a funny little story about a girl i know

My sweet, happy go lucky daughter who loves to be on stage and smiles that much more when she is in front of a crowd has been replaced lately with this grouchy little thing that hangs out in her room and huffs and puffs quite a bit.  There are heavy sighs and eye rolling to go along with the other fun stuff.  It’s almost like a tag team in the hall way, though.  If Nicole is having an off day, Paige is an angel and vice versa.  They can’t BOTH be happy and fun to be around .. somehow that wouldn’t please the universe ;)  Welcome to the world of teenage girls!  (oh, and Paige isn’t actually 13 till later this month.)

Our story begins last weekend when we made plans to go to the ranch (perhaps, I should post those pics!). Only we had found several houses online that we wanted to go see so our ever patient realtor decided to meet us early that morning, so we could do both!  My girls were less than thrilled at the idea of looking at houses .. again.  Then, we woke them up before noon because we needed to meet Clayton at 10am.  The horror!   To make matters worse for my sweet 12 year old, we were going out to the ranch with OUR friends and not hers.  Another trip to the ranch was her request for her birthday, but after last year’s excursion with a large group of preteen girls, I decided to give Heath a break and just hang close to home this year.  She’s “making do” with a spa themed party at our house which sounds fabulous if you ask me. The invites sure did turn out cute anyways!

This is where the story gets interesting … Paige decides to put on some make up in a rebellious fashion to express her outrage at these terrible Saturday plans. I walk into her room to ask her if she’s ready and she doesn’t turn to face me as she says “almost”.   My Mom Senses kick in and I realize she’s hiding something from me.  I ask if she’s wearing makeup (a new stage we are experimenting with) and she said yes, followed by “I do, but you won’t” when I ask if she likes it.  She turns around at my insisting and I see this face … how do I even begin to describe what she did?  She’s covered her entire eyelid up to her eyebrow and all the way down underneath her eye in raccoon fashion with a dark purple/brown eye shadow. I think it was the darkest color she has.  Then, she’s wearing a deep, dark red lipstick AND has drawn a light purple cross on her forehead.  My look must have said it all because really there’s just no hiding the sheer shock and amazement I had at that moment.  I’m sure I said something like “wow, that’s different” and she replied with “I’m making a statement.”

I immediately left the room and went to tell Heath what she did. He just sort of laughed it off and said I should let her wear it.  “But I don’t want to be seen with her.  It’s embarrassing.”  He was right when he said that she'd be the one that was embarrassed and suggested we try to get a sneaky picture of her while looking at houses.  I did my best to act as though there was nothing strange at all about the way this kid, my kid, looked.  I could hardly look at her w/out wanting to either laugh or cry.  Then, when she wasn't getting the reaction she was going for, she tried ignoring us.  "You can make your little statement or whatever this is, but you must reply to us when we are talking to you."  So, she wrote out all her answers.  

Let me tell you, the ride over and those first few houses were really quiet!  She did finally start speaking again and by about the 3rd house, she was wiping her make up off.  Even more amazing, she had fun at the ranch!

Here's the only picture we did manage to sneak of her that didn't have the back of her head.  And this, my friends, was after she started wiping it off.