The "Nice Little Girl in a Purple Bathrobe"

Sweet Girl's been longing for a bathrobe. Her Daddy got a new one a couple of months ago, which might have something to do with it. More than likely though, it was the number of times I'd said, as she shivered her way through the kitchen from the bathtub to her bedroom, clad only in her favorite green towel: "we really should get you a nice, warm bathrobe."

Well, we finally did today. We checked a couple of places out and finally decided on the soft, fleecy, dark purple one -- her choice. She and her Daddy went back to the store to buy it, leaving me right across the way...in the bookstore with the "15% off, only today" coupon (slightly dangerous!).

Actually, I was very good with that coupon. I looked longingly at a couple of books I knew that either I or D. and I both, would enjoy. I reminded myself once again of our finances and of the fact that I could almost definitely find any of these things on inter-library loan. I almost scrapped the coupon completely, except that I found a lovely paperback copy of Arnold Lobel's Owl at Home which I knew the Sweet Girl would love. With the coupon, I got it for about $3 -- and was able to put it away for Christmas.

I was standing in line to buy it when I suddenly heard -- well, it's hard to describe, but it was a kind of happy squealing that I can almost always instantly identify as my daughter. I looked up. There she was, standing next to her Daddy in the mall proper, just a few yards away from the bookstore entrance. He was down on his knees...you guessed it...helping her into the new bathrobe.

Suddenly a tiny little girl wrapped, hooded and belted in warm purple fleece was hurtling toward me with the biggest grin on her face you can imagine. "Mommy! Mommy! Look at my new bathrobe!" she shrieked with glee, causing several heads to turn and several people to chuckle. I made all the appropriate exclamations, of course, and so did the very nice ladies behind the cash registers at the bookstore.

We managed to convince her that it wasn't really an outdoor kind of thing to wear, so she exchanged it for her jacket, but as soon as we got home, out came the robe again. I suspect I shall be seeing a lot if it this coming winter! She wore it for the rest of the day. At one point, when I was making dinner, she pelted into the kitchen to proclaim "I'm a nice little girl in a purple bathrobe!" and I had to laugh. We celebrated purple bathrobe day by putting on Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake Waltz and dancing around and around the kitchen with her bear Trumpkin and her small stuffed skunk (an old toy she's recently fallen in love with and has christened simply "Skunk").

It's funny that I chose the Tchaikovsky. It used to be one of her favorite pieces of music when she was a baby -- we danced to it almost every morning during the winter when she was between 6-9 months old, me holding her on my hip and waltzing her around her room, or zooming her up over my head during the fast, swishy parts. I told her about how we used to do that, and she just grinned. Later on, after she'd gone to bed (wearing the bathrobe, though that didn't last long because she got too hot and needed to take it off, as we'd told her would probably happen) it suddenly hit me that today is the 5 year anniversary of the day we found out we were pregnant with the Sweet Girl. Just 5 years ago! She's filled up so much of our days since then. It's sometimes hard to realize there was ever a time when I didn't know that happy squeal, ever a time when I didn't know and love my "nice little girl in a purple bathrobe."