Thursday, October 22, 2009

Soft Pants

I may have mentioned this before. Honestly, I cannot remember what I ate for breakfast or even IF I ate breakfast, so bear with me. Please. If I have mentioned it before, this will be a new take on it, I hope. If it is not, well, I already mentioned that you should bear with me. So just do it, OK? Mentioned.

My sweet and precious son will only wear soft pants. Have you ever heard of "soft pants?" Well, it is basically knit pants. He will even wear thick, almost sweatshirt material pants in the summer. Just do not make the mistake of trying to put hard pants on him. What are "hard pants," you may ask? Well, hard pants are every other kind of pants. He does not enjoy khakis or courds or jeans or any other kind of pants. And when I say "does not enjoy" that is a nice way of saying "refuses to wear."

As with every fashion phase they go through, I always try to just go with it. It usually works itself out, and they move on to another way to torment me. One summer, Jessa announced that we new favorite color was purple and that she would not wear anything else. This was easy enough to solve, we all started buying her all purple. She was not naked and happy, so we were happy. The theme of her fourth birthday was "purple." The only problem we had was that her arm was broken at the time, and she decided she was an all purple sort of girl AFTER the pink cast was on her arm. And yes, the child did ask the doctor to remove the pink one and give her a purple one. And the dear doctor said, "Next time you can have a purple one." She was pleased with this, but I told them both to hold their horses because we were not going to make plans for a "next broken bone!" Sheesh!

So, Spencer. He always preferred knit pants. And when you are small, they are way easy to find. I mean Carter's is like a knit mecca. Once he started going to school a day or so a week, I tried to dress him a little nicer. OK, to some jeans are not nicer, but the kids was wearing all sweatpants! I was golden because I always dress them while they are still asleep. Clever, huh? I get to be in charge of their wardrobe AND they get some extra minutes of sleep. Seriously, sometimes we would be in the car on the way to school before they even noticed what they were wearing. Think I can do that when they are in high school and wanting to wear what everyone else is wearing? I am willing to try. Carrying them to the car may be more difficult. . .

Well, Spencer still sleeps through getting dressed most mornings before preschool. BUT now, he pays attention. Yep, in his sleep, he can pay attention. I am gently trying to pull on some precious carpenter jeans, and he WITH EYES STILL CLOSED will run his hand across the pants and say, "These are not soft. MOMMY! THESE ARE NOT SOFT PANTS!" So I relent. It is not worth the fight, really. And I want him to be comfortable and confident at school, so he wears soft pants. Again.

This is only a problem when we go to church. I must draw the line at sweatpants at church. Call me mean, if you want, but the child can suck it up and wear a pair of khaki pants once a week for 2 hours. 2 hours! That is all I ask. But EVERY Sunday morning, we argue about this. I give in every other day, but I want him to be cute and properly attired on Sunday mornings. So he usually grumbles the whole way there. And he is always changed back into soft pants within about 12 seconds of being home every week.

Oh, and remember how I said that I wanted him to be comfortable? Well, he may be taking that too far. Last weekend, I let him skip a bath on Friday night, and he climbed into bed with his clothes STILL ON. I asked him didn't he want to put on his jommies? He said, "Nah." Do you think his clothes are TOO comfortable if he wants to sleep in them????

2 comments:

kate said...

That is hysterical! And if you've written about "soft pants" before I must've missed it. Although I do love my jeans, my second favorite is soft pants. :)

Shannon Karafanda said...

I have a son that only wears "soft pants". Church is not a fight anymore but he still need reminding. He's nine. The eight year old wears any pants (dirty, soft, hard, smelly, torn, ugly) but he will change if I ask him to. And then there's my husband who also only wears soft pants at home. He'd rather change out of jeans or shorts to put on soft pants or soft shorts.