Thursday, March 23, 2006

smells like baby spirit

we are continuing our descent into the 2s here at wile's house.... the latest permuatation is a fixation on the clothing. as in, unless it's something he's picked out, it would be easier to dress lulu in a corset than get a simple t-shirt and pants combination on to wile.

the other night, when stephen offered up some red footed fleece jammies, wile said "absolutement pas!", and insisted on a thin cotton union suit that barely snaps together anymore. somehow, stephen was able to convince him that it would be super-hip to wear a fleece jacket to bed that night....

so i've been giving in, mostly, and he hasn't left the house looking too insane. yet. though there are some times when i want to pin a sign to his back that says "i dressed myself today!" as in, "my mother, if she had any power at all in this situation, wouldn't have really gone with the reindeer hat with the football jacket." when we were down in the florida, the main issue was pants: he was against them. so we mainly went without.

this morning, when we were trying to leave the house to go to the store, there was a major outerwear meltdown. wile luuurves the windbreaker (ours is turquoise) that we bought before we left for florida. we don't shop for him too often (why shop when the gifts and hand-me-downs keep flowing in like water?), but one day iden and luella rolled in to the playground sporting these windbreakers and i knew we had to have one. so we trekked over to old navy and did what we had to do. and wile really enjoyed the whole process of picking out the color, trying it on, buying it.... yes, i do fear that he liked it too much. which is why our next lesson in shopping 101 will be "thrift stores and you: perfect together." but anyway, he loves him some windbreaker. so of course he wanted to wear it today. fine and dandy---except when we came to the part where i told him that it was cold out and we had to put another coat on over it.

15 minutes later and 10 decibels quieter, i had managed to get a fleece jacket under the windbreaker and a scarf around his neck and was reasonably satisfied that he wasn't going to freeze.

what about a hat, you might ask? oh, don't worry---he had his hat on. in fact, in the past four days or so, he hasn't taken his hat off. playing in the house? hat on. at playgroup? hat on. eating dinner? hat on. taking a nap? hat on. i expect sometime in the next week to be dragged to the local coffeeshop for open mike night, so that he can perform his angst-filled songs about the alienation he feels as a toddler living in an adults' world. you know, plus some pearl jam covers.

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