My Sly Naomi

God only knows how Shannon and I managed to bring about such a girly daughter. Her Grammy and Aunt Jackie have to take some of the blame, but she was like this even while we were in Kentucky. We try to encourage who she is, but sometimes we don't know how to take it. She is constantly wanting to change her clothes and wear dress after dress like she's in a fashion show. Admittedly, we need to find some balance between her desire and our habit of keeping her in the same outfit for two or three days. We hate laundry and consider clothes to be "dirty" long past what is conventional. However, we have laid down strong rules about how often Naomi "needs" to change her clothes, and every five minutes will no longer cut it. Even so, she knows how to pull my strings.

Last Thursday, we were planning to leave for Orlando, after getting over some illness. Naomi had been dressed, we were almost all packed, and out she comes running with a skirt. She looks at me and says, "Daddy, can I put this beautiful skirt on?" I tell her that she can't because she's already dressed and we're going to leave and she shouldn't wear a skirt with a dress anyways. She runs past me to ask Shannon (a new habit that we are stamping out). Shannon disciplines her and she comes, apologizes to me, and disappears back into the bedroom.

Five minutes later she comes out laughing and jumping. She has blue shorts on with her dress. She looks up at me, bats her eyes, and says "Daddy, look at my cute, new shorts!" I just stare hard at her in disbelief. She did kind of work around what I told her, but I was so disappointed. Her ear to ear smile starts to lose its form and she gets this look of confusion. She looks over at Shannon for some explanation. Shannon tells her that maybe she should ask me what the problem is. So, slowly, she turns to look at me and says "Daddy, what is the problem?" I ask her "Naomi, what do you think the problem is?" Her eyes well up with tears, her lip droops, and ever so sadly she looks into my eyes and says "you don't like my new shorts?"

I tried so hard, to keep my composure, to not laugh, to make a point to her, but I couldn't. Shannon was rolling in her chair trying to hold her laugh in and she broke once I finally did. Naomi kind of looks around confused then starts to chuckle her maniac chuckle. It's only a matter of time before she's sly enough to do that type of thing on purpose without the tinge of innocence.