Zoe vs. the Avon Lady

My mother was an Avon lady. This was in the late seventies/early eighties, and my sister and I would often go along on her appointments. We'd rate each customer by time spent there leveraged against the snack offered or if they had a cute pet to play with. I paid zero attention to what these ladies bought, whether it was cosmetics, skin cream, or something from the questionable jewelry selection.

Ding-Dong! I see Avon in my future.

I have no recollection of being interested in my mother's makeup though I do remember playing with the tiny white lipstick samples, painting streaks on the webbing of my hand like my mom did to see how the color would look against my skin.

Skip forward to high school and my first foray into makeup wearing, which was tragic. Picture a pale child with blue eyes under dirty blond bangs. Now give her some silver eye shadow and tell her to go nuts. You know, really overdo it. Then hand her some teal eyeliner. Let me repeat that: teal. I put the "googoo" in Kajagoogoo. It was very unfortunate. After realizing the horror, I went another direction entirely, eschewing color to only wear heavy black eyeliner for years, like a Goth raccoon.

Are you A) shy, B) too shy, or
C) too shy, shy, hush, hush, eye to eye?
(Photograph: LJ van Houten/Rex Features)

My fear of makeup is only superseded by laziness and so I never really got the hang of applying eye shadow or most other makeup. To add to all my wild and crazy, I've had three hairstyles in my life (but also three colors---if you count highlights as a color). I'm not one for jewelry or perfume either, the latter making me nauseous and/or sneezy. I've never had a pedicure and only had a manicure once, for my wedding, so, basically, I'm not high maintenance in terms of my beauty regimen. Don't worry, as my husband can attest, I make up for this in other ways.

Zoe may be different.

It started with lip balm. I'm a lip balm addict, and I think I got her hooked. Once I let her put it on the first time, there was no going back. All my lip balms started to disappear. I'd find the little caps under chairs, open sticks swathed in cat hair.

Next, she started "helping" me put makeup on. Handing me mascara and taking away concealer. Soon she was stealing lipstick. I tried to designate one for her use, an old one with a tiny nub left, and I tried to put it on her. But of course she wanted to put it on herself. It's like a scientific law that the messier or more dangerous something is the more a preschooler will express a sudden interest in being independent. Meanwhile God forbid they reach for their own sippy cup a mere two millimeters away if Mommy's at the computer or on the phone.

Note to self: Always apply lipstick BEFORE
putting on cumbersome headdress.

So she took the lipstick, brought it to her face, and completely missed her mouth, putting a smudge above and below her lips like she was Princess Amidala.

Shortly after that was the Pink Lip Gloss Incident. She somehow found a tube of pink lip gloss, with glitter, I don't even remember buying. She smuggled it somewhere on her person so when I sat her down for breakfast, thinking I had time to check e-mail while she ate, I was in for a surprise when I turned around to find a tiny individual completely slathered in gloss. All over her face, and up and down her arms and legs. She'd achieved maximum viscosity. She looked like an Oompa Loompa on Disco Tuesdays.

Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee-do,
I have the perfect skin cream for you.
Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee-dee,
You look like an Autumn, buy lipstick from me.
(Source: imgur)

What price beauty? Somehow all her experimenting doesn't extend to her hair, which she refuses to have brushed or styled. Unless the teacher she has a girl crush on at school does it. I have to chase her around the apartment each morning with a brush and then when I pick her up at day care she's sporting some complicated updo that I have no idea how it could've been accomplished even if Zoe had stayed still and I had three more hands. 

Speaking of hands, Zoe has had more manicures than me. That's right, two. She loves getting her nails polished. To keep up I've started coloring my nails again. I'm currently wearing a hideous bubblegum pink. If comic sans was a color, it would be this. Guess who picked it out? I suppose I can't blame her since I bought it.

A pedicure can't be far behind, which also happens to be where she's going to leave me. No way am I getting a pedicure with my ingrown toenails and Elf Toe Syndrome.

How soon will she want to pierce her ears? Her nose? What comes after that? A tattoo? Eyebrow threading? The other day when I was plucking my own eyebrows she asked what I was doing. After I explained, she turned on her heel, splayed out her fingers---decorated with my old rings---and told me that her own eyebrows "are perfect." I had to agree.

Who knows what her beauty regimen will be one day. Right now she likes face powder and lip gloss. Her nails polished. Toes polished too under her mismatched shoes. A dog-shaped purse thrown over her shoulder. She's quite the fashion plate. Just don't ask her to comb her hair.

Zoe: 54; Universe: 0

Zoe vs. Mommy, the Physical Assault

Note: I'm specifying "physical assault" because the case can be made that all the previous posts catalog Zoe's mental assaults on me. I'd be the one to make that case.

