I knew I would have to deal with fashion at some point in my children’s lives, I just thought it would happen later on, like maybe when they become tweens. But that just wasn’t the case for us.

Jill showed an eye for fashion when she was just six-months old.  She would reach out for lavender-colored clothing and smile. It didn’t matter which store we were in and she didn’t reach for other colors so we thought she just liked the color.  That is, until I was flipping through a catalog one day. The catalog was full of designer outfits and Jill was sitting next to me looking as I flipped through the pages.  Suddenly she grabbed the catalog and turned back the page, smiled and started making what we called “happy noises.”  Jill not only liked fashion, but she had expensive taste to boot.  More interestingly, the outfit was not lavender.

Since then Jill has become a bit of a fashion critic and will tell me how an outfit could be improved and she likes to be creative with her own outfits.  She must pick out her own clothes and spends a bit of time each night deciding on the perfect outfit for the next day. Sometimes she will take the weather into account and sometimes the outfit is just too important for her to care about weather conditions.  For example, last Friday temperatures reached over 100 degrees in our area but Jill insisted on wearing a black and white shirt with black gaucho pants. She said she would be in a classroom most of the day and would stay in the shade on recess. Her mind was made up. (I also did not realize until we were leaving the house that this was her chosen outfit. She and her dad discussed her choice and she won.)

Jack is also somewhat fashion conscious but in a different way. He will wear the same clothes for three days if you let him. His idea of changing outfits is running into his room and turning his shirt inside out and/or backwards and turning his pants inside out.  When you say, ”I just told you to go change your clothes.” He will answer “I did!” He will also argue that his clothes are still clean and that he likes them.  Jack doesn’t care if there are holes in the pants, stains on his shirt or even if they are too short.  All he cares about is that he is comfortable.

As you can see I deal with both ends of the fashion spectrum on a daily basis. If it’s like this now I can’t bear to think of what it will be like when they’re teenagers.

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