Once upon a time, I wrote an article for Romper about the time another mother referred to my then 3 year old daughter as the "hot mess hair" kid at her school. If you follow their page, you might have seen it come across your newsfeed at some point. I know it's been shared thousands of times, and over the years since it has been published, people have reached out to me via the Interwebs to either commiserate with me, or to tell me why I shouldn't have been upset by it. That's the price you pay when you share personal essays on the internet– gotta love it. 

I was reflecting on that very essay last night as I edited these images that I took of her yesterday on a whim. My "hot mess" hair kid is growing up, and fast. I can see glimpses of the beautiful woman she will one day become, but make no mistake– the tenacious, fun loving, crazy hair/don't care girl is still ever present at five and a half, and I am still pretty damn proud of it. 

This girl runs around our house doing ninja kicks, sharing her love of Power Rangers "Ninja Steel" with her little sister, and she wears ballet costumes while doing it. She likes to help her Papa stack firewood, and assists him on various landscaping projects on our property. She loves to play baseball in the backyard, but prefers her Dad to toss her the ball because apparently, I am just not that good at it. She hounds me every.single.day before leaving the house to let her wear some of my lipstick, and prefers red lipstick to pink, but will settle if she has no other option. 

She is scared of spiders, thanks to me, but is pretty much not afraid of anything else. Her favorite color is red, and I am pretty sure her favorite food is ice-cream, since she thanks God in her prayers for it everyday (seriously). She loves her family ferociously, and I am thankful she is even sweet to her younger sister sometimes. Even though she is five, she still asks to cuddle and every now and then will ask to be carried– which is a feat for me since she is already three quarters my height. 

Oh, and most likely, she wants to be your friend. She wants to be everybody's friend. Countless times I have seen her run up to new kids and ask them to be her friend, and thankfully, most of them have entertained her. Last year, she even liked a boy at her school, "David", and would come home and collect dandelions from our front yard to give to him at school the next day. Super cute, right? She's a real lady too, because she told us she doesn't fart at school because she doesn't want David to hear her. Instead, she reserves them just for us, and gingerly sits on our lap just to push them out of her butt and declare "I tooted on you!!" while laughing hysterically. Yup, that's our girl!

And maybe you are wondering about her hair? Well, we've never given her a hair cut (as some commentators on the original article suggested), and she doesn't want one anyways. She prefers to have long hair like me, her mom, and I am honored to be in good company with her. Sometimes, she likes her hair in an "Elsa Twist" aka. a braid. But most days, no matter how her hair starts out, it still ends up being a hot mess, and you know what?  As her parents, we could care less, and as for Sadie, the only thing she cares about is becoming a ninja ballerina some day, and we are all good with that!

Until next time!

XO,

Stephanie BC