Looking back at some of my childhood pictures I wonder if my awful hairdo and hideous outfits were in fashion at the time, or if they were they genuine fashion blunders then and now. I don’t remember having any say in the clothes I wore, at least not before I was a teenager. Different times or different characters?

My son knows very well what clothes he likes and even better what he dislikes. He wasn’t even three years old when he started to pick out his own outfit in the morning, not rarely leading to conflicts, fights, screaming, and yelling (yes, goodmorning to you too) because all of his ‘cool’ clothes are in the laundry. “I really don’t look cool in these pants”, as if I would let him out of the house looking anything but cool :). If he could (meaning: if I let him), he’d wear shorts and short-sleeved T-shirts no matter what. Even now the temperatures are slowly dropping, he changes into his shorts as soon as he comes home after school. What’s worse is that my daughter is starting to copy his behaviour. I can live with my son not wearing everything I buy him, I’ll just refrain from buying expensive knitwear or anything expensive for that matter that I can’t return or exchange. Boys’ fashion is pretty straightforward to me anyway: pants, t-shirt, sweater, done! Little girls’ fashion on the other hand I love almost as much as women’s fashion, almost…

I’ve found my daughter’s soft spot: princesses. So if I really want to sell her something, anything, I just say it’s for a princess. She’ll repeat after me ‘this is for a princess, mommy’, as if she‘s telling me and not the other way around. Too easy. If it’s pink it doesn’t even need selling, she’ll just take it. She’s turned into a girly girl who loves everything pink and princessy, even though I don’t think I specifically raised her like that. I always thought she’d be more of a tomboy but all of a sudden she’s playing with dolls and she wants me to make her ponytails, put on her pink cinderella dress, and dance with her. She can be a little pink angel, a real sweetheart, but when she’s fighting with her older brother (or should I say when she’s attacking him for no obvious reason), I feel sorry for him…terrible two’s…I’ll save the details for another blog post.

But seriously, aren’t toddlers too young to have a sense of fashion? Am I not supposed to have a few more years during which I can dress up my kids as if they were living dolls? I was kind of counting on that…but my toddlers don’t seem to agree…