Moonspun Spins

So I don’t know for sure how it started, maybe the night before when we got dressed for the women’s hockey game and I let lil moonspun braid my hair. She did fine, she is a great braider, actually. Every once in a while I put my hair in two braids and the last two weekends when we have gone to hockey games it seems like a great way to contain it and still look cute under my hat.

Anyway, it was Saturday morning and I was sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop. Lil m was seriously impatient waiting for her friend T to come over for a long awaited lego playdate. She was kind of fussing around me and somehow asked me if she could clean my studs—by which I mean my earrings people, not RP or the cabana boys that had yet to show up at that point. I have two piercings in each ear and the second hole has a pair of garnet studs in them. I don’t take them out, but I do clean them when necessary. I told lil m if she really wanted to do the job of taking them out and cleaning them and my ears, she could and instructed her to get cotton balls and alcohol from the bathroom.  I figures she could futz with my earlobes and I could still type.

We are working hard with lil m on improving her ability and awareness to take care of things, her own and helping out. If she is able to do this FFO and I have agreed she can get her ears pierced on her 10th birthday in July. So I imagine the fascination with my own earrings is part of it.

She did fine and as instructed with the studs. (Still no cabana boys!)

And then she looked more closely at my left ear where there is a third hole. I have not worn an earring in it for, oh I’d say 15 years and the last time I poked at it over the summer I was pretty sure the back had closed up and was fine with that. The next thing I know, lil m is dipping a paperclip in the alcohol and coming at me with it.

WTF?

(This is the moment I refer to in the beginning)

Me: What are you doing???…..

Lil m: Hold still, mama, it will be all right.

Me: ……With a paperclip?

Lil m: (looking confused) What? I put alcohol on it! It is sanitized.

Me: What are you doing to do with it?!

Lil m: (giving me the obvious look) Poke the hole back in your ear!

Me: NO YOU ARE NOT! NOT with a paperclip! That’s gross and it’s too big.

Lil m: Oh. What should I use then?

Me: (sighing as I realize there is no fighting this) An earring…one of my earrings from upstairs.

Lil m: OK!

And she bounds up the stairs to our room to get an earring.

A couple minutes later, she has excitedly and successfully poked through my third hole. It didn’t hurt at first, but as it’s not been used in a while, it was sore. I had to talk her out of me having a dangly in it and said it needed a stud. Several trips up and down the stairs (all the while me blissfully getting some homework done) resulted in her finding, goodness knows where, a lone stud with a celtic design on it. I think it was FFO’s actually. But it’s all we could find.

Lil m was still so excited this morning about it she sat me down in the bathroom to clean it again. And reminded me that after tomorrow she won’t be here for the week, I’ll have to remember on my own!

The episode did prompt several conversations about what it was like to get your ears pierced and how important it was to take care of them. that were valuable. But I’ll tell you my friends, the sight of my 9 year old coming after me with a sterilized paper clip was a sight I’ll not soon forget!