A great defeat. (For me at least)

This was the day I have been dreading since he was born.

Look at this picture. Notice anything?? (Other than he is  excited about some stickers) Do you see the pride in this kid’s eyes? He had just won a great battle.

Honestly, I wasn’t “in it- to win it” on this particular morning, and he knew it- and when the underdog senses weakness (or tiredness in my case) that is when they make their move! You probably didn’t even noticed that Stratton’s clothes don’t match- but they don’t.

And it Just. Drives. Me. Crazy!

This is how it went down. I laid his clothes out on the ottoman in the living room like I do every morning. (Stratton is now really good about dressing himself if I lay the clothes out.) I am in the bathroom getting ready when he storms in and throws his blue jeans at me and says “I want to wear Pants, not jeans!”- (Apparently we need to re-visit what “pants” are) then he tells me he wants to wear shorts with his new wolf shirt, to which I tell him it’s too cool to wear shorts. He’s alright with that but he’s not giving in to wearing jeans, he would rather wear “comfy pants”. Then he rushes to his room and pulls out a pair of navy and bright blue and white track pants (mainly because I hadn’t folded and put away laundry and there wasn’t much else in the drawer. . . ) and tells me he wants to wear them. His shirt is dark grey, with some white and neon green. Not going to happen. So, I tell him that the wolf shirt and navy pants didn’t match and he would either need to pick another shirt, or just wear the jeans. His answer: “But Momma, why do I HAVE to match??”

Touché.

I weighed my options at this point. I thought about how I would explain to a 4 year old (male, at that) about the rules of matching and the importance of an outfit coordinating and how we should look our best, but let’s get real. That would have been a waste of breath and time, and it was about 5 minutes till we needed to walk out the door. Then I thought about just lying. I could tell him that it’s in the bible (You know over in the first chapter of Paul) that usually works. So, I had to pick; A.) Let him win (and wear clashing clothes) B.) Make him wear what I wanted, which would take time picking something new out, and probably result in a meltdown and would make us late for school, and that would make me late for work or C.) Tell him a blatant lie that I’m sure I would be forced to deal with at a later time when some smart kid tells him there is no book of Paul (not to mention, the obvious: lying is never a good strategy).

So, I LET him win.. . . Sometimes the underdog wins.