A DISAPPEARING ACT

At age four, my youngest child is already so mischievous that I am afraid what is going to happen as she gets older. Yesterday, I went into her room to get her clothes out for church. I selected an outfit from her closet amid her protests and laid it on her bed. It was a really cute pair of bib overalls and a little pink shirt, but she instantly registered her dissatisfaction with my choice as soon as I had pulled it from the closet. It was one of Maggie’s old outfits, and I remember Maggie looking so cute in it - - for some reason or another, Aleita has decided she hates it and never wants to wear it. I have only endured her grumbling and made her wear it one other time, and yesterday, I was determined to have her wear it at least once more before she outgrew it. I told her to go use the bathroom and that I was going to get myself dressed and that I would meet her back in her room in a minute to put her clothes on for church.

After getting dressed, I returned to her room to find her on the floor playing with her cars. “Did you go potty?” I asked.

“Yep,” she replied.

I turned to get her outfit off the bed and it was gone. I glanced over at her dresser which is where I sometimes set her clothes before getting her dressed and it wasn’t there either. I retraced my steps back into my own bedroom to see if for some reason I had carried it in there with me when I went to get myself dressed. The outfit was no where to be found.

I returned to Aleita’s bedroom and asked her if she had done something with it. She looked at me and then immediately looked down and just shrugged her shoulders. “Aleita,” I said, “where is your outfit for church?” She responded, “it’s not here.”

“Yes, I can see that,” I answered. “Do you happen to know where it might be?”

She begrudgingly set the car down she was playing with and pointed at the dresser. “Did you put it one of the drawers of dresser?” I asked. She shook her head no. “Then where?” I asked her.

“Back there.” she answered.

I got down on my hands and knees and looked under the dresser, and sure enough, the outfit was behind the dresser. “How did it get back there?” I questioned her.

“I think maybe I throwed it a little,” she admitted. Yes, she had indeed thrown the outfit behind the dresser in a feeble crack at not having to wear it. Her dresser is quite tall and at an angle in the corner of her room, so it required some effort for me to move the dresser and retrieve the outfit.

She was disappointed that her attempt to avoid my choice for her church clothing had been thwarted. She whined as I lotioned her up and dressed her in the aforementioned dreaded outfit. She had a pouty look on her face as I said, “step back and let me look at you.”

Now wouldn’t you know it - - - after all that, the outfit was too small. The pants were just a little too short and the belly just a little too tight. When I told her I would have to change her, she did a little dance around her bedroom saying, “woo hoo! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!”

She ended up wearing another lovely little outfit to church that day - - a skirt along with a shirt that she sometimes grumbles about wearing, but today, she happily put it on if it meant not having to wear the original outfit selected.

DID SOMEONE SAY BOBBSEY?

In an email to me this morning, my friend Karen very tactfully made fun of the fact that I sometimes tend to dress my girls in matching outfits. The matching outfit thing may seem to occur more often than what it actually does, due to the fact that I have a propensity to want to take their picture together when they’re all cutesy matched, so there just happens to be quite a bit of photographic evidence to support that conclusion. Karen also accused me of being one of “Those People.” You know “Those People” - - they are the ones that you see doing stuff with their kids that you swear to yourself that you will never do - - because it is the stuff that only “Those People” do. She admitted to me, however, that this past weekend, she joined the ranks of “Those People.” Seem she babysat for her niece and had ended up taking a slew of pictures of her niece and her own daughter in.. . . .you guessed it - - matching outfits! What can I say? I can’t help it - - they just look so dern cute when they are dressed alike.


It is funny that she sent me that email though. I just had a conversation with my husband a few days ago about this very same topic. I had dressed the girls in cute matching dresses for church and commented to him that I wondered how much longer they would tolerate me dressing them alike. Right now, they love it when they dress the same and often request to do so. However, I know there will soon come a time when they will find it embarrassing and immature to do so. I can only speculate about who will be the first one to object - - Maggie, because she is older and more mature, or Aleita, because she is so headstrong and fiercely independent? Only time will tell.

For now, Maggie & Aleita enjoy their "Bobbseyness." When one wears a shirt or dress that they each have alike, the other will beg to change in order to match her sister. I know, I know . . . those days are numbered.

WEARIN' A HAPPY SHIRT

This morning, Aleita was in a good mood. As she came skipping into the bathroom after Chris got her dressed, she announced, “I am wearing a happy shirt.” Happy shirts are ones that make her happy to wear them (and I am sure that you can assume what the inverse of this statement is.) The “happy shirt” she is wearing today is a pink and red striped one with a picture of a cat on the front. She loves this shirt and would wear it every day if I would let her.

She definitely has developed her own taste in clothing. It is strange how different she and Maggie are. At seven, Maggie is still quite content to allow me to pick out her clothes everyday, so long as I don’t select anything with a constricting collar, such as a turtleneck. I will sometimes give Maggie a few options for clothing to wear that day, and frequently, she will look at me somewhat indifferently. Most of the time, she will tell me, “whatever you pick is fine.” She likes to wear nice clothes and likes to look pretty, but she is confident in my ability to help her achieve this, I suppose. Not so much her sister. . .

Many times, at the beginning of the week, I will set out five choices of outfits for the week (M –F). She can pick the order in which she wears them, but all five outfits will get worn as the course of the week goes on. Often times, knowing that those are her only choices, Aleita will try to rearrange the pants and shirts so that she can insert as much autonomy as the situation allows. She can never understand why I won’t let her wear the strange combination of mismatched shirts and pants that she comes up with. I know, I know, if I were one of those hip and with-it moms, I would wait patiently as my daughter selected her clothing choices each day, and honor those selections and celebrate what a “little individual” she is becoming.

I saw a mom in line the other day at the post office with her young daughter in tow - - she must celebrate her “little individual” quite frequently, because her daughter looked like she belonged at a circus for the colorblind and deranged. She wore green and yellow polka dot pants, a pink and blue striped shirt with stars, tap dance shoes, and what appeared to be the fairy wings from an old dance outfit or Halloween costume. The mom looked adoringly at her daughter as she tapped her way around those of us waiting in line, as if to say, “isn’t she precious?” All I could think to myself was that that little tap-dancing, mismatched whirling dervish was definitely the one who ran that household. Her parents will shake their heads once she is an out-of-control teenager and wonder just why they can’t influence their daughter to behave better.

Perhaps I lack sympathy for my young three year old because of the fact that 99% of what she wears is cotton and has an elastic waistband. My ironed button-down blouse and slacks definitely appear at the opposite end of the “happy” scale from cotton pullovers and elastic waistbands.