Caving into peer pressure

I think I may have mentioned before that Ciara is actually a 5 year old boy trapped in a 3 year old girl's body. She longs to be like her brothers and usually refers to herself as a "big boy" as in "I can watch this tv show, Mummy, because I a big boy". Gavin does not help matters in having Ciara realize she is, in fact, a girl. Also, our attempts to girlify Ciara seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Ciara is now in preschool with a class of 5 girls and 1 boy. I was secretly excited there was only one boy because I thought it would be great for Ciara to develop some female friendships. Little did I know the extent to which some little-girl-behavior would rub off on Ciara.

With Halloween coming, Ciara has stated that she was going to be a pirate since the very beginning of September. Never wavered from this. Always a pirate. Which was fine with me because we have all the pirate paraphenalia laying around the house and it meant I didn't have to buy a costume. Yippee! So, one day I pick Ciara up from school and we talk about what she did that day and she tells me that at circle time her teacher asked each child what they would be for Halloween. I said "And did you say you were going to be a pirate?" "No", she says. "I not going to be a pirate. I going to be a ballerina princess!" Say what?! The only thing I can come up with for the mind change is that her teacher went around the circle and each little girl probably said "princess" or "ballerina" or some other girly concoction and when it came time for Ciara to announce her costume choice she fell into the pattern and chose "ballerina princess". I find this hysterical because she received a ballerina tu-tu with sparkles and irridescent fabric for her birthday and it lays in her closet gathering dust. Now, of course, it is part of her costume. I got her to modify it somewhat and now she will be a "fairy princess" so all I had to buy was a pair of sparkly wings and a wand.

Oh, the powers of peer pressure.