Warning: Girly-Girl Ahead

Well, it's Olympics time again, and us three girls have been watching it religiously. As it turns out, one little girl here in this house is completely obsessed with figure skating.

And no, it's not who you think.

Claire, of all people, loooooooves ice skating. Every time it's on, she perks right up and pays attention. She bounces along to the skaters' music, and laughs and shrieks as they run through their programs. When the audience claps, Claire claps too (she's developed an adorable way of clapping—she hits the back of one hand with the palm of the other). When the skaters complete their programs and salute the audience, Claire mimics them by raising her arms over her head. I don't know what would be considered normal in this situation, but I'm fairly certain a 10-month-old being really into televised figure skating probably isn't it. And I have no idea what she finds so appealing—the music? The sparkly, colorful costumes? The spinning and twirling? (She does seem to particularly react to the spins.) But it's certainly fun to watch her watching them.

Then yesterday, while Elsa was at dance class, I was telling a few of the other moms about Claire's affinity for figure skating. Shortly after I finished the story, somebody handed me a binder with pictures of the dance recital costumes in it, so that I could see what Elsa's costume will look like. And Claire went totally berserk over this book. She screeched with delight as we flipped through the pages, pointed at the pictures, and basically went crazy. The other moms were all bowled over by her reaction to this book (as was I). One of them said, "Wow, you're really in for it with her—start buying Barbies now!"

It's difficult not to speculate what this all means about Claire's personality when she gets older. Do we have a real girly-girl on our hands? We seem to have escaped this with Elsa, who doesn't have quite as massive a princess complex as so many other little girls her age. I think the current obsession with princesses is annoying and even unhealthy when taken too far (it's one thing to like princesses, quite another to be allowed to go through life thinking you are one). So of course that probably means Claire will have it bad enough for the both of them. Figures. Well, at least if that is the case, I wasn't responsible for starting or encouraging the fascination—considering how young it's starting, I'm pretty sure she was just born this way!