I guess I’m completely clueless, but I thought my girls would be at least 4 before they started criticizing my fashion sense. Boy was I wrong!
They’re only 1 for Pete’s sake, and have never seen a fashion magazine, a movie, or any TV other than the news and the occasion episode of Fraggle Rock, yet Mumu has decided to start dressing herself. She feels my wardrobe selections for her are not up to par. This does not bode well for the future…
It all started the day after Father’s Day. On Father’s Day, if you’ll remember, we were busy sucking the marrow out of life via a scenic drive through the jungle, and chowing down on ho hos in anticipation of the apocalypse. In other words, just a typical day. The girls loved those ho hos of course, as they hadn’t previously ever had junk food, and were in raptures over their sublime yumminess. Lulu managed to spread the chocolaty goodness all over her bright pink dress, no surprises there. What is surprising is that the next day, Mumu picked her sister’s chocolate stained dress out of the dirty laundry basket and became obsessed with it. I kept hiding it at the bottom of the basket, and she kept fishing it out and waving it around,flinging her arms up and down and grunting determinedly in my general direction. This went on for quite a while before I realized she was trying to tell me she wanted to wear the chocolate smeared dress. She was so insistent I finally said what the hell and pulled it over her head. She was ecstatic. She looked…completely nuts.
The outfit she was already wearing before I pulled the dress over was fairly avent-garde to say the least. This is because Jungledad had dressed her. We’ve fallen into this supersweet routine in the mornings where I sleep in, or check email in bed at my leisure, and Jungledad gets the girls up, changes them, feeds them breakfast, and sometimes dresses them, before making me my breakfast and coffee. I told ya- supersweet. If this is not the normal routine in other households DON’T YOU DARE tell my husband. Anyway, I love it when he dresses the girls, because he often puts them in something completely insane. That day was no exception. It was a chilly, rainy morning, so he put them in long sleeve onesies with colorful patterns on them. Then he added brightly striped baby legs for added warmth. The combined effect of all those colors, patterns, and stripes was blinding and slightly seizure inducing, but Jungledad was so proud, and the babies so snuggly, I just had to smile. The new outfit created by the multicolored patterns, stripes, and then chocolate stained hot pink flowered dress was really something. Watch out Yves Saint Laurent, I am revolutionising women’s fashion, one toddler at a time.
Since that day, Mumu has not been shy about letting me know when she disapproves of wardrobe selections, and has started making suggestions of her own. Jungledad and I now offer her a choice between two garments in the morning, and this has so far worked out well. Of course, Jungledad likes to tease her by grabbing the outfit she didn’t choose and pretending to try and put it on her. She is always appalled by the switcheroo and immediately grabs the offensive garment out of his hands and flings it to the floor before thrusting the correct outfit into his hands. This kills him every time. Well, at least she’s a girl who knows what she wants! We offer Lulu a choice now as well, but she’s not nearly so adamant/aggressive in her selection process. How about you? Do you let your kiddos choose their own clothes?
Daniel has some favorite shirts that he requests by “name,” but Rebecca is becoming particularly opinionated in her clothing choice. Just this weekend, I was trying to put her in this cute (comfy, cotton) blue and white striped dress for the 4th. She about had a fit and insisted on the green dress with butterflies instead. Pretty much anything that involves butterflies is all but required.
Daniel gets upset when his “shark shirt” is in the wash.
Melody’s relatively mellow when it comes to what to wear. Her preference is ALWAYS a dress, but if I come up with a convincing reason to wear pants or shorts, she’s game.
Jessica has discovered my choice-of-two-outfits trick, and now announces her choice of attire before she opens her eyes in the morning, sending me scrambling. “Yawn, my blue shirt with the dinosaur on it and my watermelon skirt. Good morning, Mama.” “Mama, those jeans don’t look beautiful. You need to wear a skirt so you can be a princess like me.”
Both girls have banned denim from their wardrobe altogether. It’s a pity, because there’s so much cute denim out there!
Nate was very early to be interested in his clothes as well so we’ve always given him a choice. Alex doesn’t seem to care. Now I open the closet doors and let them choose whatever they want to wear. Nate dresses himself completely. EASY!
Damn, how do you train a JungleDad? I love this post and the only thing missing are some photos…
You know I enjoy giving you a hard time about photos!
Oh yeah, the joys of when they start picking out their own clothes! I have one picky boy…he wore sweats pretty much all winter as that was the only thing he liked this year. I just let him wear what he wants, though I must admit on especially crazy days, I’d be sure to tell his preschool teachers that he got himself dressed!
My other son isn’t as picky, though he’s in love with some light up shirts we got as hand-me-downs from another set of twins. They are pretty cute in a completely garish way…they have big plastic things on them with lights inside that flash on and off whenever they move.
My husband also picks some INTERESTING outfits for the boys when he’s in charge. Then he tries to blame it on the fact that he’s colorblind, even though rarely are green or red involved in the outfits. Hey, I just let it go! As long as they’re dressed…
What we’re doing for the day determines how much say my girls have in their wardrobe. Staying home? They have free range… but I did have to draw the line during the winter when they wanted to wear swimsuits. They’re pretty vocal about what they want (or don’t want) so usually I try to compromise… if they pick the shirt I’ll pick the pants or vice versa. Hubby doesn’t understand the concept of “matching,” so if his parents show up unannounced and he has dressed them I make him tell them I had no part in their outfits.
My daughter has always been very picky about what she wears. It started very young with her too. She even has to pick out her own underwear everyday because God forbid I pick out Hannah Montana underwear on Thursday when I should know that on Thursday she wears her Camp Rock underwear.
Oh and my hubby totally sucks at dressing the kids so I always lay out their clothes for him, if he’s the one getting them dressed in the morning.
My boys (8 and 5) still don’t care what I dress thtem in and have not the least bit fashion of fashion sense. My 8 year old would walk out to the bus everyday with his pants tucked into his socks, his hair sticking up and his shirt on backwards! I already know my girls will give me a much harder time- I will be in trouble just as soon as they learn to talk!