Just Us Girls

Monday night out with Evie was a mixed bag of emotions for me even though Evie assures me she had a great time. I wasn’t able to pull myself away from work till around 6pm and was about ten minutes late picking Evie up from her after school program. I was tired and a little cranky and so I couldn’t really muster up much excitement for her when I told her we would have a night out for just the two of us. She was duly confused and excited all at once as she pondered the meaning and significance of a night without her daddy and little brother. (I can just imagine her mental cost benefit analysis, a few hours without toddler brother who might eat something sticky and touch her, pro; a few hours out with somewhat boring and somewhat cranky mommy, con?)

We started out the night by recruiting a few other gals and called my cousin Hongie* (who brought her hubby along). We met at a favorite Japanese restaurant where we ordered Evie some sushi, including hamaguri (clam). I told Evie that we could pretend the hamaguri was for luck since Wikipedia said that a clam soup was a traditional food served for Girl’s Day. I sort of trust the truthiness of Wikipedia which claims that a soy based clam soup (with shells) is good to eat on Girl’s Day as it’s a “symbol of a united and peaceful couple.” I figured luck was a much better thing to be eating clams for than marriage/couple-hood which has no guarantees no matter how many clam shells in your soup. Dinner ended up being a lot of fun for both of us and was surprisingly relaxing. I found myself hugging Evie a lot during dinner as I realized that I don’t get to hug her all that much. I'm either busy or her little brother is usually on my lap whenever she wants one. I watched and listened as she chatted with her auntie Hongie and uncle A. I don’t really remember what we talked about other than the quiet passage of our daily lives and how we’re celebrating Girl’s Day with Hongie’s hubby A.

After dinner we went to Target and met up with Hongie’s sister Vannie to help Evie pick out a doll. Evie owns, not counting stuffed animals (do stuffed animals count as dolls?), maybe two dolls. Both were gifts that refused to stay at the bottom of Evie and JT’s massive toy piles. I think I’ve mentioned how much I dislike dolls in the past as I consider them, particularly Barbie, Bratz, and princess dolls, to be bad influences on young girls and their sense of self. The sheer impossibility of their beauty standards makes me uncomfortable with giving my daughter one of these things. We live in a diverse area with many different kinds of beauty and I’m hoping that Evie can learn to see them before she’s blinded by some unrealistic mass produced and marketed standard.

Still, I’m not completely obtuse on this issue. I do think dolls can help facilitate certain imaginative play for children. Sometimes I think girls benefit from having dolls and other toys which encourage them to think and use their imaginations. Maybe “girls” toys such as dolls, which do very little other than look cute, help girls use their creativity more than certain “boys” toys which beep or do all sorts of other fancy stuff (JT’s Buzz Lightyear action figure comes to mind). So, I guess I was warming up to the idea of giving Evie a doll on Monday. It was just a matter of finding the right doll; that is, no Barbie, no Bratz, and preferably olive toned, dark haired and doe eyed. Following those rules, Hongie, Vannie, Evie, and I ended up spending an hour going through Target’s pink toy aisles. No dolls fit our preferred description and I ended up pointing to an African American Barbie and asking Evie if she’d like that one. Evie, to her credit, said that the doll was pretty, but she didn’t want it because, she “[doesn’t] like brown dolls.”

Say what baby girl? That little comment earned her a gentle (at least I thought so) reminder from both myself and Vannie (who heard as well) on how all colors are beautiful to which Evie backtracked and said, “It’s ok, I like brown, really.” Which, of course, made me a bit frustrated that she basically just went along with whatever we were saying to please us; ARGH! This parenting thing: IT.IS.HARRRD!

We ended up getting a FurRealz Puppy. I don’t know how else to describe it other than it was not a doll and barks when you pet its back. Another toy for the toy pile achieved, we said goodbye to my cousins and headed to a bookstore where Evie was allowed to pick out some books. She chose a Magic Treehouse book (a fantasy series she’s been reading on her own) along with another copy of E.B. White’s The Trumpet of the Swan. I had been reading The Trumpet of the Swan to her for about a week at bedtime (a few weeks ago) when my copy, which I had managed to hold onto since the fourth grade, went missing. A sad loss for me, but I’m happy Evie chose to pick out another copy so that we can finish reading it together. We finished off our book selections with a picture book on Japanese Celebrations that should be educational for all of us.

All in all, it was a nice night out with my little girl. I learned a little bit more about her and she enjoyed having Mommy all to herself. When we returned home to our manly men, JT was sitting up watching Noggin while J was sprawled out next to him, exhausted. Apparently manly men play video games and “jump on daddy” while eating a nuked dinner. Evie went to bed asking when we were going to have a family day with daddy and JT.

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For those of you who remember, Hongie ended up having a parent teacher conference with that crazy parent from a few months ago. She stood her ground and the parent apologized only to accuse Hongie of not preparing her kid well enough despite all the other kids in the class being better prepared. When I was a kid I thought I might grow up to be a teacher. Hongie reminds me why I said, “Nahhh…”