Holes

 Well, who is this darling little girl with the pierced ears?!  Xanthe Mary Mei!  Last week, Scott took the kids shopping and Xanthe wanted to get her ears pierced.  I think she chickened out, so I told her we would go "another time."  Xanthe interpreted that to mean "Monday right after school," and came home breathless on Monday, ready to get her ears pierced.

While I love driving the kids around to all their scheduled activities, I hate inserting a non-scheduled shopping-related errand into a weekday afternoon when everything is already carefully choreographed.  Xanthe was disappointed, and she doesn't deal well with ambiguity, so I knew I had to give her an exact time frame for the ear piercing.  I wasn't looking forward to numerous discussions about "how many more days," so it had to be soon.

This morning, while I was at Jennie's incredible Utah Parent Center breakfast, Xanthe left to pick up Esmae for school only to find that her BFF wasn't home.  She panicked and ran home with "a stomachache and a headache," crying.  Ruby let her stay home and texted me to give me a head's up on the sudden illness.  :)

When I got home, I gave Xanthe a hug and some fake sympathy and declared that she had better stay home and relax.  Ten minutes later, it was clear that she was perfectly fine, but she was still too spooked to go to school.  Perfect opportunity to get the ear piercing out of the way.  Xanthe was a lot more enthusiastic about going to school when the incentive was to show her friends her new earrings!

 Before!  Smiling because I told her it wouldn't hurt.

 And after the first ear, because...I lied.  Xanthe was brave.  She hardly panicked, really, compared to how uncontrollably fearful she has been in past similar circumstances, like the doctor.  Come to think of it, it was probably irresponsible of me to even get her ears pierced, just because she is so prone to extreme anxiety, but she wanted to, and I thought it would be a good growing experience.  Judging by her bravery, it was.

 This moment got me all choked up, Xanthe clinging to Ruby for comfort after the first ear.  Xanthe is the one with pain on her face, yet Ruby is the one who has the broken heart.  It was a hard day for Ruby, who didn't get a part in Nutcracker, but it still came naturally for her to put aside her own feelings to be there for Xanthe.  (Golda and Freestone made Nutcracker (yay!!), Ari and Ruby didn't.  I was proud of all of them for the way the handled it.  Scott and me?  We were the ones with both the pain on our faces and the broken hearts.  Parenting, right?  How about if we don't have any more character-building experiences.  Ever.  Because it's bad enough when you're a kid and you don't get chosen.  It's worse when you're a parent, and your child is the one who is crushed.)

 If anything could cheer me up, it's this beautiful face.  She has already encountered trauma that will live in her heart indefinitely, yet her resilience shows on her face.  This innocence and hope, this joie de vivre, it's all going to be crushed someday by an audition, a failure, a disappointment.  But it's OK, because she will have her older sisters to tell her, from experience, that all the hope and joy written on that angelic face will come back.  It will always come back, because there is a flame deep inside each of us that can't be extinguished unless we snuff it out ourselves.  No matter what, we can always choose to let it shine.