Left Behind (or Project Princess)

There's a little girl in our house who is a bit confused these days.  You see, for as long as she can remember, she's gone almost everywhere with her brother.  She's gone to school with him, to the kids club at the gym with him, to soccer practice, t-ball practice, birthday parties, etc...all with him.  Sure, every now and then she's gone to the store with 'just Daddy' or 'just Mommy', but for the most part she's spent all her time with her brother.  Well, all that's changed.  Now that Jake's in Kindergarten, Delila is...well...on her own.  She doesn't understand it at all.  Everyday when we drop Jake off at school she asks why we aren't staying.  She goes on and on about kindergarten, and seems to be making a point of learning as many names as she can.  The names of Jake's teachers and classmates, the school songs and motto, she's committing them all to memory.  She'll be well-prepared two years from now when it's her turn.  But in the meantime, I can't help but think she's feeling a little not-so-special these days. 

It's bad enough that Lila's being left out of the whole school thing, but to make matters worse, two weekends ago Jake attended a birthday party to which Delila was not invited.  She was really upset about it.  Fortunately, the next day she received an invitation to a Princess Party from one of her gymnastics friends.  She was quite pleased to learn that Jake was not invited.  She was also pleased with the whole "princess" aspect of the party, and informed me that she would need to wear a princess dress.  Oh! and that she wanted a princess hat to go with it!  You know, the pointy kind!  I told her that I'd be happy to make her a pointy princess hat...and a dress, if she wanted one.  And Project Princess was born.

Delila and I went to the fabric store to pick out "princess fabric".  We came home with a small bag of really lovely and outrageously expensive snippets.  She was so excited about it, what was I supposed to do?  Say "Sorry, Ladybug" and head off to the Disney store?!  No way! 

Next up was the daunting task of getting our little girl with the kingdom-sized attitude to stand still long enough to get the critical measurements.  Since that wasn't going so well, I decided to make a mock-up out of muslin first. (There was no way I was coughing up more money on this crazy project because of miscalculations.)  Suffice to say, Her Little Royalness did not care for the ugly muslin "not a princess dress" at all!  But...

...once all the nipping and tucking were done and I started putting the real deal dress together, her attitude changed...just a bit...and only for a very little while.  (She really has a thing or two to learn if she's not going to be a 'ready-to-wear' kinda girl.) 

Yes, I had other things to do with my time and certainly more useful things to do with our money, but I'd say it was worth it.  After all, isn't it my job to make my little girl feel like a real-deal  Princess?  I'll admit that at times,  Project Princess left me feeling more minion than mommy, but that smile right there...well that makes me feel just a little like a real-deal Fairy Godmother.