Monday, October 01, 2007

mother-daughter disagreements present and future

This is Lilly's hair....isn't it beautiful? She has the curliest kinkiest frizziest hair. We were sitting watching a movie the other night and I started running my fingers through her little ringlets and it just kept getting bigger and bigger until it looked like this. We do live in the right place for curly hair though with all the moisture in the hair. I can see this becomming a future mother daughter disagreement. As her hair gets longer and more tangly and frizzy mommy is going to want to make it look good and I think that Lilly is not going to like me tugging and pulling at all her little frizzies.
These last three pictures by the way are ones Maddy took yesterday when I gave her the highly covetted reign of the camera. This is the face I see many times a day recently. Joselyn has taken to the eye rolling approach to get her message across to me that she thinks I am utterly annoying. We are working on severing that out of her repetoire of comebacks. I am encouraging "yes mother" as her alternative comeback. I will let you know if it works. In about eight to ten years I fully expect to see the eye rolling sneak it's way back into our interactions at which point I am not sure what I will do.
Maddy let Joselyn take this picture of her posing......surprise surprise. I put this on here to illustrate another mother-daughter disagreement I have going on at the moment. Maddy has decided recently that she now cares about what she wears to school. This is a new one for her. She has never cared and it has been nice because I could tell her to put anything on and she would. We had to come to a truce because we were arguing every morning about what she would and would not wear. If you saw the things that she was wanting to wear in the norming you would understand why. I finally sat her down and made her a deal. I told her that mommy gets upset because she doesn't wear the clothes mommy bought for school and to me that upsets me because it is a total waste of money. But I understand that she wants to be more in control of what she wears. So I told her that Monday, Wednesday, and Friday she could pick out her clothes and she can wear whatever she wants. Then on Tuesday and Thursday mommy gets to pick the outfit. She said she needed to think about it. I told her this was a pretty sweet deal for her considering she gets to pick out her clothes three days a week and I only get two. So she said okay and then she told me that if she starts complaining on Tuesday and Thursday to just remind her and she will stop. Well the picture below is an illustration of WHY I want to help her pick out some clothes. We have a bunch of leggings that go UNDER long shirts or skirts. They are her favorite "pants". Well Maddy insists on just wearing the leggings and I am sorry but they are TOO tight and thin to be worn merely as pants. So I am trying to let go of my control little by little and at the same time trying to keep my self respect as a mother who does not send her daughter to school in leggings that are too tight and show the outline and vague pattern of her panties underneath.
This last picure just cracks me up. Maddy wanted a family picture together and I preffered to take it instead of be in it. All I can say is thats my family.

5 comments:

Heidi said...

I have disagreements with Taylor all the time about her clothes--it's such a joy every morning before school!! I'm sorry you have 3 girls to deal with clothing dilemmas. With Zach it's like, as long as what he wears to school is clean, we're good to go!

Darrell and Alissa said...

I have the girl's choose the night before- it's kind of annoying when we're late going to bed- but there is no arguments in the morning anymore. If we forget to choose the night before I swear they decide together they are going to choose the craziest thing just so they can fight with me and throw lovely, ever so lady like tantrums!

Jaime said...

I love to hear that there are other people out their who's children love dressing like vagabons. Ellie is the queen. We fight everyday about what she is going to where.

Amanda said...

your blogs crack me up jess!! Its like my daily funnies! I miss you guys! Good luck! I can't BELIEVE Lilly's hair though..that's a Moyes head!

Wendy said...

Olivia and I struggled over that for quite a while. You are lucky it took Maddy this long to care! I think Liv and I started going at it when she was in kindergarten. I pretty much had to decide what outfits were "acceptable" and what ones I just HAD to intervene on. Now she is in 3rd grade, she seems to have started worrying about what looks "good", or trendy. So, she actually asks my opinion about how certain things look together, and if they "go" or not. That makes it kind of fun. Hang in there!