My daughter's clothes

A huge issue.

A way too big of an issue, IMO.

One similarity with Skadi and I is that when I was 5, I wore only dresses too. I had some weird and irrational thought that if I wore pants, someone might think I was a boy. I had long hair. I didn't look like a boy. But I was POSITIVE that someone would think me a boy.

When I was very little - probably around three - my dad's mom bought me a pair of cowboy boots. But she poisoned them. She poisoned them because she said "cowboy boots!" Not cowgirl boots. I still remember screaming my head off and my mom hissing through her teeth at me that I WOULD try them on for her one way or another. It was horrible. My feet were poisoned by boy shoes.

Skadi has these same delusions, sort of, at least. With footwear, she is all about comfort and one of her recent favorite pairs of shoes was a pair of brown hand me down Keens from her brother. I have no idea.

But not only does she want to wear a dress daily, but she adds her own flair to her style.

And it is the flair that she and her kindergarten teacher may come to blows over.

I am pretty sure her kindergarten teacher has labelled me as one of *those* parents. At Skadi's fall conference she mentioned one instance regarding the "class t-shirt" and it not being her issue.

The Class T-Shirt. So the deal is that at the beginning of the year the teacher requested we send in a white t-shirt for our kids that would be decorated in all the same way to give the class a consistent and fun look for field trips, group pictures, assemblies, etc. "The kids are just so cute in them!" She proclaimed!

Great!

Except Skadi HATES hers. Despises it.

So Skadi came home last fall with a sticker instructing the kids to wear the t-shirt the next day. And she refused. Wanted nothing to do with it. Since Skadi goes to morning care and I feared it being taken off and left somewhere (since a pink t-shirt underneath is mandatory in Skadi world) - I don't know, stuffed into some drawer or down the toilet at her morning care? I put it in her backpack and sent an e-mail to her teacher explaining that Skadi didn't want to wear it, it is in the backpack, hopefully when she sees the other kids wearing theirs, there will be positive peer pressure and she will want to put it on.

Well at conferences I was told that was out of line and not a teacher issue, not for them to deal with, it was up to me to get her in the t-shirt, her job is to teach.

Actually I disagree a bit. The Class T-Shirt is not part of a uniform that I agreed to. It was a request by the teacher that she wear this t-shirt. Therefore, your request, your problem. Not to be a complete bitch about it or anything, really. But I was rather annoyed.

That hasn't been the end of The Class T-Shirt. Skadi still despises it and on the days before she is supposed to wear it the teacher puts a sticker on the kids' shirt on their way out the door for the day reminding parents.

Any guesses where those stickers go?

I have no flipping idea because I don't see them! So instead Skadi ends up being the only child not in a matching t-shirt on a regular basis. I do have a secret weapon - friends. I have enlisted a parent friend from the class to let me know when her son comes home with a sticker to wear the special shirt.

But seriously, a battle where I am left shaking my head "why?!"

As I mentioned earlier Skadi has her own flair. She loves wearing a tiara daily. She loves pink. She loves dresses. And she prides herself on her clothing "creations". She argues about what matches and what doesn't. She is a clothing centric child. I was not. I like nice clothing and like shopping for clothes (this she got from me), but I don't push the syle boundries.

One day I got an e-mail home citing a school dress code violation. I was perplexed. I looked at my daughter. She was wearing a dress that she has owned for two years, wore to her grandfather's wedding and wears nearly once a week. And now... out of the blue... a dress code violation? Despite the fact that she had a sweater on covering the bare shoulders each day, it was cited that she wore sleeveless dresses two days in a row. (The previous day she did have a halter dress on, but wore a jean shirt/cardigan/light jacket over it.) If this was a problem, why wasn't it brought to my attention when she wore it first and not after 25 times? How do I explain to my daughter that I know it was ok last week when  you wore the dress, but now it isn't?

Skadi gets it I think - and it may sound awful - but I blame her teacher. "Remember Mrs. W said you can't wear dresses without sleeves?" But you know? It works. And there is no battle. And she willingly changes to abide by Mrs. W's rules.

The other day Skadi wore a long flowing maxi-style skirt that she loves. Apparently when running on the playground she tripped on the dress and it ripped. Badly. Skadi came home in a pair of humongous sweat pants. I e-mailed her teacher acknowledging the rip and thanking her for loaning her a pair of sweat pants.

I kind of expected an e-mail back saying, "you're welcome".