Survivor of an attack by a
featureless orange toddler.

Last week's post detailed the ways in which Zoe likes to get up close and personal. But sometimes it's not just too close for comfort. Sometimes it's downright painful. So today I list the ways in which Zoe's love hurts. From head to toe.

Hair: she likes to pull it. Hard. She likes me to put a "bow" (translation: ponytail holder) in my hair so she can yank more efficiently. Ow factor: high.

Eyes: poke! If my glasses are off. Irony alert: if my glasses are on, my eyes are protected but my glasses are in danger. Ow factor/threat to expensive belonging: high.

Nose: you pick mine, I'll try to pick yours. Ow factor: low, really more annoying.

Cheeks: pinch! Ow factor: medium.

Mouth/lips: the making out gets violent. Ow factor: medium, depends on how bitey she gets.

Teeth: I'm separating this from "mouth" because we have a history. When I was pregnant with Zoe, I had pregnancy gingivitis, meaning my gums bled. A lot. Since her birth my teeth are just a mess and my dentist is sick of seeing me. While Zoe's first year was full of the usual milestones like smiling, supporting her own head, walking, for me the year was marked by one dental appointment after another to deal with toothaches that ended in root canals, crowns, and even one apicoectomy when I still had pain following one of the root canals. Ow factor: high, and expensive.

Chin and jaw: let me set the scene. Every morning I sit on the floor behind Zoe trying to get her dressed for day care as she flails around whining. After I finally manage to shove one leg into whatever pants she doesn't want to wear, she launches herself violently upward into my chin and I see stars. The head under chin contact from a blonde, three-year-old missile is unbelievably painful. This has happened more times than I can count. Sometimes I bite my tongue because I'd been in the midst of begging her to stay still. Ow factor: highest.

So let's see, how far have we gotten?  Still above the neck. We have a lot more ground to cover.

Speaking of . . .

Neck: pinching. Similar to cheek pinching, however, there's not as much to pinch so it's more like yanking on skin. Also, passionate strangling. You know how it is. Sometimes the excitement is just too much and then you have to strangle someone. Ow factor: high.

Torso: general jabbing with knees and elbows as she tries to get comfortable. A prerequisite is Mommy must be making that Ow sound. So soothing! Ow factor: medium to high, depends on target area.

Hands: Zoe, as you might imagine, objects to having her nails cut so right away let's add scratching, full body. Her only takeaway from my eventual trimming of her nails is that Mommy's nails are too long, and since she's not allowed to use the scissors (wonder why) she tries to use her fingers to pull my own nails off. As I read her stories as night she works from one nail to the other, digging and pulling until I yank my hand away. Ow factor: medium.

Groin: The Husband would have volumes to say here but he's sitting on the couch whimpering with a bag of frozen peas on his lap. So I'll just paint another scene: I've collapsed on the floor on my back because sometimes, wherever you are and whatever is happening, you've just got to lie down. Zoe comes over and lies down between my legs then squirms her head up into my groin. I think she's trying to get back into the womb and/or re-enacting a breach birth. I keep telling her she can't get back in but that doesn't stop her from delivering her intimate head-butting. Ow factor: eh. Awkward and weird factor: high.

Butt: she likes to bite it. To be fair, I've bitten her butt. It's just so cute. Guess she feels the same way. Can't really blame her. It's my best feature. Ow factor: silly.

Legs: in the mornings, when she's AWAKE and I'm NOT, she wants to sit on my lap on the couch watching TV, and constantly shift her weight. It's not just shots and jabs to the chest and stomach (see "torso" above), it's also the skin on my legs that gets mauled and pinched amid her shifting, or I get scratched by her toenails. Ow factor: medium.

Elf Toe Syndrome. Needs its own telethon.

Feet and toes: First I must explain. I have ingrown toenails. They grow down and in. Also, I have this weird issue where the bones of my big toes grow upward. There's probably an official name for this foot condition but I call it Elf Toe Syndrome. Except instead of delightful little bells at the ends of my big toes, it's bone. I recently had one of my toenails removed, as in permanently. But before that, when Zoe used to stamp down on my foot, I'd lose my ability to process language, entering the Realm Beyond Ow. Think of a room without windows where three of the walls are painted bloodred and the fourth is an accent wall covered in a repeating pattern of Edvard Munch's The Scream. Ow factor before surgery: Infinite. After surgery: I have another toe, so it ain't pretty.

He thought he had problems.

That complete's my head to toe survey. In terms of pain management, I feel like Dr. House. I went from someone who took one Tylenol at a time to swallowing two Aleve . . . dry.

Zoe: 16; Universe/Mommy: 0

Postscript: This post is a day late because Zoe gave me her stomach virus. Ow factor: dry heaves.