Quick change
This morning we did a little number I like to call The Clothes Shuffle, or, How Many Outfits Can We Dress Our Toddler In Today?
First, some background: Zoe is in a very weird in-between stage with her clothes. She's outgrown much of her 24 months, but isn't quite in 2T yet. Silly me, once upon a time I thought they were the same. Wrong!
Anyway, I've learned that children's clothes are much like women's clothes...basically, the tags are useless. She has some clothes that still fit, or finally do fit, and the tags say 18 mo. She's outgrown some other ones that say 24 mo. It's crazy. We put a cute pair of 2T bell bottom jeans on her last week and her cuffs were 4 inches tall, but they fit her in the waist (which is remarkable because she's so tiny and has no hips, so pants mostly fall right off her and she walks around looking like a toddler rapper with her diaper band hanging out and her crotch around her knees).
She had a birthday recently, too, which equals tons of great new clothes, and then we hit the change of seasons (which took forever this year...hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold). All this combines to create an absolute nightmare in her dresser drawers. There are clothes stuffed every which way. I had them fairly well organized, you know, shirts in one, onesies in another, pants and skirts in yet another. Now it's like the sale rack at Macy's in there. I have a laundry basket full of clean clothes for her that's camped out in our bedroom because I can't bring myself to take it in there and cram it in with all the other clothes.
It's easy for me to put together outfits for Zozo because I'm the person who pays attention to the clothes when they are first unwrapped (which means I know what tops go with what bottoms) and because I pay attention to things like, oh, colors. M, not so much. Last week, he dressed her with her shirt on backwards and her socks inside out (although he blames one of the socks on me, like that equals the backwards shirt plus the other sock). She looked like a girl who just finished shacking up with her toddler boyfriend.
Anyway, even with her drawers a mess, I find it mildly annoying but still perfectly do-able to pull together an outfit for her on a daily basis. This week, though, our schedules are a bit changed up and M is getting her up before I get home from exercising. I walked in this morning and he was putting on the finishing touches. The outfit was adorable, and all matched, and was on the correct way, and was entirely too small. We stood her up and her little belly was hanging out.
After surveying her for a moment (both of us internally leaning towards just letting her go like that, for the sheer sake of time and effort), we agreed that it would never do and something had to give. So we stripped off the jacket and the shirt, and put a new shirt on. New shirt is long enough, but now hangs past the jacket, so I pulled a different jacket out and threw that on. M said, "Doesn't that jacket have matching pants?" Yep. Dug out the matching pants and M held her up by her armpits while I stripped off the small pants and suited her up in the long pants. It was the toddler equivalent of a quick-lube oil change. We were a well-oiled machine right there, team effort, the pit crew with the fastest change time.
Zoe, I'm sure, thought we were insane for ever having dressed her in the small outfit to begin with, not to mention the piecemeal changing of her entire ensemble.
Some time this week I'll have to empty her drawers and organize again. Not tonight, though, as it's pumpkin carving night and there's no way I'm tackling dresser drawers on the same night we're gourd gouging.
First, some background: Zoe is in a very weird in-between stage with her clothes. She's outgrown much of her 24 months, but isn't quite in 2T yet. Silly me, once upon a time I thought they were the same. Wrong!
Anyway, I've learned that children's clothes are much like women's clothes...basically, the tags are useless. She has some clothes that still fit, or finally do fit, and the tags say 18 mo. She's outgrown some other ones that say 24 mo. It's crazy. We put a cute pair of 2T bell bottom jeans on her last week and her cuffs were 4 inches tall, but they fit her in the waist (which is remarkable because she's so tiny and has no hips, so pants mostly fall right off her and she walks around looking like a toddler rapper with her diaper band hanging out and her crotch around her knees).
She had a birthday recently, too, which equals tons of great new clothes, and then we hit the change of seasons (which took forever this year...hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold). All this combines to create an absolute nightmare in her dresser drawers. There are clothes stuffed every which way. I had them fairly well organized, you know, shirts in one, onesies in another, pants and skirts in yet another. Now it's like the sale rack at Macy's in there. I have a laundry basket full of clean clothes for her that's camped out in our bedroom because I can't bring myself to take it in there and cram it in with all the other clothes.
It's easy for me to put together outfits for Zozo because I'm the person who pays attention to the clothes when they are first unwrapped (which means I know what tops go with what bottoms) and because I pay attention to things like, oh, colors. M, not so much. Last week, he dressed her with her shirt on backwards and her socks inside out (although he blames one of the socks on me, like that equals the backwards shirt plus the other sock). She looked like a girl who just finished shacking up with her toddler boyfriend.
Anyway, even with her drawers a mess, I find it mildly annoying but still perfectly do-able to pull together an outfit for her on a daily basis. This week, though, our schedules are a bit changed up and M is getting her up before I get home from exercising. I walked in this morning and he was putting on the finishing touches. The outfit was adorable, and all matched, and was on the correct way, and was entirely too small. We stood her up and her little belly was hanging out.
After surveying her for a moment (both of us internally leaning towards just letting her go like that, for the sheer sake of time and effort), we agreed that it would never do and something had to give. So we stripped off the jacket and the shirt, and put a new shirt on. New shirt is long enough, but now hangs past the jacket, so I pulled a different jacket out and threw that on. M said, "Doesn't that jacket have matching pants?" Yep. Dug out the matching pants and M held her up by her armpits while I stripped off the small pants and suited her up in the long pants. It was the toddler equivalent of a quick-lube oil change. We were a well-oiled machine right there, team effort, the pit crew with the fastest change time.
Zoe, I'm sure, thought we were insane for ever having dressed her in the small outfit to begin with, not to mention the piecemeal changing of her entire ensemble.
Some time this week I'll have to empty her drawers and organize again. Not tonight, though, as it's pumpkin carving night and there's no way I'm tackling dresser drawers on the same night we're gourd gouging.
posted by Amy at 12:59 PM
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