Not surprisingly the e-mail back to me was not a "you're welcome" but instead said that she wouldn't need the pants if she would quit wearing long dresses and skirts and recommended that maybe if I let Skadi pick out a pair of sparkley pants that she wouldn't feel so compelled to wear dresses all the time.

I didn't respond. Because if you don't have anything nice to say...

I thought pretty strongly about snapping a picture of my daughter's pants collection - the pink jeans, the cheetah print jeggings, the pink cheetah print jeans, the yoga pants, pink fleece pants... - and sending that off.

But I resisted. I may have cursed a bit, felt as though I was being judged as a mom, wondering if she had even MET my daughter... oh wait, those e-mails about my daughter's stubborn nature recently... maybe she had met her once.

I came to a conclusion the other day... I continually get notes about Skadi's lack of progress when tested linked to her refusal to do simple tasks... apparently she only knows 5 letters, for example. (Yet she can write her and her brother's full names and most of her sight words...)

Maybe if the teacher quit worrying about and focusing on my daughter's clothing, she could focus on teaching my daughter?

The news

Normally the news is on in our house far too much. I often get annoyed with my news freak husband about the TV always being on, and not only that but on news channels that just rotate through the stories repeatedly.

I should have known something was up the other day when the TV never hit a news channel. AB knew I would keep the TV on cable when I watched and never mentioned the VA Tech massacre to me. He knows me right now.

I am almost 4 weeks post partum and I have the same post partum "issues" this time around that I did with Leif. Some women get post partum depression. Thankfully I don't, my "issues" are being extremely emotional (read sappy, I cry when Leif says his prayers at night) and paranoia about something bad happening (how many times exactly did I remind AB to wear his seatbelt on his way to drop Leif off today?). All the different realms of post partum feelings are normal as hormones return somewhere near where they should be.

AB knows this is me right now and we have talked about it. This is why that awful day our TV never hit a news channel and AB silently got his news on the situation from the internet. (I feel obligated to remind women to keep open lines of communications about their feelings post-partum... they are normal.)

That is until I surrendered to the realm of bad TV and decided to flip to Days of Our Lives so I could whine about it. It wasn't on, it was a news conference with an interview with the university president and the chief of police. I can't dwell on the horrific act right now. I have just gotten to the point where I don't have to flip the channel within 2.6 seconds of a related news story coming on, but I am not to the point where I can discuss the happenings without breaking down to "my children are never leaving my house".

However, this morning there was a story on about how other students and faculty had recommended this student for counseling and how did he slip through the cracks. This took me back to my 3rd or 4th year in grad school when I was teaching Physical Chemistry Lab.

It was near the end of the semester, the students were turning in their final papers to the professor. The prof asked me to coordinate them all and make sure all materials were turned in. I noticed that Michael (aka The Postman as named by his classmates nearly 4 years ago in their dorm hall) had not turned in his first draft and I sent him off a quick e-mail asking him to drop it by my office when he had a chance, reminding him it needed to be submitted with his final draft, which I had.

Within minutes I was e-mailed back a rambling, ranting e-mail telling me where I could go and saying that everyone in the department, but particularly me, needed to be watching our backs. I had no idea where this came from. At first I was more perplexed and sent it to the professor of the class. Then I started thinking more about it, realized he was really threatening us, and I sent it to the chair of my department.

The prof blew it off and said, "I don't know where that came from, make sure he gets the paper in". I didn't hear from the chair immediately.

About a half hour later the door to my lab flew open and The Postman was standing there. He was raging. I don't remember what happened very well, other than he was still outside the door and had not entered the lab. I grabbed the door shut it, locked it and told him to leave. I called the professor first, who finally saw the gravity of the issue and then the police were called. I was sent home for the day as the police tracked him down. (Eventually about 6 hours later in his dorm.)

What finally happened? He could have been kicked out of school. He went to Judicial Counsel and was given a warning for his behavior, he claimed I misinterpreted the e-mail (which the counsel saw as bologna). He was "given" a grade of a D+ in the class I taught (since he had completed the class nearly to that point, the prof didn't want him taking the class again) and was told not to attend anymore that semester and to stay away from me as long as I was a student. He was also required to attend counseling until the day he graduated.

The university had problems with this guy from the first day of his freshman year. He had the nickname "Postman" for a reason... his dorm mates all thought he was going to go postal someday. I don't know if anything would have happened, how far he would have taken it. I do know, as did many faculty members and students, that the guy was nuts.

It frightens me to think about what could have happened with how unstable this guy was. How lucky was I that when I yelled at him to leave the building, that he actually left. Was he not as crazy as I thought? Or was I just lucky?