Good thing we gave Harper a Uni-Sex name

The past few days have been a real testament to Harper's inherent tomboy-ness. Since our plane ride home from Portland to Hawaii was a 6 hour day trip, I knew I'd need to stock up on lots of fun, new activities to keep Harper occupied. Dollarama was where it was at, apparently, and I spent $14 on some of the coolest toys a lil' babe could ask for. One of those toys was a little mermaid doll with long luscious locks and a tiny comb. I thought to myself: "I don't really want to condition Harper to play with dolls just because she's a girl, but combing hair is a pretty androgynous activity. You don't think Tristan from Legends of the Fall let his perfectly luminescent head 'o hair go a day without combage, do you? Or hows about Anderson Cooper, you silver fox you... We all know you have a wooden boar's hair brush in your back pocket at all times." So I bought the dolls along with 13 other small trinkets, and put them in a little backpack for the plane ride.

When I handed Harper the doll and comb about 2 hours into our journey, Harper's face lit up with excitement. In turn I waited with baited breath for her to pick up the little brush and start delicately combing Ariel's hair. Intrigued, Harper carefully inspected the mermaid's cranium. "Ooh, she's conjuring up a cool 'do for Ariel!" I thought proudly. And what a naive thought that was, because Harper took the doll and instantly began methodically pulling out small tufts of the doll's hair until she was completely bald. Then, with a look of satisfaction, she proceeded to play with it as if to say "there, now she's beautiful. Exactly how she should be: bald like my dad and mom." The comb was never even an option.

The second indicator (of many) that Harper is quite rough n tough was the short-term adoption of her new "pet". Yesterday morning, while attempting to unpack the many boxes we had left in our apartment over the summer while we frolliced in Alaska, Montreal and Oregon, i noticed Harper grab something, put it to her neck and say "my buh, my buh" (translation: "my bug") Upon inspection I found that Harper caught and had instantly began to cherish a sizable cockroach that took up the majority of her hand. I tried to get her to drop it, but she clutched it as if it were an unopened pack of Dora the Explorer fruit snacks. So, call me a bad mother, but I let her keep it. If you had seen her rock it in her arms saying 'shhh shhh baby" as she did, you would have let her keep it too. Harper LOVED that cockroach for the hour she had it, before she played it to death, literally. (The love story ends with cockroach guts on Harper's hand as she exclaimes "duhty buh" (dirty bug). Don't worry, I promptly washed her hands with hot water, anti bacterial soap and some hand sanitizer for extra germ fighting insurance.)

She found another one today (it's not my house that necessarily dirty, it's just Hawaii, but I decided it better not to let her make a habit out of befriending creepy insects, so I made Rivers flush it down the toilet. By the look on Harper's face, you would have thought that we had just dismembered her favorite doll or something equally as evil. She cried for a solid 15 minutes and only calmed down once we gave her a treat and took her outside, apologizing for murdering her baby the entire time.

So sorry 'bout it... Our little girl likes her dolls bald and loves to play with cockroaches. I think that's worse than loving ponies, but a little better than liking Hannah Montana. So I say we're shooting for about average.