Soapbox

March 10th, 1994

So I’ve got this kid… and she’s in preschool now. When she was a baby I had visions of dressing her up in all these dear little outfits when she got to be school-aged. I even went out and bought lots of calico and corduroy for school jumpers and have been saving it for a couple of years now.
At the beginning of the school year, she liked to wear little dresses and tights with the saddle shoes I bought her, and I was a happy woman, believe you me. I even used some of that fabric to make a jumper and matching hair bows, and got to play dress her up like the Barbie doll I never had.

But there is no joy in Mudville today. My 3 year old darling has suddenly developed very strong opinions about her wardrobe and literally screams whenever I get a dress out of her closet in the morning. I’ve tried just muscling her into it, on the theory that she loved it last month and once she sees that she has to wear it she’ll be fine. Besides, I spent a lot of time making this darn thing and I’m bigger than she is, darn it!
As it turns out, the sun revolving around the earth is a much more sensible theory!
As fast as I get one arm in, she has pulled the other arm out. While I’m pulling up the tights she is yanking off the dress, all the while beet red with hysteria. This is the most perplexing thing I have ever witnessed. She’s three now, isn’t she supposed to have evolved past tantrums?

Brute force having gotten me nowhere, I tried a compromise: one school day Katie chooses her clothes, the next day Mommy gets to choose. Won’t that be fun? The result of this logic was that one day Katie showed up for school cheerful and dressed like she came from the Salvation Army, and the next she was red-eyed and sniffeling, and surreptitiously trying to yank off her dear little outfit. After a week or two of this, the weaker party gave in, and she now gets to dress herself every day.
I have visions of her at 13, standing before me with hands on hips, saying, “Mother, you can’t possibly expect me to wear these hideous clothes! I’ll never forgive you if anyone sees me in them!” I don’t have to be psychic to know, that’s one vision that will come true.
Meanwhile, what do I do with all that lovely corduroy?