A caffeine fix and an earring

We had a fun weekend with a happy baptism celebration and out-of-town guests. We're having a summer that is fun but never lazy. So lately I've been finding my afternoon energy in this yummy blended drink that seems much more appealing to me in this nearly 100 degree weather than a hot cup o' joe. I blend 10 ice cubes with 2/3 cup of cold coffee, 1 tablespoon of powdered milk and 1 tablespoon organic chocolate syrup. Yum. Ordinarily powdered milk is not something I'd consider putting in a drink (I keep it on hand to thicken homemade yogurt), but this drink is too watered down if I use regular milk and too fatty if I use cream. This version gives me just the right caffeine kick, tastes just the right amount chocolately, and is only 75 calories. Happy mama.

Yesterday I had one of those tough-call parenting moments that makes me need more coffee. Dorothy had been lobbying for quite some time to get her ears pierced. I don't have any particular thought-out philosophy about child ear-piercing. I'm not really comfortable piercing an infant's ears (although I don't really have any problem with the theory), and I was 13 years old myself before I even wanted earrings, so I don't have any helpful memory of how my own mother handled the issue. So I'd basically told Dorothy she could get them pierced whenever she really wanted to, and I'd taken her to the mall to show her where you sit and describe how they do it. That had cooled her off on the idea for a while, but yesterday she was back on it, big time.

We watched a Youtube video of ear piercing, I was frank about the fact that it does hurt, but she was motivated. I wonder if a child at Bible School last week had earrings, but Dorothy didn't mention it. To make a long story short, Dorothy ended up getting one ear pierced and then changed her mind about it. Although I'd stayed quite neutral to that point (I was neither discouraging or encouraging the piercing--this was her thing), once we had one earring in I thought it would be a bit odd to walk away without both done. I hugged, consoled, bribed her with new earrings and ice cream. She sat back up in the chair to get the second one in, but just couldn't go through with it. She's four, after all, and it does hurt. The young woman doing the piercing felt like if I could hold her still long enough, she could just get it in there (I'm sure she'd done this before), but there was no way I was forcing my kid to get an ear pierced. What a breach of trust! So we left, with one earring.

Today Dorothy is very proud of her earring and has even yelled out to the elderly man across the street (who is hard-of-hearing and certainly neither heard nor cared) that she got her ear pierced. She says she's going to get the other done "tomorrow." I'm thinking maybe in a couple weeks. Or maybe she'll just look charmingly and quirkily lopsided for years. Isn't that the way life is anyway?

Back at home last night as she was processing the whole ordeal we had to pierce her teddy bear's ears. (Both of them.) The bear did not find it particularly painful.