New clothes and quality time

One of my favorite stories about my little brother is when he was little and spring rolled around. My mother says he about had a fit when she tried to put shorts on him for the first time--he thought the pants were broken. Apparently this went on for days. Fortunately we’re not having that problem right now.

Instead, now that we’re finally having a little cold weather, it’s very exciting for William, who is thrilled about all his new clothes. I guess last year he was still too little to understand the seasonal wardrobe overhaul. I took him to Target the other day and bought him all kinds of new stuff, and we’ve been cutting the tags off in the morning as he gets dressed. “New pants,” he hollers. And this is one boy who loves shoes. They have a dress-up section at his daycare (equal opportunity dress-up, thank you, and the kids are often cross-gendered), and for weeks he would walk in the door to the Glowworm room, plop down on the floor in the corner, and start pulling off his shoes so he could wear these giant boots. Finally I took him to buy a him his own pair of boots: his “tiny boots.” He stomped around the house for days. So between tiny boots and new pants, he’s been enjoying the fall weather.

It’s a good thing, because he’s been getting the short end of any special attention these days. Laura had a student holiday/teacher workday last week, and we asked my mom to come over and watch her for the day--Laura doesn’t much like the afterschool program the way it’s set up on their holidays, and neither do I. So we trucked Will off to daycare while Mama and Laura went off to Andrew Jackson State Park. I’m a big believer in individual time for each child, but Laura certainly gets that much more consciously. When Will was born, I was staying home with him in the summer and it felt like we were alone together all day long; Laura was home, but she was playing with her friend across the street most of the time. So I would take her out every Saturday morning to the library or to Michael’s to do the kid club crafts, and boy was it wonderful to be out with someone who didn't need diaper changes. This month, I’m taking her to two ghost story events--one at the park here, and then the Haunted State Museum (which was a major hoot last year). Well, Will’s too little for real ghost stories. So he’s ditched again. Poor baby. Or maybe I should revise that, since he just walked up to me a minute ago and announced: "I am a big strong boy."

Uh oh. Crisis moment. Firefighter erases Spider Countess’s picture on the dry erase board. And I sense it’s time to change diapers. . .