Ellie can be Ariel...

What?!?! Yesterday, the girls were playing and I said something about being a mermaid, and Maggie announced that Ellie could pretend to be the Little Mermaid. (If Maggie made the rules, she would only allow Ellie to play with toys she didn't want anymore and pretend to be princesses that she classifies as minor royalty...) This power shift is far bigger news at our house than the election results: the sleeping princess raised by fairies without knowing her true birthright has replaced the finned redhead from under the sea at the center of Maggie's universe.

A few weeks ago, as America started receiving its holiday gift catalogs, we got one from a company called eToys. Maggie saw it, perused it, and selected the page of her dreams. (This is how she talks these days - "Mama, will you be the prince of my dreams?") So, she's obsessing about the Disney Princess Sleeping Beauty Styling Head Vanity Set and Accessories. And the Disney Princess Royal Cash Register. And the Disney Princess Shoes 4-Pack - basically, she's chosen page 82. All of it.

She carries her catalog with her wherever she goes. Today when I picked her up at KinderCare, Ms Danielle said, "Maggie and I looked through her catalog today. She flipped through all of the pages until she got to the one she liked, and then she just sat there stroking it." Needless to say, Santa's gotta come through with the vanity with the little styling head or the world will end before 2009. So, Santa's elf who lives at our house did a little research and found that the vanity which lists for $89.99 in the eToys catalog can be had for $30 LESS at Target. (Yay, Target!) So, it's already hiding somewhere at our house. But, back to the point.

Ariel reigned in this house for a LONG time. Maggie's first true love in Princessdom. But no more. Now, instead of lying face up in the bathtub and arranging her wet hair around her head like a floating mane of mermaid locks, she lays out a blanket on the floor, lies down, covers herself with another blanket, lies frightfully still, closes her eyes and calls me to come be the Prince of Her Dreams, kiss her and wake her up. (In this photo, note the tiara that she got yesterday at the dentist resting on her little blonde princess head.)

I never actually returned the Sleeping Beauty video that I got at Costco last month because I had a little inkling that she might come around. Fun times here. I think this year I'm just going to give in to the whole princess thing and allowing us all to embrace our girly sides. Ack. The only little thread that I'm hanging on to is the fact that at least she's not pretending she's Barbie. And she doesn't know anything about High School Musical. Or Hannah Montana. God help us.