Not-So-Little Mermaid Obsession

 It's hard to say exactly where it started...

 Maybe it was in May when Grandpa Mac turned her into a mermaid.

Perhaps it was when Grandma Mac let her choose a toy at Disneyland in June,

or a few weeks later when we went on the new ride at California Adventure,

or even at Tuachan in August.

Regardless of when or where it started, it's here. And from the looks of it, it's not going anywhere soon.

Cailyn's Obsession with The Little Mermaid.

 I knew that she loved Ariel, but I think the first thing that really surprised me was about two months ago; we had just moved and I set her up watching The Little Mermaid on the computer so I could unpack. I walked by and caught this:

Cailyn likes to sing, but I'd never heard her sing all the lyrics to such a long song before!
Since then, this has become her signature song. She calls it the "cowexion" song (...wouldn't you think my cowexion's complete?) and sings it all the time, with or without accompaniment.

Lines and songs from The Little Mermaid began popping up all over our house. I overheard her in the bathtub one day saying "Sweet child; I make all your dreams come true!"

Another time I heard a little voice from her bedroom saying "Oh Eric! Ahh-ahh-ahh!"

Then she started "swimming" and singing through the house.

So when I saw this mermaid costume at Costco, I snatched it up - even though we already had plans for our Halloween costumes - so she could play dress up with it.

As it turns out, dress-up wound up lasting for three days straight. Nights included.

The girl formerly known as Cailyn became the mermaid, Ariel.

The following lines are all things that Ariel told me at least once during those first few days:

"Mermaids don't wear shoes!"

(This from the girl mermaid who days before had a meltdown because I walked out to the car carrying her shoes and her feet got "dirty" from walking barefoot outside...)

"Mermaids don't wear jammies!"

"I am NOT a human!"

"Why there's no human costumes at Costco?"

She watched The Little Mermaid as much as I would let her.

The singing-on-the-rock pose...

Just when I thought it couldn't get any more over the top (or should I say under the sea?), this happened:

Cailyn Ariel was watching (what else?) The Little Mermaid. While wearing her costume, of course.

I was on the computer and she suddenly ran in to me saying, with a high degree of urgency, 

"I need to take my costume off!" 

Surprised, but also relieved, I asked her if she wanted to go choose some clothes. As it turns out, she didn't want regular clothes at all. Instead, she wanted to wear the Ariel dress from the dress up box.

And get this: it was because the movie was at the point that Ariel turns into a human!

So, for the next few days, every time she watched The Little Mermaid, she did costume changes. And not just once - back and forth twice! Mermaid to dress when Ariel first gets legs, back to mermaid when the sun sets on the third day - and this had to be a fast change so she could be ready a few minutes later when Triton changed her back to a human permanently.

I got the brilliant idea to expand her panty selection with Ariel panties; the girl has a box overflowing with panties, but always refused to wear any of them that weren't Dora. She had a pretty good selection of Dora panties, but occasionally they would all wind up in the laundry waiting to be washed. So I thought that getting some Ariel panties would solve the problem.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Rather than continuing to wear her Dora panties and also wearing her Ariel panties, Cailyn immediately decided that she would ONLY wear Ariel panties. And not only that, but only specific Ariel panties. Only four out of the seven pair that came in the pack (of size 4 mind you, because that is the smallest size of Ariel-Only panties anyone sells, in case you were wondering) of Ariel panties were deemed good enough for Cailyn to wear.

Cailyn's panty box overflowing with panties she used to wear. On the left are the Ariel panties she doesn't like to wear; on the right are the ones that she will wear. And bad news: there are currently two pairs of Ariel panties (one that she likes, one that she doesn't) that are MIA. Gulp.

