Baby Steps: The little diva has landed

Well, it's official: We have a little diva at our house. Felicity Kay is all girl, all the time. We love all things pink or sparkly, and if it is both, that is an extra bonus. Our dresses have ruffles, our pants or shirts have tutus and almost all our shoes have glitter.

I didn't realize just how much of a diva she is until a recent trip to Target. It was right before Halloween, and I needed to get a few things for both kids' Halloween parties at school and day care. Felicity also needed another pair of shoes, as she had outgrown most of hers and only had a pair of tennis shoes and a pair of black dress shoes.

I stupidly thought, "I will just run into Target real quick; it will have everything I need." That was my first mistake, as no women ever has run into Target "real quick." The second one was taking Felicity with me -- I just didn't know it yet.

Felicity is opinionated. Every morning she picks out her own shoes and refuses to wear any others. She picks out her own books at bedtime, and she decides which baby and blanket she will sleep with. Maybe I should say she is very opinionated.

Because of this, I should have known that passing the clothing section at Target was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. I have a one-track mind when shopping: I get what I need and get out, especially after a long day at work. But as I was racing down the aisle, I heard a high-pitched "Elsa! Let it go!" scream coming from my shopping cart. I stopped and my daughter grabbed an Elsa tutu dress from the rack and declared, "Mine! My Elsa!"

Because I was not in the mood and the dress was a decent price, I conceded to the little dictator in my cart and moved on. Then I heard, "Paw Patrol! Paw Patrol! My dress!" And because I was not properly caffeinated that day, I stopped and picked up the dress in question, saw it was on sale and added it to the cart. I then heard, "Aw, Minnie! My Minnie, too?" Behind the Paw Patrol dress was a Minnie Mouse dress even more deeply discounted than the Paw Patrol dress.

Because we budget and these were not planned purchases, I thought to myself, "I can sneak the $18 Elsa dress out of her hand and replace it with the $7 Minnie Mouse dress, and all will be well with the world."

My 20-month-old had different plans. She ripped the Minnie dress out of my hand, clutched it to her chest with the other two dresses and glared at me while she stated, "Mine. My dresses, I pretty."

And that, my friends, was that. Choose your battles, and choose them wisely. We bought three dresses, and this was just the beginning -- we still had to get shoes.

We finally got out of the clothing section and made it to the shoe department. This is where Felicity really lost it.

The first shoes she saw were what I would call "Dorothy shoes." Picture the ruby red slippers in silver, and those are the shoes that caught Felicity's eye. They were $12 and exactly what I was looking for. I was satisfied, Felicity was satisfied -- and then she turned her head and saw the boots on the other side of the aisle. All of a sudden she screamed, "Boots!" Her shoes were pulled off and thrown down the aisle; boots started filling my cart and all I could think was, "Now I know what a diva really is."

We bought the Dorothy shoes and a pair of sparkly silver cowgirl boots. We have three new tutu dresses. We still had to find Halloween treats.

The quickest way to the food section from the shoe section of Target goes past the camping, electronics and -- of course -- toys. I was looking for the quickest way out. We passed the toy section, and I was not paying attention, but Felicity was. She literally jumped out of her seat and danced and pointed down an aisle, yelling, "Elsa! Snowman! Let it go!"

I wrestled her back into her seat, ran to the food section and grabbed whatever came to my hand first, all while Felicity chanted, "Cookie, cookie, me want cookie," like a little Cookie Monster.

That night when I walked in the door at home, I looked like I had done battle, and trust me, I had. I swore right then and there I would never, ever, take my daughter back to Target, or any other store, if at all humanly possible.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to know what a diva is, just stop by our circus. The diva will be dressed in pink tutus, wearing sparkling shoes and doing the moonwalk while singing "Let It Go" at the top of her lungs.

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Kristen Pind, a native of small-town Gower, Missouri, came to Southeast Missouri State University with big dreams of being the next Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer. She never thought that in her 20s, she'd be married with two kids and living in Cape Girardeau. Keep up with Kristen's adventures as a young mom who's still trying to figure out how her own life fits together. Turns out, she's living a dream she never knew she had, and loving every minute of it. Kristen invites moms of all types to find her "Baby Steps" page on Facebook.