1 Mother 2 Another

I consider myself to be fairly
knowledgeable about clothing. I used to be a personal shopper, and
am definitely expert in that area. And while I do enjoy dressing
nicely and putting together a good outfit, I’m not a
clotheshorse, following those youtube clothing bloggers religiously
or waxing lyrical about a Prada shoe sale.


So I’m not quite sure where Cora gets this positive passion
for changing her clothes. Several times a day. And having complete
artistic control over the outfit.


I’ve always known she’s concerned about her look and
interested in clothing. When I’ll go shopping with her in
tow, I usually have a list in hand – jeans for Maddie, dress
for Cora, and so on. Cora will begin “shopping” on her
own, fingering materials and holding up outfits, frowning: does
that shirt really match those pants? Will that bubble suit be
flattering on me? By the time I’ve found a few necessaries,
Cora’s got an armful of “necessaries” of her own,
and it’s quite a process to talk her down off that ledge.

I know this, and live with it, since she
actually has decent taste.


But recently she’s added another dimension to the clothing
thing: outfit changes. That girl will pick out three or four or
even five different changes of clothing before the day is through.
She’ll usually stick with one for the entire morning, then
change during naptime. The changes will come more quickly as the
day wears on, and sometimes her room will be littered with
discarded outfits, ensembles that didn’t quite make the cut.
Often are the days I’ll come to get her from her quiet time,
to see she’s apparently spent the entire 90 minutes matching
shorts and shirts.


Sometimes Cora will even pick out future outfits. “I’m
going to wear this for the morning, and I’m going to lay this
out for naptime,” she’ll say. It’s as if she
loves the many combinations so much that she’s got to find an
excuse to enjoy all of them.


This seems cute, and you’d think it would be helpful in the
morning – a child who can pick out her own clothes and sort
of dress herself. But we’ve got two problems: first, it can
take her twenty minutes to decide on an outfit. Not exaggerating.
And second, her outfits don’t always, um, match.


And when she puts together what I call her “special”
outfits, I have to talk her down very very carefully, lest she dig
her heels in and absolutely refuse to leave the house unless she
can wear those red shorts with the lime green shirt and orange
headband. I can start to see her “style” emerge: if I
squint I can figure out what of those three items cries out
“put me together!” to her. And I want to encourage her
self-expression, I really do.


But I know people will look at that kid and think I dressed her
myself, and I’m just not ready to go there.


Last week, Cora got dressed relatively easily, but then spent
fifteen minutes designing her hair. She ended up asking for a
“rainbow of ladybugs” across her hair “from ear
to ear”, and carefully selected co-ordinating rubber bands to
go with them. That hairstyle took me almost twenty minutes, but she
stood patiently and watched silently until her vision had been
realized.


And yes, I took pictures.


I’ve started trimming down her wardrobe-designing time, for
the sake of my sanity. If she’s stalled in front of her
drawer, unable to decide on an ensemble for her PAJAMAS, I’ll
begin counting to ten. Cora will fly into a frenzy, hands
fluttering over everything, trying to hurry her artist’s
creation to meet the corporate deadline imposed upon her. She
always makes it, because she knows the alternative – having
Mummy pick out her pjs – is simply unbearable.


The matching thing we’re working on, but it’s slow
going. The other day, she picked out her favorite flower-power,
neon leggings – bright shades of green and purple and pink
– and a red shirt. I didn’t mind too much though.


It was Brian’s day to take her out.