These are the moments I love being a parent.

Alissa has definitely hit the point of her life where she likes to push the limits. She clearly knows right from wrong and has figured out how to manipulate to get her way. Which means that at not even four, she’s already just like I was at 15. Oh, the parental curse. I’m screwed.

But tonight, when I went in to tuck her in for bed, only to find two pair of scissors on the bed, along with a few snippets of doll hair, I had to find which poor doll got the treatment, only to find that five of them got it. Frantically, I searched to see if any of my original ponies got clipped, to find that they hadn’t (although one of them, I had given a hair cut once upon a time). As I started to yell at her for having scissors (she knows she’s not supposed to use scissors without permission or supervision) and destroying her toys, I looked down at this one to notice the shape of the cut – a first class mullet.

I immediately started laughing so hard, I pretty much lost all of my firm parental scolding credibility, but the laugh was worth it. And in the moment, I realized that as mad as I was that she ruined her toys, I loved her so much for her innocence in it all. And I think that is what it’s all about.