Things Kids Wear and Wear and Wear

There are so many funny pre-school parenting blogs out there. I read them and find myself transported back in time. I didn't blog then, but let's just say I did so that I can capture some of the stories of children who eventually grow up and parents who simultaneously push them forward, then pull them back.

I have two girls. When they were little, their days were filled with imaginative play and rainbows and unicorns and maybe even a few kittens. Okay, nix the kittens, I'm not a cat person. But rainbows and unicorns, and glitter and beads. Oh the glitter! Oh the beads! In fact, I just had the unique opportunity to trade email with the person who lives in our old house, and 10 years later, the glitter still lingers. Direct quote:

... it is really awesome to meet the person who built our house. Just so you know, there IS evidence of you (well, your sweet daughters) as I have found little sparkly plastic beads in various cracks and crevices around the house. Since I didn't have a daughter until 5 months go, I knew they had to be yours.

But little girls are not all sugar and spice. Sometimes they are grub and grime. On the off chance (ha) that either of them read this post today, I will protect their specific identities so they can say that was her sister. Plausible deniability.


One of my children did not care for anything itchy. That same child had a penchant for running around shirtless and explaining that she was half boy so she didn't need to wear a shirt. Except when she took dance lessons and she wore a leotard and tights, in a very unique way. She wore the tights like pants, putting them on over her leotard to avoid the itchiness of the seams on the tights. And socks with hula girls over the tights. Because everyone knows the way to prove you're dancing is by your socks. But she refused to put her hula girl socks in the laundry, she would hide the socks in her bedroom until the following week. After a month of dance lessons, I think the girls could dance on their own. Or at least stand up.

The other child had "day of the week" underpants, with the day encircling the waistband. I had something similar as a child but never remembered what day it was, so I was not surprised when I saw Wednesday underpants on her one Friday morning. However, two days later, on Sunday, when she leaned forward in church and Wednesday blinked back at me, I shuddered. After church I asked her WHY she hadn't changed her underpants since Friday and she explained she just wanted to see how long she could go, and that actually she had been wearing them since Wednesday. She was hoping to set some sort of record. The thing that really made me exasperated was she was actually throwing a clean pair of underpants in the laundry every day so that I wouldn't catch onto her stealth attempt to set a world records for consecutive days wearing the same underpants. (there isn't one, although there is a record for wearing 302 pairs of underpants at the same time.)

Today, those same teenagers generate laundry at an alarming rate. I think that even if they look at clothing it goes in the hamper. I stopped doing their laundry unless they hit a particularly busy patch of time. Then I wonder what sort of records their clothes are setting these days. But even more so, I admit, I miss those days a little. Until I find the running clothes that were in the gym bag in the closet since last fall.