I'm a bad parent....

Or really, I'm trying to be a good parent.

Both my husband and I were really rebellious as teenagers. Some of his horror stories include shaving off all of his curly, curly hair and going completely bald for quite some time (this was before 'bald is beautiful'... and he was 19 at the time... and not black), and refusing to wear shoes for over a year (in a part of the world were we it rains more than 10 feet/3.5 meters a year).

I on the other hand, shaved the sides of my head, had my hair temporarily colored purple and was the first girl that I knew of in my neighborhood to have the top of my ear pierced.

All of these things seem to be so tame now, compared to lip rings (you choose your bodily location on that one), plugs, facial tattoos, and piercings that make even me quiver in disgust. And I can tolerate almost anything.

But now my husband and I can see our children already following in our footsteps.

My son, at the age of 7 has started creating his own sense of fashion. He is no doubt paving the way for his little sister to follow right behind him.

It started with blue hair gel. This was actually pretty cool..... I do remember how my mother responded when I came home with my hair shaved at the sides and purple. Not only was I not going to act like that, I actually think blue hair is really, really neat.



I wish I was young enough to dye my hair blue.... or had the figure to pull it off.

But now my son is pulling it one step further. While out shopping for some shoes for a formal day coming up, he saw some blue, sparkly nail polish. He wanted to have this.

For the first time I hesitated. Do I want my son wearing nail polish? What if he gets teased at school? Do I want others to be mean to him? I tried to talk him out of it, without actually telling him he wasn't allowed to wear it. (My husband and I have sworn we will never tell our kids that they can never do opposite-gendered-related things. My son has two dolls along with his lego and muscle cars, my daughter has two mechanical excavators along side of her barbies).

But he was insistant. He was going *TO HAVE* that nail polish.

And then I thought of me and my purple, shaved hair. I looked really awful with it. This is true. From a fashion stand point, it was something I should have never, never done.

But you know what? The world did not stop. Nothing bad happened. It didn't even hurt.

I dared to do it. I dared to do it in a long line of things I have dared to do. Not all of them turned out great (purple hair one example, a couple boyfriends another example) but some of them turned out better than I could have ever dreamed (that I dared to move to a foreign country where I couldn't even speak the language is the best example).

Suddenly I was really proud of my son. We bought the nail polish. We put on some nail polish just before he ate his bedtime snack.

While I am a little nervous of what his friends will think of his fingers tomorrow at school, at the same time, I'm amazed at the inner strength he is already showing. He has the courage at 7 that I did not have until I was 17. I needed to have angry, chaotic, teenage hormones rushing through me to help me have courage. He does it all on his own.

Good for you, N. You're really awesome.

[As an afterword, I came home to find two of his friends home for dinner.... N. had painted their nails already. And a third mother sent me an SMS to find out if the story was true. Then a second message to ask me where I bought the nail polish.]

Childhood Treasures from Down Under

I found this fantastic artist on Etsy when I was looking for Christmas gifts for my two neices.... aged 3 and 1. All of my family lives in Canada, while I live in Norway, so sending gifts can be a bit of a challenge. If clothes do not fit properly, they cannot be returned. We have to think of size and weight when shipping. We have to consider that items might be broken on the way... although of course there is not so much we do about that in any case.

I had considered for some time of perhaps sending these two girls art work that they could hang on their walls and look at during the quiet times of their days, namely in the morning and evenings. There is a artwork enough on Etsy geared towards children, but when I saw the work of Lloyd, who goes by the user name of TummyMountain on Etsy, I knew I had found exactly what I was looking for.

TummyMountain's work is appealing on a lot of different levels. The pictures are simple and without a lot of complicated visual details. The simple faces of the children could be *any* child. The pictures themselves are not static, but have an energy and an expectant engery that flows through them. Something is always about to happen or a new world has just been created. It's something that all of us can recognize from out own childhoods, and in the lives of our children.

And who can not smile at the full fury of a little youngster that doesn't have his or her own way? There's something precious and beautiful about even this.

And finally, the small disasters that come about from trying to be adults in a world children don't quite have access to yet. Even when we know we should be angry at them, they have our full sympathies.

I purchased two paintings for my neices, and have been informed that Lloyd and his wife have gone to the extra effort to find the perfect holiday wrapping for two small ones, who probably will only appreciate the wrapping paper at this stage of the game.. This is perhaps not so easy to do at the end of September, when the rest of the world is still getting used to the start of school and the upcoming of Halloween. They have certainly made my day and I just felt I had to share my treasure with the rest of the world.