French Braids & Black Eyes

Since I have a daughter now (well, I have had her for 4 years now, but I think she is actually ready to let me play beauty shop with her & boy do I love it!) I think it is time for me to learn how to French braid. I know, most people my age learned in the 6th or 7th grade. Nope, not me. I have very vivid memories of two girls braiding my hair on a regular basis, Carly & Abby. They did it all the time & they were fast. I was actually jealous that they could braid hair that fast then do their own hair right after they finished mine. So, now that I have my own sweet doll to work on and she will sit still, I have gotten to work. Before you start laughing, this was my VERY FIRST go at the braid. I can braid a regular braid, but a French braid is something different. If you don't have a clue what I am talking about, tune out and come back tomorrow...or in a week because that seems to be how often I am blogging these days. Anyway, she let me work on this number for about an hour. Pretty sad, huh? An hour and that's all I got...whew, we have a long way to go sister! However, she was SO PROUD of her mommy and her mommy's first braid, she thought it was perfect and so I didn't want to let her down and I didn't tell her otherwise. Perhaps I didn't tell her otherwise because it had been a long day already...
If you have been looking at the pictures enlarged at all, you may notice a marking under her left eye. Here is how it came to be:
I am in a cooking club that meets at 7 p.m. on set Tuesday nights. I know the menu a week or so in advance. I forgot a couple of things so I load kids up to get literally a couple, meaning 2, things. Husband calls and needs a couple, but not meaning 2, things while I am there. In efforts to hurry I try to pick up and move at top speed in hopes of Caroline keeping up. She is doing great. She is singing her made up songs at the top of her lungs & they are wholesome and sweet so I do not hush her---everyone needs to hear a good sweet song every now and then, right? As she is belting out something about a RAINBOW, her singing turns into a screaming, not musical, but a tragic something is wrong screaming and she is then on the floor and everyone on the juice isle which was solely senior citizens (not mommies like usual) just stand there and look at me and Caroline in horror.
I scoop her up and try to see what was going on. I notice blood running down her sweet face and figured out that as she was singing her rainbow song she must have been searching for a pot of gold and not looking at the buggy right at her eye level. Boy that buggy got her good. She is still sending all senior citizens over the edge as they are all fixing their hearing aids, I am not kidding, she was screaming that loud. Once I gain some sort of control over her and the bleeding and we start moving to the cold isle to get peas on this thing, Hayes starts announcing that he 'HAS TO GO POTTY NOW!!!' And friends, when he has to go, we drop whatever else is going on around us and go. Well, not today. Kid with bleeding eye or one with wet pants...I'm picking bleeding eye. First cold thing we get to is actually on my list--Provolone Cheese. Whew, that worked out well. As for the other item I needed, Kroger got a visit later that afternoon. Troy never got what he needed, but as we drove up & he was waiting for his groceries in the driveway, I came tearing up and said black eye in seat 1, kid in seat 2 about to explode...and so our day went from there. And after all that she still let me braid her hair.....good girl or what??? And her eye only got worse after these pics but I couldn't bare to take a picture. And as for the shirt she is wearing, she was being Pocahontas while I was braiding her hair because Pocahontas always has a braid you know.?.