A Sense of Style

I was once given the wonderful parenting advice- "chose your battles." A friend gave it to me before I had kids, before I was even pregnant. It often pops into my head. It most often pops into my head when it comes to the clothes and Ben.

When I see a young child at the store who is dressed a little strange I think, "that is cool that they have a mom who let them dress themselves and isn't too worried about the way their outfit looks." Being that mom who doesn't worry about it is a different story. If I had my way, Ben would wear a shirt and tie every day. Okay, not that extreme, but a nice polo shirt would be good.

This is Ben's favorite outfit-

He is allowed to wear it two days a week, as long as it isn't visably dirty or obviously smelly. I put my foot down at two, he would wear it more if I would let him. Not my favorite outfit, but he loves it. Somebody gave Chad the shirt when he was playing football in high school. I'm not sure why, it's a Michael Jordan shirt. Ben thinks it's soccer shirt. After trying to explain that it's a basketball shirt, once, I let it go. Because seriously, does it matter?

Another one of Ben's favorite outfits-

Right after I bought these shorts, I realized what shirt Ben would pair with them. I did try to explain to him that they don't go together. He thought about it for a second and then thought otherwise. It doesn't really matter, does it?

I spent a summer living in Texas with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. My cousin, Zachary, was six at the time. His favorite outfit was a pair of red shorts and a green shirt, or the other way around. Anyway, red and green go together, as they are complementary colors, but it's a strange combination when it's not Christmas. Everytime Zack would wear the clothes I would say to him, "Merry Christmas!" Not very nice of me, huh? Sorry Zack.

Sometimes Ben lets me pick his clothes. He will ask me in the morning to get clothes for him. When I question if he will truly wear what I pick he tells me, "yes, mom." And most of the time he wears whatever I choose. That happens like once every couple of months. Actually I guess it happens every sunday, because sunday is the day I put my foot down and he has to wear something nice to church. Sometimes a superhero shirt is underneath that, but who cares, huh? One day at church Ben showed a friend of his his superhero t-shirt under his Sunday shirt. Then his friends dad showed us that his friend still had on his superhero pajama top underneath his sunday shirt. And his dad said, "it's part of our sanity play for the day. Do whatever you can to get through the day without any serious meltdowns."

Shoes on sunday is a different story. We've had way to many tears over sunday shoes, so Ben just has to wear relatively nice shoes, like clean, holeless sneakers.

As for Jack, he still let's me pick his clothes. Most of the time. Sometimes he insists on certain things.