Now, you're probably thinking  

"Why can't you just be the parent and tell her to stop being ridiculous and make her wear whatever panties are clean?"
 And you would be right to ask that.
The answer is I do. But Cailyn is a special kind of stubborn and doesn't back down without a fight. Remember the blue jean incident from a few weeks back? We have similar meltdowns every day that Cailyn gets dressed that one of her four sacred pairs of panties aren't clean - which is probably about half the time. Some days these meltdowns last for about 5 minutes and make me want to poke my eyes out are relatively mild. Other days they escalate into full-fledged tantrums that take close to an hour to work through and if you were a stranger and didn't know any better, you would think that she was responding to physical abuse.
Just last week as the girls were getting out of the bath and into jammies, we encountered this dilema. She refused to choose any panties because the ones she wanted weren't clean, so after a few minutes I chose a pair, pinned her down and forced them over her kicking legs while she screamed. I then gave her the option to choose some jammies if she would settle down. She didn't, so once again I chose a pair and once again pinned her down with all of my appendages to get the jammies onto her flailing body. A tantrum continued for 45 minutes. She wouldn't look at me, when I tried to snuggle her she pushed me away and said "Don't TOUCH me!" and her face kept scrunching up like she was in real physical pain. (I actually thought about grabbing my phone to video part of this ordeal, but I decided against it. I now regret that decision; words really don't do the story justice.) She finally fell asleep, still upset about the panties.

Luckily, tantrums like this don't happen very often...Cailyn is normally a sweetheart! But she is definitely a Mermaid-Obsessed sweetheart.
Until recently, she maintained that she still wanted the Dora Ballet party for her third birthday in December that she had been talking about since March. But within the last few weeks she changed her mind and now wants - what else? An Ariel party. So much for the Dora things I'd bought on clearance all year long!

Stubborn as she is, I sure do love this sweet and sassy Cailyn Mermaid!

Boston Miscellaneous

 Here are a few fun pictures from our trip that haven't been posted yet:

The girls with Uncle Kerry and Aunt Marianne

 Backyard Zipline

 (As much as Cailyn loved the zipline at Zion, she didn't like this one...she wasn't able to hold on well enough to feel secure.)

The girls loved playing with the dogs. Cailyn called the Hopkin's black lab, Micah, "Mike." She would walk around saying "Where's Mike?"

Rylee also loved Elena and Sofia's puppy, Maggie...

Pretty view on the flight home.

 Free entertainment on a cross-country Southwest flight (:

 Cailyn passed out towards the end of the second flight. We didn't change planes before the third flight, so before the new passengers boarded, Rylee spotted the pilot walking past us. She asked "Are you the pilot?" They got chatting, and before we knew it, he had invited her up to sit in the cockpit!

Captain Roy, Rylee, and Sella

I'm telling you, this girl's confidence will take her far in life; this is not the first time that her outgoing personality has gotten people to bend the rules for her, without her even asking! OK, well sometimes she does ask...notice the bear. This bear belonged to Marianne, but Rylee loved it and named her "Sella". Then on our way out the door to the airport, she asked Marianne "Can I buy Sella?" Marianne accepted payment in the form of hugs and kisses, and needless to say, we left Needham with an extra bear.

Shortly afterwards, even the energizer bunny got tired and slept for most of the flight from Kansas City to San Diego.

We had such a fun trip! The girls are still talking about the trip two weeks later and saying things like "next time we go to Boston..."

It will be a while, but we'd love to have a next time (:

Thanks so much Marianne and Kerry!

Boston Day 6: The Children's Museum

 We had planned on using our last day back east to go to Salem, but decided at the last minute that it would be too much for the girls - they needed a break from the historic sight-seeing. So instead, we made it their day and headed for the Boston Children's Museum.

 We rode the train into the city

 and then walked the block and a half from the train station to the Museum.

 Then we played all day!

 Rylee's favorite part of the whole day was going to this audience participation play; the girls and I all got chosen to be "dancers."

 Everyone loved the bubble station.

 We spent a long time playing with the different ball stations.

 Arthur!

Rylee's "Castle"

 Afterwards we walked back to the station to catch the train home.