After recovering from my initial shock of finding out I was pregnant with Coconut #1,  I realized that I really wanted a girl.  I don’t know if it was that I had been around little girls in the dance world all my life, or just that fact that I thought it would be cool to give Grandma and Grandpa their first grand daughter.  Whatever it was, I really wanted a little girl.  Although we elected not to find out through a sonogram the sex of our baby, I was convinced it was a girl.  When she was born and laid on my stomach, warm, wet and full of life, I was so grateful to God for giving me my hearts desire. Fast forward 5 years with our surprise blessing of Coconut #3.  Again, I had a strong desire for another little girl.  I really felt like if my son was going to be stuck as the middle child it might be good for him to be the only boy.  Either it was that or simply because the memory of those early months with him were still so vivid in my mind.  Regardless, God again fulfilled my desire.  Over the course of the last 8 years however, I have come to learn that girls have their own set of trials that they bring with them.  And so during the journey of raising two girls I’ve discovered, The Trouble with Girls.

~ Little girls make it extremely difficult to continue to allow negative self talk come out of your mouth.  The realization that the way you view yourself as a woman will, in turn, impact the way they will view themselves someday is sobering..

~ With girls come the revelation that the way you treat your spouse in front of them will be the same way they treat their future spouses.  In the same manner, the way your partner treats you will be what they will look for, consciously or subconsciously,  in a partner.   Talk about pressure!

~ The way I dress and view modesty will be their measuring stick for their own views  later in life.  Additionally what I teach them about their bodies will resonate deep within them after I am gone.

~ Girls will put you in the most difficult position when trying to answer questions about life, death, and where babies really come from.  The intuition that God bestows upon women manifests itself early on.  Trite answers to serious questions will be ferreted out for what they are.  Only truthful answers to life’s most difficult questions will suffice.

~ From early on both of my girls were independent and knew what they wanted.  Many days I would have to wrestle with my control freak nature and tell myself that allowing them to wear a tutu, tiara, and raincoat to the store was simply allowing them to explore their creative side.

~ Little girls will say exactly what they are thinking.  Out loud.  To whoever is around.  Ego stands no chance with little girls.  Or with any child for that matter.

~ How I live out my faith and my life in front of them will be more important that what I say about my life or my faith.

~ My girls are like fresh, tilled up soil.  I must choose carefully what seeds I plant.  Additionally, there is the constant reminder that the words I speak to them now and the way I talk to them will become their internal voice later in life.

~  What is also troublesome is the way little girls have the uncanny ability to gaze at you with eyes full of raw love and emotion that pierces any resolve you might once have had.  And how, pretty much from birth, little girls burrow themselves deep into your heart and soul.

But the hardest thing about my girls I’ve found is their soft and tender feminine hearts, easily wounded, that I long to protect with a fierceness that scares me and the knowledge that I won’t always be able to.  Within my very being resonates the certainty that I’ve been entrusted by God with two precious little girls whose innocence I fight daily to preserve.  Whose souls I place daily into the Father’s hands, and whose tiny arms wrapped around my neck at the end of the day make parenting them worth any perceived “trouble” there may be.  

My sweet girls