair or my hands and make it impossible for me to do. I can't do them by myself at this point because she doesn't understand why Mommy's pulling her hair and can't help but pull away.

So today her hair was awful--she got out of bed looking like her finger was stuck in a light socket. Some mornings she wakes up and it looks almost perfect, and other mornings it's a static mess. Today is was the latter. So I decided to fight the battle of the pig tails. Daddy held her down and I, armed with a brush and two teeny tiny rubber bands, went to work. She wiggled, she squirmed, she cried and carried on, but Mommy (with reinforcement from Daddy) won. The pig tails stayed.

I tried to take pictures, but she was too busy either dancing, playing, fooling with her pig tails, or crying (because I wouldn't put the camera down) to really smile for me, but oh well. Here she is in her pig-taily cuteness (complete with drool on her jumper!).