It only took 1 year, 4 months, and 11 days

I would have told this little story way back before Christmas if I hadn't been consumed with the joy of the season and too joyful stressed to deal with it.  So here goes...

Before Kate's 4th birthday she had expressed interest in getting her ears pierced.  Having gone with my own Mother at age 4 to get my ears pierced I thought it was a perfect idea.  Daniel was more on the fence or if you ask him: totally against it.  We explained to Kate that it would hurt but just briefly.  We explained that we'd have to clean them and take care of her ears.  She was on board.  So on her 4th birthday we trekked over to the local Claire's and she sat stoically as they prepared to pierce her ears.

At impact her face contorted briefly and then she went back to her brave stone expression .  She never cried, later admitted that it had indeed hurt, and spent the rest of the day enjoying her birthday.  The 6 weeks of daily cleaning were OK.  She resisted some but since we weren't trying to remove the earrings she was fine.

So for Christmas that year I thought a perfect stocking stuffer would be some new earrings.  In theory she thought this was a great idea.  She regularly enjoyed perusing Claire's for earrings and had decided on butterflies and cherries.  Let's just say after Christmas the earrings were traded for a dog calendar.  That was safer.

She told us she'd do it tomorrow, or next week, or next month so many times I eventually just gave up.  She swore when she turned 5 she'd do it.  She swore for Halloween she'd get new earrings to go with her genie costume.  She swore she's do it for this Christmas.  At times she said she was just going to wait until she was 16 and at times I was OK with that.  But every time we even went near her ears she'd freak out, flail her arms all about, start screaming and more or less convince us that this was one battle we weren't going to win.  I was somewhat convinced she might need a child therapist to help her deal with what must certainly be Post-traumatic stress disorder from having a hole shot through her ears.

So for whatever reason, perhaps it was the stress of the holidays or I'd just had a bad day and wanted to make it more fun, I decided that 1 year, 4 months, and 11 days of not taking her earrings out was long enough!  We tried sympathizing, we tried letting her help, we tried letting her put earrings in and take them out of my ears.  We bargained with letting her get a Chihuahua if it hurt (among many other things that were NEVER going to happen)  But in the end it took Daniel holding her down, her screaming, and me as quickly as possible removing those blasted things.

You want to know what kept her from clawing my eyes out?  The promise that she could get ice cream and  wear these little gems I had leftover from Halloween.

She proudly wore them that night as we went back to Claire's.  This time we actually walked out with a pair of dangly pink stars.

She's still skittish.  She still gets that look of sheer panic in her eyes when we're changing her earrings.  Just yesterday it was a battle to get her to put some in after a battle involving me sitting on her the night before to get them out (she was actually laughing this time).  But it's progress.  Maybe when she's 16 and  all her friends are wanting to get their eyebrows or bellybuttons pierced she'll remember this experience and say, "Nah.  I think I'll do it when I'm 21."