"Big Girl Weekend"

By Jerry Zezima

The Stamford Advocate

The surest sign that a toddler is getting big is when she becomes more mature than her grandfather. In the case of my granddaughter, Chloe, who is about to turn 3, that happened about three years ago.

Two other signs are when she gets her own bed and has her first haircut.

Both of those things happened to Chloe recently in what was dubbed, in case you missed the celebration, Big Girl Weekend.

Since she was born, Chloe had slept in a crib, which prevented her, as some grandfathers have been known to do, from getting up on the wrong side of the bed.

I don’t know what the wrong side of the bed is, unless it is against a wall, in which case you will hit your head when you get up and promptly fall back to sleep. Since I am off the wall, I have never had this problem. That’s why I have always thought that the right side of the bed is the top.

Anyway, Chloe had begun trying to climb out of her crib, a sure sign that it was time to get her a bed.

When Chloe heard the news from Mommy (my younger daughter, Lauren) and Daddy (my son-in-law Guillaume), she was very excited. Nini (my wife, Sue) chimed in, saying Chloe was going to get a “big-girl bed,” which made her even more excited.

When I (Poppie) added my two cents, which Chloe put in her piggy bank, she said, “Chloe’s a big girl. And Poppie’s a big boy.”

“Poppie has a big-boy bed,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t wake up on the wrong side of it and slam headfirst into a wall.

Lauren and Guillaume shopped around for a twin bed and a box spring, but naturally there were complications because one store offered one deal and another store offered another and never the twin did meet.

One day, Guillaume and I, thinking outside the box spring, lugged a box containing a bed, not a spring, back to one of the stores. Later, I went home and fell fast asleep in my own bed.

But rest assured, it all turned out OK because, on a recent Friday, Chloe’s new big-girl bed was delivered. She took to it like a fish to water, even though it’s not a water bed, and went right to sleep that night, probably dreaming of her first haircut, which she got the next day.

On Saturday morning, Sue and I went over to see the bed, which is higher than ours and a lot more comfortable. It also has two mattress guards, presumably so Chloe can’t get up on the wrong side.

“Do you like your bed?” I asked Chloe.

“Yes, Poppie!” she chirped. “I’m not a baby. I’m a big girl.”

And she proved it even further when Lauren, Guillaume, Sue and I took her to Hairport Salon in Port Jefferson, New York, for her first official haircut.

“She looks like Shirley Temple,” said Valerie, a very nice stylist who had the important assignment — and, if I do say so, the honor — of trimming and shaping Chloe’s blond curls.

Chloe sat calmly in a chair, holding three purple brushes while Valerie snipped her underlying baby hair. Chloe even helped by handing Valerie one of the brushes.

When the haircut was over, everyone told Chloe she looked beautiful.

Chloe smiled and bit into a cake pop that Lauren had given to her for being so good.

It was a fitting end to Big Girl Weekend. The next celebration will be this Saturday, on Big Boy Weekend, when Poppie gets up on the right side of the bed and goes for a haircut. I may even have a cake pop.

Copyright 2016 by Jerry Zezima