Thursday, November 13, 2014

Julep: bella figura

I just got the daily e-newsletter from school, which often features a few photos of what the children have been up to today. And I noticed today, as I have before, that my kid looks adorable and the other kids, not so much.

It's not that my children are physically so attractive - they are, but most of the other kids are also nice-looking. The difference is in wardrobe. The other kids might as well be wearing their pajamas. For instance, today the Bear has on khaki pants, a white oxford shirt, and a blue argyle sweater vest. And of course, his school shoes. The boy with whom he is building a block tower in the photo is dressed in a long-sleeved horizontally striped T-shirt, sweatpants with vertical striping on the legs, and plastic sneakers which may or may not light up.

The girls aren't much better. Mostly I'm seeing pants with long-sleeved T-shirts or T-shirt dresses with leggings. I prefer to send Little Bits to school in a dress, but I was caught short on the laundry this morning - they don't usually go to school on Thursday, and I don't have enough tights for four school days in a row. I could have sent her in play clothes, but instead Little Bits is wearing red corduroy overalls with black and white plaid trim, a white blouse with peter pan collar, and two hair bows. (She wanted white, and her brother was adamant that she should wear a red one to match her outfit.)

In a vacuum, most of the clothing items these kids are wearing are fine. I would let my kids wear any given item around the house for play time, or over to my mom's house, or even to Target or the grocery store. But even though they do a lot of play at "school" at this age, I just feel like school deserves the good stuff out of one's wardrobe. Yes, a lot of the time they come home with paint or spaghetti sauce on their nice clothes. I have a free hand with the Oxi Clean, and that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make so that my kids don't grow up to be the kind of people who go to their college classes in sweats or show up to traffic court wearing a Tweety Bird T-shirt and jeans with holes.

Twinks, I am expecting next year's school experience to be a step up. If nothing else, I know the Twinkle sisters will ensure that my two are not the only ones in the building who appear to have changed their clothes after rolling out of bed in the morning.

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