When good princesses go bad

Maggie's good friend Meghan came over to play this afternoon. The girls usually play well together, and today was pretty decent, but there were also some spats that were humorous in the way that only 3-year-olds arguing can be. The best was the fight over the purple dress-up shoes. As you can see from the photos below, Maggie chose a purple princess dress, while Meghan carefully selected blue. You may also notice that each is adorned head to ... well, not quite toe ... in the color of her choice. The necklaces, the bracelets, the rings, even the purses all matched the dresses.





Enter the purple shoes in question. The two little princesses argued over them for a good 10 minutes, and it was impressive to see the logic each used in her justification that SHE should get to wear the purple shoes. "But Mommy, MY dress is purple. I need the purple shoes because they match," was Maggie's main rationale, while Meghan was quick to respond with, "But I don't have any like these at home." What's a mom to do? I ended up forfeiting my Nobel Peace Prize in the interest of teaching Maggie a lesson about putting others first and, much to my daughter's dismay, we let Meghan wear the shoes.

They played in their princess dresses all afternoon, even going outside to play on the swingset and seesaw. By the end of the day, in addition to the matching fashion accessories, the fine purple and blue dresses were also decorated with spots of mud and grass stain -- a perfect contrast, no?