Ramblings

Every morning I battle with my son. He hates getting dressed. And he basically refuses to wear a coat.

In the evening, darn near the minute we walk in the door from the sitter, he takes of his shoes, socks...and PANTS. We live in a 98 year old house with no insulation. It's freakin cold in our house unless I have the heat set at 70+ degrees. And with $500 monthly gas bills, I refuse to turn it up that high. Especially in freakin October.

So, he runs around the rest of the evening in only a long sleeve tshirt & diaper. He often takes off the diaper too.

Back to the morning battle. I have to leave the house at 7:25am to get to the sitter and to work by 8am. Sometimes I don't have the patience in the morning to fight with him about changing out of his pj's. So, he gets to wear his pj's or half of his pj's - whichever half I can get off and replace with clothes. It's me. I know it is. He plays me.

He hates coats, sweatshirts, sweaters, etc. This morning I held up 2 coats for him to choose from. A tan jacket, and last year's winter coat (which still sorta fits). He needs a new winter coat - but if he is just going to refuse it, what's the point? Anyway, first he choose the winter coat. So, I started putting it on him. "Nooo! Not that one, mommy, not that one!" as he's squirming all over the place. So, I grab the tan jacket. "How about this one?" I say. "Mmm hmmm". And he thrusts his arms into the arm holes and then hugs me while I zip it up. It was weird. But, it worked.

I think giving him a choice may work.

He also likes to pick out his own shirts. I grabbed his favorite dump truck shirt out of the closet this morning and while I was trying to put it on him...he said "No! Not the dump truck. I wanna pick". So, back to the closet we went. He wanted to wear a (really cute) polka-dot linen button up shirt. I told him that wouldn't be warm enough (although, in hind-sight, if he would have let me put a long sleeve tee under it, it would have been fine). So, we went thru all the long sleeve tees - most of which have trucks on them - and he picked a Polar Bear tshirt from last year. It still fits...so, yay. We have a shirt! I changed his pants while changing his diaper - he was still half asleep so he wasn't paying attention.

Now I have friends telling me that their 10+ year olds give them crap about wearing coats. I really hope I don't have to go thru this for another 7 1/2 years.