Marriage and Kissing and Pillow Pets

Barbies and weddings and pillow pets and kissing. Oh my. Pre-Kindergarten, the younger portion of our family was blissfully ignorant of all those things. We don't watch TV with commercials and just generally don't do a lot of the commercialized stuff but my oh my how things changed once we started Kindergarten. Now there is kissing at school and talk of marriage and stuff - always with the hottest new stuff. And I have to explain to Miss E why kissing is not OK for Kindergartners, which is baffling my friends. Just baffling.

Tonight Miss E and I headed to a local store to get a birthday gift for a friend. During the picking out of the gift, it became clear to me that a whole new world of products has been opened up for her. Before, she would go to a toy store and look at the toys she liked. Now she is looking at the toys she has HEARD ABOUT. Very different. I have to say, I have a bit of a hot button on the whole "wanting things for no reason" and we talked about it, I asked her WHY she wanted a pillow pet, and explained that "because Mark has one" is not a good enough reason. Ditto for Barbies, ditto for electric toothbrushes. To her credit, she didn't whine, ask for anything for herself or complain.

Then it was time to pick out wrapping paper for the birthday present and she picked out wedding paper because she is all excited about getting married and daily tells me which boy in her class she is getting married to and who was kissing who that day. Or it's quite possible she picked it out just to make my eye twitch a little bit. Or a lot. On they way home, as I was trying to explain that NOBODY picks out who they are marrying in kindergarten, she starts asking me what it's like to fall in love and is there kissing involved and what does it feel like and OH MY GOD I thought I had at least 5 more years before that conversation.  And I really don't know what to say. How do you make adulthood not look attractive to a kid? Tell her kissing is icky? I talked in circles with her about how short of time you have to be a kid and how getting married is a huge decision and you have to know a lot of people before you pick the one you are going to marry and none of it was the right thing to say. I could just feel it. Kind of like writing this, I'm not really sure how to put it out there in the right way.

When we reached home and got out of car I took a moment to take a deep breath, look up at the moon and whispered a silent prayer. Please.... please let me know what to say, to say it right, to guide her right, to know which issues to take on and which to let slide by. Right now I am ignoring the marriage thing, all kids talk about this, they don't know what it means and they won't for a long time. The kissing thing has been addressed and the rest of it will be day to day. She is a smart, smart girl and I will always have faith in that.

On a side note - In the picture above she is singing along with the snow globe and making up her own lyrics. She's been doing this a lot this year since she loves to sing but doesn't know all the words to the Christmas songs. It's so fun to hear what she comes up with. A lot about snow falling and fire places and sleighs and coziness.

Also, that snow globe is a present Peter got me for Christmas in 2003 and on the bottom he wrote "To my perfect wife". Every year when I get that out it makes me smile and my heart feel warm.