Saturday, June 1, 2013

The Un-Western Ballerina

Caiden makes crazy outfits.  We all know that, right?  If you aren't familiar with my previous discussions on this topic, look at the old posts here:

Sartorial Inclinations
Wacky Wednesday
Parenting Crossroads
I Let My Kids Dress Themselves
The Red Tutu and the Garden
Caiden's Crazy Outfits

As I rolled out of bed this morning, I found a little 5 year old girl, curled up in a ball with her hair splayed out all over my pillow, wearing nothing but bright green underwear.  I got up, brushed my teeth, and decided to make the kids' lunches in peace before waking them up.  As I came back to drag Caiden out of bed, she was so cozy and warm that I curled up next to her, cooing to her to wake up as I gave her little kisses and nudges.  She refused, so I scooped up my scantily clad Kindergartener and carried her into her room where I tried to deposit her onto the floor in a standing position, but she kept trying to climb back into her bed.

"Do you have clothes picked out?" I questioned, trying to wake her up more when suddenly she came to life and ran over to a fluffy pink pile of clothing.  I guess she was really excited about this outfit, because it snapped her out of her fake grogginess (she's a morning person, but she tries to hide it).

Off came the bright green undies.  On went some clean ones.  She ran to the potty.  She came back and I helped her wriggle into some white tights with silver dots.  Next, I assisted her in stepping into a very fluffy, soft, pink skirt with about 5 layers of "floof." (I just made up a word...)  To my horror, the next thing we put on was a bright green, no, fluorescent green t-shirt.  We then rounded out the outfit with a pair of pink, authentic ballet "shoes."

The inner turmoil regarding those ballet shoes waged inside me for a good few minutes as the scenarios of her prancing around the playground in ballet shoes, sitting on the floor in the classroom cross-legged with ballet shoes, and dangling her ballet shoe-clad toes at the cafeteria lunch table played out in my mind... As well as walking in the cafeteria over food, running around outside for P.E., doing various activities in the classroom, her teachers reaction to her feet???  I had to make a decision!

And then the other side of the battle was waged in my head as I considered the alternative shoes for this already wild outfit with the remaining options being fake patent leather purple flats, black and yellow Nike high tops, Roxy flip flops, or white Chuck Taylor Converse.

None of those options appealed to me, so I went ahead and condoned the use of the leather ballet slippers.  But not without quite a bit of hesitation.

Now the only remaining obstacle was to hope against hope that papa bear wouldn't object to this outrageous getup before we left the house.  We happened to be in luck, however, since oddly enough, the only thing Dave commented on was how bright her shirt was.  "Hhhmmm..." I thought.  "Really???  Could I actually be this lucky?!  He must be getting slowly desensitized if he didn't notice anything else strange about this outfit..."  But I sure wasn't going to bring it up at that point in the game.  No one was crying and we still had a few minutes left for breakfast.  That's a win, win, win right there.

Caiden must have felt lucky this morning, too, because after all of that passed inspection, she pulled out a velvet, forest green sash and a fire-engine red bandana to "complement" the outfit.  That's when I put my very generous foot down.  "No way, Caiden.  I'm already letting you wear all of that. [pointing and gesturing] You take off that green belt right now--And the red bandana off your neck.  I've been generous, but that is too much!"

"But, Mom, this belt says I'm a ballet master!"

"That's not how it works in ballet..." I countered (echoed by Elliott).

"What about this bandana.  It makes me look pretty." she tried.

"No way.  You're dressing like a ballerina, not a cowboy."

And that's the story of how Caiden went to school dressed like a very colorful ballerina with ballet shoes and everything on the day I had forgotten was supposed to be "Western Day."  Oops.

"See, Mom, you should have let me wear that bandana.  Maybe you could go back home and get it..."

(Re-enacted outfit, missing one shoe and her glasses due to breaking them...)

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