Monday, December 8, 2008

[JessFinds] I am so not ready for this

Uh oh. I am in such trouble.

Crab is exhibiting symptoms that can only be described as "4 going on 13." I am not ready to have battles with her over clothing and screaming matches over shoes. Not good. For two days in a row, we have had the nastiest arguments over clothing.

Admittedly, the first one was sort of silly. I ask that she wears dresses to church on Sunday. During the week she wears play clothing. She is very specific about tags and itchy clothes. Soft clothing or clothes that she perceives as "cool" are the only ones on her "ok" list. It really does not matter to me that she wears dresses to church, but she has so many pretty ones! And they are NOT itchy! They just sit in her closet, waiting for a debut. I only get so many years to dress my girl as a girl -- is 4 1/2 really it?

She loves dressing like a boy, which does not really bother me. I sort of like the skater chick look. Plus she has the crowning glory of long red hair. I really should just back off.

Today, it was not as silly. I insisted that she wear boots. There is snow and ice on the ground and it feels like 10 degrees outside. You would have thought I just asked her to rip off her own arm. It was a tantrum to beat all tantrums -- she had to have a sequence of at least 30 minutes of time-outs to calm down. We were late to school. I told her she could not wear her favorite Star Wars tee shirt unless she put on winter boots. They are comfy. She had THREE options to choose from. This seemed so logical and simple to me. She even threatened to pee herself. Whatever - go ahead kid. Pee yourself. Then you have to wear wet pants AND boots.

So here I am, exhausted and it is not even noon.

2 comments:

Jane Priest said...

I am not there yet and hope never to be. Hopefully Patrick won't care what I put him in because he's a boy and is just glad to have clothes on to go play. I would think that letting her follow through with her threat to pee herself (sorry you have to clean it up) and work through whatever she has to work through are absolutely the right things to do. It's rough on mom but she'll soon figure out that she WANTS boots on in snow and ice.

JessFinds said...

Look out - boys can be notoriously awful about clothing too!