WonderBaby is a girly-girl. A train-and-truck-lovin’ bitch-slappin’ thug of a girly-girl, but a girly-girl nonetheless.

(That bitch-slappin’ thug part, I am not making up. You don’t mess with the WonderBaby. She will take you down. Older or bigger children who see opportunity – easy! candy (or, more usually, toy trains) from a baby! – in her tiny form learn their lessons quickly and painfully: you try (try) to take her train and you will receive a shove or a thump or a smack and a loud, remonstrative NO. But that’s a whole ‘nother post.)

She’s a girly-girl. And she’s a girly-girl who loves her some glitter and glam. Ring-toys and stuffed snakes become bracelets and boas; beads become stroller-bling; all bags become purses, carefully slung over wee shoulders or into the crooks of tiny arms and toted proudly ’round the house.

She does not get this from me. I have never carried a purse in the crook of my arm in her presence (I’m a messenger bag kinda girl), nor have I ever angled my wrists just so, the better to let a bangle catch the light. Come to think of it, I have not slipped bangles on my wrists nor flung scarves jauntily over my shoulders nor traipsed or flounced in any way since she was born. I have been, for the most part, Frump Mom. (I am not proud of this fact; I am simply stating it for the descriptive record. Again, whooole ‘nother post.) There is nothing glamour or glitz about me, nothing flouncy or traipsy or oooh look pretty shiny! And on the rare occasion that I have slipped on a pointy stiletto and jewellry and sashayed proudly around our living room (you know, for kicks), she has been long asleep.

So how is it that ten minutes in her presence would convince you that she’s being reared by Tyra Banks? (Tyra Banks with boxing gloves and a penchant for pink strollers, but still. Someone fierce.)

I had always thought that I would not encourage any daughter of mine in frilly excesses. I would not push pink, I would not push dolls (unless two-headed or otherwise subverted in their preciousness), I would not push princesses. I would not peddle pretty pretty. If she was going to gravitate toward these things, fine, but she would do so of her own accord, and not because they were the only options available. So it is that WonderBaby has, since birth, been surrounded by books and blocks and trains and the odd odd dolly. And, since she encountered one during a visit with a friend, a toy stroller. A toy stroller that is now thoroughly be-blinged with makeshift costume jewellry and covered in all manner of small bag and scarf and inhabited by whatever stuffed comrade is deemed deserving of pimped-out pasha treatment.

Sure, she loves her trains. And she can work a soccer ball like nobody’s bizniss. But that soccer ball is a shiny pink-and-silver confection of a thing, and those trains inevitably get tucked away in a twee little handbag and hooked over the handle of a bright pink stroller bestrewn with garlands of beads and ribbons (her own design, no less.)

Where did she come from, this wee, sparkly glamazon of a girl? And why do I – black-clad hipster doofus of a Gen-X/Y feminist – love it so much?