Big HUGE bow day!

Why can't every day be as Sadie calls it "BIG HUGE BOW DAY?"Why do my beautiful girls insist on wearing tacky vacation souvenir t-shirts with shorts and scraggly hair instead of the sweet smocked dresses with matching bows I bought them that are now collecting dust in their closet?!?!?Raising girls is a wonderful, emotional journey for sure! I remember all the emotions (good and bad) that ran through my house growing up with 2 sisters. We loved HARD and we FOUGHT hard! And my mother did her best to guide us gently in the right direction.Now I find myself (as I am sure my mother did many times) at war with myself. I want my girls to act and look the way I think as their all knowing mother they should act and look, but sometimes I realize in doing so I am squelching their creative spirit.Mia HATES bows, and she has told me so ever since she started talking! I think back to all those mornings we fought over her hair! All the tears that were shed over a stupid bow, but I was just trying to teach her to groom herself for heaven's sake!!! Then one morning I realized I had to stop trying to change my daughter into something she wasn't, someone I thought she should be. She didn't like her hair in a bow. It made her feel "stupid" she said. She told me this over and over again, morning after morning, and then one morning I finally heard her.I don't have all the answers by any means, but in the almost 7 years I have been a mother I have learned more often than not we don't change our children, but instead they change us.....into better people....people who listen more, love more., and react less.Mia is a total control freak, type-A personality. She likes what she likes, and that's it. She loves feeling pretty, but she doesn't like frills. By forcing her to conform to the little girl image I had in my head I was actually stressing this already tightly wound girl out!Don't get me wrong I am super strict about things that actually matter like manners and obeying your parents, but my mother once wisely told me you have to choose your battles. As a mother of 2 daughters I know we will have many battles together over silly things that seam important at the time. I only hope I can take a moment to look at the big picture and ask myself, "is this argument over something that will bring out the best in my daughter or a trial personal preference of mine?So why it can't always be BIG HUGE BOW DAY around here, Sadie still has one every once in awhile and Mia looks fabulous in her headband!!!