What she gets from me

Recently I posted a picture of Skadi on Facebook. I don't even remember which one it was. But a number of my elementary school friends piped up raving about how much she looks like me at that age.

"Really?" was  my surprised response. She looks nothing like me I thought. Strawberry blonde hair is about it.

Still I thought more about this and even pulled out pictures to compare. No way.

Well maybe...

See when I see my daughter her personality shines through so strongly and brightly that her outward appearance falls to the background. When you ask me about my daughter I will answer, "boistrous, adventure loving, physical, she'll take you down when you aren't looking, outspoken, strongly opinionated, will run over the top of you, but will stop if you show signs of pain"... and I could go on and on.

Not my personality. I was always described as "shy, quiet, spoke only when spoken too, embarrassed easily, will cry if you look at her wrong..." You get the idea. A wall flower.

Skadi and I are 100% different... except for that rail thin little body and strawberry blonde hair. And she is lucky - she has these beautiful hazel eyes that get loads of compliments, lips that actually exist and her eyelashes aren't red, they are black.

But one area she did inherit from me is her eclectic music tastes. Her brother desires to only ever listen to one thing - Les Miserable. And sing along. He can recite nearly the entire musical and dreams of playing the role of Gavroche before he grows up. Skadi always one to out do her brother begs not to listen to Les Mis anymore but tells him, "I plan to play Cosette and she has a bigger role."

Anyways. Skadi, she has my musical tastes.

I admit it, the other day she told me one of her favorite songs was the one I play about "doing crafts".

Give up?

Yeah, not one of my finer parenting moments...

Also among her favorites are "I Want Candy" and "Follow Me".

When I was a kid my favorite song was "Cat Scratch Fever"...

The other day Skadi asked me to play "the bell song".

"The bell song?" I asked her.

"Yep, the one about the girl," Skadi replied.

"OH! The Belle song!" I said. No problem. I can do this. We recently went and saw Beauty and the Beast the musical, I will just download the album from iTunes!

So I did.

And then we painstakingly went through every single dang song on that album.

"NO MOM! The BELLE song, you know!" she kept saying. (Though she did latch on again to Gaston...)

I gave up. I surrendered.

Then one day when I was driving her into school I turned up a song that popped up on my existing playlist.

"YAY MOMMY! The BELLE song!" she exclaimed.

Yay me!