10 Things (You Might Not Want To Know) About Raising Girls

One minute you are a new parent, counting tiny little fingers and toes and plastering your daughter (and everything around her) with Pepto pink, gloriously ignorant of what comes down the road…

1. Someday you will have to teach this person how to use a tampon. Good God! The humanity involved in this situation. The look on your daughter’s tween face as you unwrap the tampon, slide down the applicator and explain how to insert it. That gaping mouth and huge eyes as they exclaim, “You put that where?”- Then telling her this is all happening because she is “growing up,” as you simultaneously whip out a pad that looks (and feels) like a big diaper.

2. Your daughter will one day have body hair. Ugh. Just ugh. While husbands can express pride as a father over any body hair their sons manage to grow, for me this part is a chore. I hate shaving my legs and armpits and as for the rest, holy shit, didn’t I have enough to handle covering the tampons?

3. You are going bra shopping one day with someone that is 11 going on 25. You will be ready to outfit your chick, standing with the Supergirl underoo set balancing on your finger, as you point and smile from across the aisle. And if your child is anything like I was, she will immediately reach for the lacy padded bra (a fact my mom shared at dinner that night with extended family). Sigh.

4. Boys aren’t the only ones that stink. You carefully bathe your tiny babe when she’s little. You slather her in Baby Magic; sniffing her head like it’s a drug, right after her bath. Then…one day she smells like her brother’s P.E. bag. You gotta start that love of bath and body products sometime. Now is that time.

5. Your darling will not put on Gymboree and Hannah Anderson forever. Oh for the days you could outfit your girl in the appliquéd dresses with matching tights, hair bows and shoes. Or that stage when she would not leave for the grocery store unless she could go in her Cinderella costume, complete with plastic, clunky slip-ons. Choose your battles, Mama. Remember the days you dressed as Madonna, circa Like A Virgin? It could be worse.

6. Someday you will be the dumbest person on the planet. Remember the times your mom would start out, “You know when I was your age…” as she delved into some story-who knows what it was, were any of us listening? While in your head you were saying (in a bitchy little voice) “She doesn’t understand. She has no idea how I am feeling. Will she ever stop talking? Why is she wearing that shirt with those pants?…” No life experience or degree will count here- it will happen to you, too.

7. One day her phone will get more face time than you do. Think it’s cute when your toddler plays on your phone? Good. Without parental intervention, it will likely become her main form of communication. Do society a favor and teach your child how to carry on a conversation. If your daughter is texting you from inside the same house, there might be a problem.

8. Someday, boys, damn it. Your hubs will handle the chat with any suitors, but you get the hard part. Not all boys will like her back. And some will take her sweet little heart – chew it up, spit it out and rub it in margarita salt. That’s when she’ll need you most and like your mother before you, you won’t know what the fuck to say. Boys suck.

9. Someday you are going to have to talk to your baby about babies, sex and contraception. You are going to have to whip out the biggest cucumber in the produce aisle to show her that, in fact, no boy is “too big” for a condom. You will tell her that her body is HERS. That sex is nothing to rush into (and you probably won’t tell her, but in your mind you know, “first times” usually bite).

10. Someday she will hate you, but not forever. Girls are hardest on their mothers. In the meanest, MEAN GIRLS way they will tear you down as their hormones seethe through every inch of their body. She will be such a little asshole that you just won’t be able to stand her. But you will, because once upon a time she was that precious chubby cheeked baby and she is yours AND you are stuck with her, just as your mom was stuck with you. And hopefully, one day she will have a girl too and know the precious moments and living hell she put you through.

Related post: Glitter is the Devil (And Other Things Moms of Girls Learn)