Thursday, September 14, 2006

Kids and clothes

My MIL has been visiting this week. She arrived on Tuesday and will depart on Monday. I have spent most of the time working, Leif has spent it in daycare, so we are feeling oblivious to the whirlwind of a houseguest for the most part. I am sure this weekend will be different.

Just a few days ago it was 90F out and I was whining about those unreachable 70’s. Seems we just passed over them. Today’s high temperature topped out at 67F. I was surprised by the forecast this morning and marched Leif back into his bedroom and replaced his short sleeved t-shirt with a long sleeved version (sorry MIL, I know you dressed him). I left the shorts. On our to-do list this weekend is a new pair of shoes. He has a pair of sandals that he is nearly outgrowing (the second pair this summer) and with the weather cooling down it is time. Now just to decide on what shoes he gets for the fall.

V and I were discussing the kids and fashion the other day. I was really shocked to hear from her that C has a preference in her clothes that she wears everyday and exerts her choices. Leif… yeah, no concerns there. He wears whatever we put on him. If I ask him to go get a shirt out of his drawer he goes and gets the one on the top. I had thought this was simply because they were too young to really care about what they were wearing. Nope, it is because Leif is AB’s mini-me.

When AB and I started dating I was really surprised to learn that his decision on what to wear each day was complicated only by what t-shirt was on top. Matching? No need to worry about matching when you only wear jeans! I have since learned to use this knowledge to my advantage… that hideous black mountain dew t-shirt that was a give away from some radio station in Alaska (with their logo on it) has been strategically placed at the bottom of the pile for years now without seeing the light of day. As long as the laundry stays done (and AB has so many t-shirts it would take a month of not doing laundry) that shirt shall never grace his body again. Same with the two awful 24 Hour Fitness t-shirts we were given as bonuses for joining the club… I mean who actually wears those? Walking advertisement I am not.

Ah the differences in raising a boy versus a girl.

When my sister was about two years old (my guess) she had a favorite dress. It was a red and white thing that made her look like she should be running through the fields of Switzerland. She called it her twirly dress because when she spun around the skirt would flare out nearly parallel with the floor. It was how we both judged the worthiness of any dress. I had my green security blanket, she had her red Heidi dress. She cried when she couldn’t wear it. She cried when it was washed. I don’t know how she ever got over that hurdle and surrendered the dress.

I don’t think my preference for particular articles of clothing set in until a little later. The first one I recall however, was a pair of “cowboy” boots that my dad’s mom brought down for me. The strategic error here was calling them “cowboy” boots. Had they been “cowgirl” boots all would have been fine and I might have allowed them on my feet. I remember distinctly thinking that no cowboy’s shoes were going on my feet. And they didn’t either.

My aversion to boy clothes continued well into grade school. I loved wearing dresses, I loved being a girl and despised gym day because I had to wear pants. My mom made all of my dresses and school clothes, so the necessity for pants meant a trip to JCPenneys in downtown Casper, WY. To make sure that my pants weren’t confused for boy pants, since boys wore jeans and girls were supposed to wear dresses, I made sure my pants had decorated pockets.

One year my mom got some hand me down clothes from my best friend’s mom. I was a bean pole and my best friend couldn’t wear them. Her mom passed them on. Given my mom’s opposition to used clothing (which I inherited from her) I am surprised we kept the bag of clothes instead of passing it on. One day, after my mom pleaded with me to please wear one of those pairs of pants since I didn’t have any clean ones, I finally did it. I put the jeans, without flowers on the pockets, on and went to school.

The worst thing that could ever happen to a 2nd grade girl happened. One of the boys in the class came up to me and said, “hey those look like my old pants, where did you get them?” First off I was horrified that I might be wearing boy pants. I told him that Jenny’s mom had passed them onto me, so they were girl’s pants. Oh no, he informed me. He told me that his mom had passed on a bag of clothes to Jenny’s mom! “You are wearing my old pants,” he yelled in line to go in from recess.

My face was 100 shades of red and I could feel the tears in my eyes. I went home after school, pulled the boy pants off and refused to touch another thing in that bag. And all my pants from then on had flowers on the pockets… just so there wasn’t any confusion.

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