Here are some things that happened recently that made me very sad.

1. M asked me this morning if I was going to die when she grew up. How do you answer that? Then A said that she didn’t want to die. 🙁

2. Yesterday M & A had a playdate with their good friend Aidan and his cousins, girls aged 3 and 5. In general, I think they had a good time. But M got very sad when she told me that they acted out Sleeping Beauty and that the girls had made M be the witch. She really didn’t want to be the witch and it made her sad, which in turn made me really sad.

3. A continues to be obsessed with The Nutcracker. She says often that she wants to be Clara or Stephanie, the girl in A Very Young Dancer who plays Clara in the New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker. What makes me sad, however, is that she keeps saying that she wants Stephanie or Clara’s face and eyes, that she wants to change her face to be one of theirs. That makes me so sad, because I think A is so beautiful the way she is and I would hate for her ever to want to look like someone else.

I guess this is all part of parenting – wanting to protect your kids from sadness or feeling left out or wanting to be someone else.