My very own little blondie.

Growing up as a brunette, I always tolerated blonde jokes with a slight degree of satisfaction. Though my friends with golden locks defied the stereotypes associated with their hair color, perhaps I still envied the attention they seemed to attract, particularly from the opposite sex. So with each blonde joke, I silently consoled myself with the idea that if my hair couldn't earn me any points, at least my intellect could. (Though most of the time that was actually a turn-off, too).

Anyway, I'm here to declare (at the risk of offending a few of my friends) that such stereotypes have been fulfilled within my very own gene pool. Lily, the blondest of my children is, indeed, an airhead in its truest sense. She is rather bright (which, you may find is quite common among blondes) but sensibility is simply not her strong point.

For example. Yesterday, she and Anna are out on the swings when Anna performs her latest trick of jumping off while still swinging. Then she runs off to play somewhere else. Lily, incapable of performing the same stunt but wanting to be with her older sister, racks her brain to discover the quickest way to dismount and join Anna. She fails miserably and, in her frustration, screams for me to come remove her from the swing. I notice that, amid her wailing "I can't get off!", she is still pumping her legs. I tell her to relax her legs and stop pumping. She refrains for all of two seconds before passing it off as a dumb idea and starts pumping (and screaming for help) again.

So there you have it. For all their redeeming traits, blondes are, in fact, a little on the slow side when compared with their brunette counterparts. At least in this family.