My daughter is going through the Punky Brewster phase.  Punky Brewster was an adorably headstrong girl who had mixed match fashion sense.   I don’t remember Punky changing 10 times a day or  screaming alot, but there are similarities.  Take today for instance, I lay out a cute pair of jeans, a pink long-sleeved shirt, with socks to match.  Maria favors the inside out watermelon summer dress with pink and orange leggings, and purple socks.  If she only could bear sitting for a comb through her hair longer than a couple minutes maybe we’d see pigtails.

Socks.  I always wondered what happens to a freshly opened package of socks.  Now I know.  McDonald’s play area happens…running outside without your shoes on happens….throwing a sock behind the couch happens…the large basket of orphan socks happens.  Punky was known to wear two different colored socks and two different shoes…on purpose.

Punky wasn’t all that bad.  There was the time she helped save her friends from hiding in an abandoned fridge….the episode that goes right up in the “Most Traumatizing 80’s Sitcom Family Moments’ along with the ‘Different Strokes’ pedophile episode where Arnold gets away from the video taking weirdo.  Punky had wonderful leadership qualities…she even coerced us to switch our Converses and striped knee highs.

Oh…and my daughter is going through a short term stripper phase too….or not…she’ll be working her way through law school…I’ll be open-minded and defend her…whatever.   Besides, if she inherits a chest like her grown up idol Punky then she can avoid student loans completely.  When Maria needs a break from her wardrobe changing frenzy…she airs out…running around like a nudist.  She’s two years old so it’s o.k…until tomorrow when she turns 3 then it starts to be slightly more inappropriate.

By putting her clothes within her reach, I’m encouraging her to begin making her own choices…I’m obviously choosing  my battles carefully.  A lot of kids go through this phase.  The boys did, but it was more of a ‘Digging through the dirty laundry to get out the train shirt’ phase.   It’s as if by blogging this you’ll just understand when you see my daughter in the Christmas sweater in June.  Though I’m sure her ‘Little House on the Prairie’ phase is in order.  That’s the best I can think of when I try to conjure up images of docile and obedient girls…but she’ll probably be Nellie.