Persistent Women Always Win

If there's a contest for most persistent, MILA WINS. She's ... wow. That girl can force her will upon anyone. Even me.

Alexis was born wanting her ears pierced. I swear she first asked when she was barely three years old and then gave me no choice but to let her when she was four. Ever the contrarian, Mila never once asked. She didn't seem to care and I didn't bring it up. Three turned into four turned into five ... and then I took Mila into Claire's to pick out earrings to give her sister for Christmas. It was a good idea, by the way. Alexis genuinely needed some new ones and letting Mila pick funky cacti and obnoxious llamas was GENIUS.

But there was a little girl in Claire's getting her ears pierced as we shopped.

Mila stopped and stared.

And then it started. She had a pair picked out that she was going to wear in like .000000003 seconds and she put all of her energy into trying to convince me that IMMEDIATELY was a great time to go through with a little ear piercing. I'm not that easy to convince, so we walked out with a Christmas gift for Alexis and THAT WAS IT.

Well, except for the idea. Mila definitely walked out with an idea.

AND THEN SHE NEARLY DESTROYED MY SANITY. While I was able to make Alexis wait for an entire year, Mila wasn't going to wait a week. She resorted to all sorts of forms of torture as she focused every ounce of her will into convincing me to drop everything and take her to the mall to get holes stabbed in her head.

I lasted a month. A whole month. It was not easy.

When I finally agreed to Mila's scheme, she pulled all 37 pounds of herself into a tiny ball of confidence and marched her way into that store. She stormed up to that stool and then WAS SO PISSED OMG because it was someone else's turn. Mila really didn't understand why she would wait even three seconds once we were at the scene of the crime. I was then treated to ten minutes of, "Why is she taking so long?" and "IT'S MY TURN NOW," except it wasn't her turn and WOW was Mila mad.

Finally it was Mila's turn. When she tells the story, she is going to talk about how months passed by with us standing there, but really it was more like years because when it comes to a persistent 5-year old, the months are short but the minutes are SO LONG OMG.

Once Mila was in the chair with little marker dots on her ears, she legit gloated. She had won the war and had convinced me to let her do the thing she wanted to do more than anything else in the world. And then the earring went in her ear and ... am I not supposed to laugh when my kid crumbles into a pile of tears? Because I'm telling you the extreme gloating to WTF JUST HAPPENED snap was so amazing. So very amazing.

Before you think I'm evil, Alexis couldn't stop laughing either. We tried very hard to hide it, but it's so great when Mila thinks she's on top of the world and then gets called on it. It doens't happen often, but I'm so glad when I get to see it happen. Besides, she recovered quickly and went right on back to being a demanding and confident little beast.

And now she won't stop looking at herself in the mirror. By the way, she's "soooo cute." If you don't believe me, just ask Mila. She will answer the question with those exact words.