Fashionista

Here is little miss fashionista. Or at least that's what she'd like to think of herself as. Beezely McBeezlington has always been an opinionated girl to put it mildly. She likes to be in charge of everything: what she eats, whether or not I'm allowed to put her hair up, whether or not I'm allowed to sing in the car. You get the picture. Recently, this has extended into the realm of clothing. Now, this isn't an entirely new phenomenon. For about a year I've been required to offer her multiple outfit choices. "Do you want to wear this shirt, or this shirt?" And that was usually enough of a choice to keep her satisfied. But now that she is a bit older and can articulate herself a little better and remember what clothes exist beyond the choices I am presenting her with, she has all kinds of opinions about what she's going to wear. I introduce to you the dress-over-pants-with-mismatched-socks-I-look-like-the-random-kid-you-find-at-the-Phish-concert look.

The funniest part is that I actually brought her matching socks and she said, "No, I want different socks!" She also insists on wearing pants and pajamas that are too small for her even though they look extremely uncomfortable. I put an old pair of Elmo pajamas on her the other day that were bursting at the seams, and I swear she wore them just to spite me. She wants to wear a rain coat when it isn't raining, shorts in the winter, a sweater in summer, "Not that sweatshirt, Mommy!" God forbid that sweatshirt. You know, the only one she would wear last week.

Tonight she had to change her clothes for dinner with Grandpa. Her choice? Her super girl Halloween costume, of course.

Most of the time I really don't care, and I have honestly encouraged her to be a bit of a Punky Brewster, but I want her kooky outfits to look intentionally kooky. I don't, on the other hand, want her to look like her mother is a vagabond.

The head of our daycare, Kathy, was teasing me about her outfit the other day and then told me a story about her own daughter. She said her daughter insisted on wearing different shoes to school and would go around limping until Kathy finally just bought her several pairs of the same shoes in different colors. "You pick your battles," she said, "and different colored socks ain't worth fightin' over."

So if you see my kid walking down the street looking like a very small bag lady, know that I tried, and that, if she'd totally had her way, she'd probably be wearing just a tutu and rain boots.