When Alaina Grows Up, She Wants to Be Just Like . . .

My two-year-old daughter Alaina has no shortage of older girls to look up to.

She has her sister, Janae,

 

as well as seven older girl cousins . . . not to mention quite a few aunties and all twelve dancing princesses.

 

She has been known to ask for Manda by name, compliment Jordan on her "eye-blouse," and follow any one of the older girls around when they are playing.

Recently, though, Alaina has been paying attention to one of her cousins in particular: Rebecca.

 

Or--more specifically--Rebecca's Halloween costume.

 

When Becca was here for Ben's annual party, she dressed up as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and carried her little dog stuffie, Toto. Whenever she put the dog down, Alaina picked it up and gave it to her.

We thought this was kind of cute--and could see that Alaina was really paying attention!

 

This morning, though, we saw how much Alaina was really noticing. I walked into Walmart with my girls, and couldn't help but be distracted by the racks of discounted Halloween costumes in the entryway.

As we started to look through them, Janae picked up a Cinderella dress and started begging me to buy it. I had no intention of doing so (maybe some of you have seen Janae's dress-up collection . . .).

I then saw a size 2 Show White dress which was identical to one Janae had at home and thought it would be so cute to get for Alaina. Half price, right?

Alaina, though, had her eye on something else. Even though the racks were PACKED, she had somehow spotted a Dorothy costume, which was also very little.

I tried to convince Alaina that the Snow White one would be fun for dress up, that she could have the same dress as Janae, and that she could have her very own princess costume.

But she came home with the dress like Becca's . . . and immediately found a dog to put into a basket.

 

She carried it around for as long as I would let her, and then I put the dress into the back of the closet in hopes that it would last until next Halloween (it is certainly not as well made as Becca's!).

Alaina--by the way--thought we were going to be trick-or-treating again tonight!

 

I thought it was so sweet that she wanted to dress up just like Becca :)

I guess the next thing she will be asking for is a pair of high-heeled ruby slippers. . . .