Her First Piercing!

Audrey asked to get her ears pierced several months ago, and Jayson and I decided she could as a reward once she was potty-trained. Well, that time finally came this past week. Much like her older sister, she did it on her own terms and one day was just ready to be done with diapers and onto the Tinkerbell underwear with no looking back.

This did not sit well with Lydia. At first, we thought Lydia was jealous as she whispered into Audrey's ear, "Don't do it. It's going to hurt." Then after talking about it more with Lydia, we discovered she just didn't want anybody to hurt her little sister. Serious. Does it get better than that? The thing is, it would take a lot to hurt little Audrey. This is the same kid who went to get her flu mist and asked to have the flu shot instead, watched the needle go into her arm, and didn't even bat an eye. She was ready for pierced ears.

So, off to the mall we went this past Saturday. Audrey sat still as the lady put dots on her lobes, and as the two workers slipped the little piercing apparatus over the dots. (Meanwhile, Lydia was hiding and refused to look). 1-2-3! and it was done. She then screamed and cried for a few moments until we told her how beautiful they looked and she was done!

On the way out, Lydia stopped and looked at the display case and said, "Mommy, do you want me to show you my favorite?" as she pointed to a sparkly pink navel ring. Oof.

I expected that after just a few hours, the pain would go away and she would be fine, but she did complain about her ears hurting and asked a couple of times to take a nap without her earrings. I turn the earrings twice a day, and she still isn't too happy about that. However, I thought we were going to have some major issues when I got this IM from Jayson yesterday morning:

Audrey's earring fell out, now what? Fell out in her bed and after about 5-10 minutes I found both pieces.

I responded:

Can you try to put it back in? If it hurts, put ice on it, and then try to get it back in.

This was apparently confusing.

Put the earring on ice or her ear?


There was a little more back-and-forth, and my helpful suggestion:

Put ice on it, try to shove it back in. It might hurt. Tell her she can have ice cream for breakfast if she lets you do it.

We reached the decision to just numb her ear with ice and wait until Jayson's mom got to our house in thirty minutes to watch the girls while he had a meeting. Then, Jayson finally got it back in on his own! Score one for Daddy.

Now we just have to hope that Lydia's sparkly pink navel ring doesn't fall out because I have a feeling Jayson won't be shoving that back in and giving her ice cream.