A Lesson in Fashion

I am full of excuses...

My first, that I attended girl's camp for a week and left my very patient husband with my two girls for the week, in which he went and bought clothes for them, because not enough were packed - my fault.  He picked what he thought were very fine matching outfits, but that I later discovered - something that I have never told him - that he bought my eight yr old pajamas without knowing it.

Second, that since the school year I started working very early in the morning and don't have the opportunity to get my two girls off to school.  This leaves my once again, very patient husband, the opportunity to get them dressed and do their hair on his own.  I have tried to be thoughtful and get everything ready for them, so he will not need to pick out any clothes or worry about matching socks - I will take care of all.

Which leads to number three - sometimes I am run late - and who could blame me at such an hour.  My five yr old I usually have nothing to worry about.  Jules is fashionable and matchy, though a little flashy for a Kindergartener.  She likes to dress up in sparkly do-dads and, thank heavens, she brushes her hair.  No severe cause for alarm.

Eight yr old Mia is a completely different character.

The other day she did something I feared - she wore the previously mentioned pajamas to school.  She told me when I picked her up,

Mia: "You know what, Mom?  I think you are right.  I think these are pajamas."
Me: "And why do you think that?"
Mia: "Someone in my class has the same pajamas.  She told me."

I'm mortified, but she has such charisma that this didn't bother her in the slightest.  I actually think that she likes being the odd one in class.

This morning was another such morning for me; flitting out of the house in the wee hours without a thought to what my daughters would wear, remembering near lunchtime that I had not set out their clothes and wondered how my husband ended his morning.

When I picked up my Jules from Kindergarten she looked great - picking out her fashionable "Jeggings" and her favorite bright animal shirt.  Mia, however, when I saw her I started to laugh.  She had dressed herself in blue and gray plaid shorts, a red and orange and yellow tie-dyed shirt with japanese character writing on it and a big monkey of the front, a shirt she grabbed from my closet I might add, and that hung around too big for her little shoulders, a baseball cap she had stuffed her hair in, creating a large ball of tangles, and very obvious mismatched socks - one long florescent polka-dotted sock and one small striped ankle sock.

I asked her:
Me: "Where was you dad this morning?  He let you wear this to school?"
Mia: "He doesn't care what I wear, Mom, just that I'm dressed."

I thought about what she was wearing:
Me: "I don't mind that you want to be different--"
Mia: "I don't like matching Mom."
Me: "I understand.  But I think there needs to be a limit.  Maybe just one thing at a time. You ook just like Junie B. Jones."
Mia: (all excited) "I know!  Cool huh?"

She didn't say much to me about it until later when she came up and said,

Mia: "I want to break a record."
Me: "What do you mean?"
She looks at her socks...
Mia: "I want to keep my socks on for a week."
Me: "Mia, that's gross."
Mia: "Well, I'll change them up, like I will put this sock on the other foot, so people don't know, they will think I am wearing the match or something."
Me: "Well, can I at least wash them during the week?"
Mia: "No, Mom, that ruins the record."

So, I have learned my lesson:

1. I must deal with the fact that my daughter wants to personify any title character created by Judy Bloom or Barbara Park.
2. I will need to wake up earlier in the morning and make sure that my girls have clothes and socks that MATCH.
3. And I will educate my very patient husband, the good man that he is, that outfits for girls, even one with cute cupcakes on them, are not made by JOE BOXER.