Paging Dr. Rapunzel...

DD is Rapunzel

I have a girl living in my house.

I don't just mean that she's biologically female. I mean she is girly. I don't even know what to do with them. All my girliness was directed at Little House or Anne of Green Gables or American Girls (BEFORE Mattel bought and destroyed them). I got a bit older and became obsessed with the Mists of Avalon.

I was very female oriented, sure... but girly?

And here I am, home all day with DD, the girliest girl of them all. Everything needs to be pink, and poofy, and glittery.

SI spends about a third of her time humoring DD. The rest of the time she escapes into her own, must stranger fantasies.

And that leaves me and RH to bend to DD's absurdly girly whims.

I think I've been patient. I've watched Beauty and the Beast with minimal commentary about the nature of sexually abusive relationships. I've watched hours of Angelina Ballerina with only subdued constant gagging sounds. I've watched Cinderella a million times and restrained my outbursts only to expressions of frustration that Cinderella doesn't go and find herself some paid work- she's obviously employable.

Everybody is a royal around here.

And then I stopped being able to take it any more. I stopped biting my tongue, and I let the princesses have it.

I explained to DD that the only way she can ever be a princess is to marry a prince, and mostly they're not very nice. This devastated her. She asked if she could still marry daddy, and my assurances that it was still an option calmed her significantly.

Then I told her that there are other things she could be, that being a princess isn't having a job. It's like being a girl, or a grownup, it's a state of being that you can't really alter. But even princesses have jobs.

A recent issue of Mental Floss (our favorite magazine) provided a list of princes and princesses with day jobs. I explained that there's a princess who works helping children get medicine. There's a prince who drives a rickshaw. (I think I called it a bicycle car.) There's a princess who's a doctor.

These princesses are also firemen.

That one stuck.

Suddenly, DD was running around the house wearing her frilliest tutus, her sparkly crown, and a stethoscope.

"I am Dr. Rapunzel!" she announced.

And Dr. Rapunzel has remained.

But DD's not the only one who gets to play doctor around here. She has explained to me that she still needs to marry a prince. And right now, with SI being uncooperative in her royal pretending, I must pick up the slack.

And that is how during the last few weeks, I have found myself addressed on a regular basis as, "Dr. Prince Mommy."

Two steps forward, one step back. I think I'll wait until she's five to warn her about playing doctor with boys.

Dr. Prince Mommy