www.carolineandtony.com

Bling

April 12th, 2006 Caroline

Ben and his older cousin have a lot in common, despite being separated by 5 years and 3000 miles. They both dislike potatoes (to the continual surprise of their carb-loving parents). They both like belly button access while sleeping (once we figured this out about Ben and dispensed with one-piece pj’s, we all got a lot more sleep). They both turned down Where the Wild Things Are in favor of reading In the Night Kitchen. And now, in a similarity that delights me, Ben has discovered, as his cousin did at this same age, the joys of accessorizing.

Now Ben has never been about taking anything off. I’ll never forget the 80-degree day at Lake Anza, a couple years ago, when all his friends were cavorting naked at the edge of the water and he insisted on staying in shoes and windbreaker. He was never the kind of toddler who took off his own diaper, or needed much naked time. But he was never about dress-up, either. His friend M would come over and try on Ben’s pants, underwear, sweatshirt — sometimes all at once– and Ben would just watch in wonder.

But at some point in the last year he started wearing Tony’s hats, and maybe that’s where it all started. We’d drop him off at preschool wearing Tony’s floppy old purple hat and find him three hours later, his jacket zipped to his neck and the hat still firmly on his head. Other parents have to go in to school to round up their kid’s shed clothes; never us. One day I got to school early to find Ben had added binoculars and a pair of gloves to his outfit. His teacher, who doesn’t normally hit us with much child development lingo, commented, “Ben’s got all his externals working today.”
Then one morning, hanging out in the bathroom with me while I showered, he rummaged around in the drawers and found himself a shiny metal hairclip. In it went, along with an elastic on the other side to make a tiny spout of a ponytail. He’d ask for the hairdo every day, but was always careful to take it out in the car on the way to school.
Until one day, he didn’t. Dress-up hair went to school, to our great delight and the admiration of Ben’s teachers (I love that we get props for not interfering with Ben’s hairstyle). Over the past couple weeks he’s abandoned the ponytail (he couldn’t do it himself) but the barrette goes in every morning before breakfast. He calls it, with great seriousness, his “golden hair clip.” Most days now he also wears one of my old bangle bracelets, a shell necklace I got in Hawaii, and my favorite, a big plastic “sapphire and diamond” ring he got at the dentist. He calls it, at Tony’s urging, his bling, and it’s too big so it falls off all the time (even, yesterday, into a public restroom waste basket, but I, supportive mother that I am, upended the thing, fished the ring out, and put all the trash back).

This morning it all went on before he’d even come downstairs, and I tell you, the jewelry all looks great over his Santa pj’s. We’re flying out of town tomorrow, and I expect he’ll wear it all on the plane. Maybe one of the flight attendants will give him a pin to add to his look. I can only hope.

Edited to add: I forgot! He also uses my lip stuff daily, and likes to powder his nose. So perhaps he and his cousin were separated at birth. Somehow.

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