There he was.

Standing in the hallway

Pride just lighting up his face.

There he was smiling, looking like a grandma with Parkinson’s.

Dylan had gotten into my makeup. He decided that today he was going to apply red lipstick like he has watched me do a hundred times. I wasn’t really sure how to feel. It was a multitude of emotions all in one moment. My knee-jerk reaction was anger. I wasn’t angry per se, more upset. I mean, that was one of my favorite tubes of lipstick. Then it had been one of those weeks where every time I turned around it seemed like the boys were into something. So my frustration was not all relative, that exact moment. More of culmination of moments that was coming to a head.

“Were you in my makeup?”

Despite the evidence all over his face, Dylan emphatically shook his head no.

“Come here”

He shuffled in slowly towards and then looked at me with his big brown doe eyes. Boy, am I a sucker for them. Out came a very quiet “wuv you”. My heart melted.

When he looked at me, my feeling about the situation began to change. Considering he is 2 years old and despite it being all over his face, his lip application was spot on. I mean let’s face it, he did a better job than my first time. I was impressed. Besides, who was I to fault him. In the end, I told him to stay out of my makeup. I took a couple of pictures before washing it all off. Then I put my makeup where it should have been, out of his reach. We continued about our day.

There are probably people who are appalled that I didn’t go into a long spiel about how boys don’t wear makeup and blah, blah, blah. But why? My son is 2. He would most likely just shake his head to indicate he understood even though he has no fucking clue. If there was one of my husband’s razors within his reach, he would have attempted to shave. As he has seen his father do a hundred times. He is merely mimicking the things the adults in little world do.

My children do not understand sex or sexuality. My 4-year-old, Daniel, understands I am a girl and he is a boy. However, he believes that my penis fell off because I didn’t eat my veggies. (I know. I know. Sometimes you have to do what you need to do to get them to eat.) They play with dolls and trucks and all kinds of toys. Daniel will pull down his shirt down around his waist to make a skirt. He believes he can run faster because his legs are free. Though his outfit of choice is his birthday suit.

It seems so odd to be worrying about something like that at such a young age. Particularly since their worlds are already so small. I mean the highlight of their day is snack. Cripes. Dylan just learned his name a month ago. If you asked him before he would tell him that both his brother and him were both called Daniel. Sometimes we were worried so much about who our children are going to be that forget them to let them be.

All I see below is a little boy who got into his mother’s makeup, which he has seen done a thousand times before. If you see anything more than that, just stop.