Breaking news…I have to put all of the thanks and the giving on hold for the day to report the unthinkable…Hef has returned. For all of the newer readers to this blog I need to explain that Hef is an old nickname that I gave my daughter last year when she went through a period of only wearing pajamas. My long time readers might recall that last year my darling daughter refused to wear clothing for a few weeks around Christmas time and even wore her bedraggled old Wiggle pajamas to Christmas Eve services at our church. Early in January we successfully confiscated the Wiggle pajamas and she eventually with therapy and a team of professionals she transitioned back into wearing regular clothing. We thought that this stage was over; after all she is a big girl now. Don’t big-four-year-old girls want to look pretty? Don’t they want to wear cute dresses with matching tights and shoes?
Not my daughter, she has attached her stubborn brain to the idea of wearing a Disney princess’s spaghetti strap tank top and shorts pajama set. You know my Alice so of course the set doesn’t match. She must have been rummaging under her bed at night and got into the summer clothing box, liberating two pieces from two different set. She went to bed in warm flannel on a cold Fall night and woke up dressed for fun in the summer sun. Too bad that the temperature was 46 degrees and the sun was hiding behind gray clouds.
Let me get one thing straight. Ever since he was a baby Dylan has worn everything that I have ever handed to him. Half the time he doesn't even look at the outfit. He just throws it on and goes on with his life. Not my Alice, yesterday morning after a terrible 35 minute skirmish that left her in tears and left me with disturbing thoughts about duct tape, we came to a compromise. She would wear long plants and the tank top only under a fleece hoodie. Of course the second we stepped into her preschool building she unzipped the hoodie and flung it in her cubby. I should have brought along the duct tape.
No matter what I tried, threatened, bribed, or begged, the hoodie never went back on. The worst was later that day when we went to pick up Dylan at school. I was expecting the usual covert whispering and gossiping that we moms do about each other. Oh come on you do this too. Well there was none, no on this special day, some of the other mom’s were overtly pointing at Alice while they chattered, no doubt, about my deficient parenting skills. Not my friends, they would never point at my daughter; anyway they were all too busy laughing to point. Don’t worry they were all laughing with me; they know my Alice is eccentric, after all the Cracker Jack doesn’t fall far from the box.
I was hoping that this clothing battle was an isolated incident until I tried to dress her this morning. She insisted upon wearing both the shorts and the tank top, now soiled from the day before. Anyways I didn’t have time for a knock down dirty brawl this morning, so I decide that she should learn from natural consequences. If she leaves the house in her skimpy thin outfit she will be freezing cold and have to change. Right? Wrong! The girl is part polar bear. I know I have felt her claws. Wouldn’t you know she wore that horrible little outfit all morning and afternoon? She even went to ballet class in it. Hef is back. Back with a vengeance and apparently the cold blood of a reptile.
I have to end this problem tonight or Thanksgiving is going to be impossible. We are going to Dave’s prim and proper Grandparent’s house. Yes, he still has a set of living grandparents. They are both in their nineties and require the highest level of respect and good manners. They would not understand their only great-grand daughter showing up to a special occasion stained and scantily clad. If we were going to my mom’s house wearing your PJs would be fine, heck, a lot of us would end up in pajamas before pie. In my mom’s family growing up with seven kids there was little time for my Nana to worry about proper etiquette. When my mom was a girl Nana used to always wash the dinner forks so they could reuse them for dessert. When my husband’s mom was a girl the maid brought out sterling silver finger bowls before dessert. Do you know what this means? That I am going to have to strip those PJs off my girl tonight while she is sleeping then go burn them out in the woods. She will be showing up to Thanksgiving in the cute little dress I bought her tomorrow. She might be coved in duct tape, but she’ll be in a dress.
