Whoever Said Garanimals Are Luffly?

It only takes one photo of my girls to make my heart sing. Recently while marveling at a snapshot, the music stopped abruptly. There was Cutiepie. In Cutiepie's attire. You see, she's at the age, (we're hoping it’s a phase) where she insists on dressing herself.

Just when I think I’ve stashed away all the distasteful, ill-fitted, mis-matched, wrong-season clothes, she conjures up a new hideous colorful outfit.

It doesn’t help that she will wear only pink clothes adorned with Dora the Explorer. In this particular picture, she proudly wears worn sparkly pink ballet shoes paired with ill-fitting stretch pants topped by a stained Dora t-shirt tied off with a fashionable mid-rif pink sleeves thingy. All are mismatched singles who she insists on coordinating. Marriages that weren’t meant to happen, not in my wardrobe anyway.
It begins like this:

“Cutiepie, let’s get dressed,” I say holding a lovely matching ensemble.

“But I want to wear, em, em, …” and off she trotts to upend the dirty clothes hamper. Oh dear, here we go.

“Cutiepie, I have your clothes ready already.”

“I don’t want to wear that!” Over and over she cries.

Be strong, you’re the mother, she’s the child. I remind myself.

Then the crocodile tears. One look at her and it could be over.

You see, silent crocodile tears translate to: “But this is ME. I want to express myself. I want to be responsible for myself. I want to be creative. I want to be ME.”

Pray tell, how do you ignore that?

I do. Until…

Wrangling and breathless, I think I’ve won. She stands, her tear-stained defeated face sad and her fingers pulling at her clothes.

“But, mommy…but mommy…I don’t look luffly.”

And so it ends like this:

My battle lost and forgotten…until the light of day shines bright and we are out among the real world, where real mommies rule with terms of steel and say no to ridiculous clothes. I flinch feebly at all the cutsie girls in their bow adorned garanimal outfits. And then there's my rag-a-muffin Cutiepie. Yes. I am weak.

So marching on, the camera snaps and the moments are captured and so is the battle. So is the heart and mind of a determined 3yo. There in her mismatched, ragged kit is her personality, her drive, her creativity.

All of it, in its own kind of luffliness.