During this morning's Battle of the Clothes, Olivia declared: "You always want me to wear matching clothes and I don't want to wear matching clothes anymore!"
So I am officially waiving the white flag and letting the girl have at it. There has to be better battles out there to fight.
10 comments:
Isn't it crazy how kids have such strong personalities and want what they want. Who would think mismatched clothes could mean so much to a person. Congrats on picking your battles wisely!
There are better battles to fight definitely.
Hey, there is a great site that Maddie loves called www.littlemissmatched.com which has mismatched socks (come in a three-pack, which is great), PJs, swimwear and more. They are darling, and they are matched enough for mama, but mismatched enough for Maddie Lou.
I'm right there with you Jennette! Sometimes it takes all my will power not to pin Siena down and make her wear something that matches.Remember her striped shirt and tie-dye dress combo while you were visiting? It still hurts my eyes just thinking about it. My only solace, and it can be yours too with Isabelle, is that I can still dress Talia how I want to.
Although I surrender a lot of the battles, I haven't given up the war. Mabel's often been known to say, in a tone of disgust, "Why do you care so much about everything matching?" She also says I "don't need to be embarrassed" if the house isn't clean when the babysitter comes -- especially when she's been enlisted to help get the house to a clean condition -- but last night before she went to bed she had to make a last dash to straighten one of the beds in the doll house, because she "just likes the doll house to be tidy." I guess she just can't imagine that my wishes for our home or my freakish thing for matching are driven by a similar impulse.
Anyway, I've reserved the right to insist on matching for some occasions, but a lot of the time I do just let it go.
Oh, and I've had pretty good luck with negotiation, too -- like "If I let you wear the striped shirt with the polka-dot pants today, tomorrow will you wear that new really cute outfit that I just bought you and I'm dying to see you wear because I think you'll look soooo cute in it?" (The appeal to her vanity seems to help, too.) The other day I insisted in putting a little side braid in her hair while she vehemently protested that it would be hideous and she would hate it -- she trounced off to the mirror intending to prove her case, announced, "I HATE it! Well . . . maybe I will leave it in." By the next day she was willing to admit she loved it.
Oh, and Rose is starting to have some strong opinions, too, although I can still usually get away with the trick of offering her two acceptable options and letting her choose between them. Mostly she just always wants to wear a dress or jumper, and mostly that is fine and dandy with me.
I remember going to a family Christmas party. You (along with Amy and Amber) were wearing very fashionable stirrup pants. In my effort to look cool too, I insisted on wearing aqua-colored sweat pants stuffed into my socks, despite Mom's embarrassment. Yikes! So here are my two bits. You still control the inputs so Olivia really isn't gaining that much independence--make sure that the inputs give the final product the best chance of success.
Yeah - I gave up with Cate long ago. It's not worth the battle - although it took me a few kids to learn to say that! Just take some good pictures. Cute one of Olivia by the way.
I know when my kids are teenagers, they are going to look back at photos and hate me for letting them wear whatever they want now, but you know what? Childhood is too short! They will want to match someday (or maybe not, by the looks of many of the fashions I see) and I'll be sad and miss these days... I love the 3 socks to a pack thing; I'll have to check that out because my girls wear mismatched socks every day of their lives. It's a trend at their school. They didn't come up with it. They are related to me, after all, which means they will always be a bit artistically challenged!
I just have to say "Good on ya, Jennette!" Enjoy that precious little girl!
Ahhhh....so nice to have such great friends. Thanks for the encouragement, ya'll.
(But I did have to stop her from leaving the house yesterday in a t-shirt and tutu w/ undies clearly visable under the tutu. So she wore the tutu over her shorts...I guess it worked, in kind of a Desperately Seeking Susan way.)
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