Fashionista Princess

[If "Fashionista Princess" ends up being her personal line of clothing or jewelry, you can all vouch for the fact that she got it from me and needs to cut a deal with her mom, even if her mom did all she could to strangle the fashion bug out of her at an early age.]

Tiaras are often worn to the store and other locations;
however, we insist that they are exchanged for the more
conservative (but still sparkly) normal headband when we
arrive for Sunday morning worship.

I don't know where to start on this one. I remember the moment we found out that Sarah was a girl, and how thrilled I was to have a gender ally in this family. But if I'd only know how much more of a girl she'd be than I am or ever was... well, I might've started out by immediately delivering her to my sister, whose personality is a much closer match to this daughter's of mine!

In proper mother-daughter fashion (according to the sitcoms, anyway, which everyone knows are the source of all life's truths), we have already begun butting heads. About clothing choices, no less. Already.

The source of consternation has nothing to do with modesty at this point, of course. It has everything to do with no less than five total (and totally unnecessary) outfit changes each day, unmatched configurations, and bizarre accessories.

Before we moved the kids into their new shared room in July, Sarah's dresses all hung on a rod far out of her reach, so our morning routine went something like this:

Me: "Sarah, time to get dressed."
Sarah: "Mom, can you get that dress for me?"
Me: "Which one? How about this?" [pulls out a perfectly reasonable option that hasn't been worn every other day this week and is appropriate for everyday wear]
Sarah: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" [tears and collapsing on the floor with legs kicking in the air]
Me: [Big sigh, perhaps a slight eye roll]
Sarah: "I want that one!"
[fifteen minutes spent sorting through each dress to figure out which one is "that one"]
Me: "No, Sarah, this is a church dress. You can't wear that today."
Sarah: [tears and collapsing on the floor with legs kicking in the air]
[fifteen minutes of back and forth in similar fashion; it's a close call as to is was being more ridiculous: kicking, screaming girl or adult who thinks she can reason with said kicking, screaming girl]

It wasn't pretty.

Of course the bow goes in the front of the hat.
Don't even try to argue with her about that.

So when we newly outfitted their closets in the new room, I decided it might help if the kids each had an upper and lower clothing rod - and I carefully placed all the "church clothes" and out of season items on the top rod (read: out of reach) and left a wide array of other selections on the bottom.

It worked like a charm: no more tantrums, no more begging to wear the fancy dresses for a trip to Wal-Mart. And as an added bonus, Sarah took total charge of getting dressed by herself. As an added penalty, she got dressed by herself about a thousand times each day.

So then we began fighting over the fact that her dirty laundry basket would fill up completely in a matter of days (or hours). Sarah would insist that her clothes were dirty and needed to be changed, and I would fume speechlessly at the sight of her appearing downstairs in yet another new outfit. I'm convinced that the reason she is still not quite "making it" to the potty in time is because it's a good excuse to change clothes. For the laundress of the family, it's downright infuriating. (Also for the potty-trainer.)

I asked to take a photo of her, and this is
what she did in response. 

But aside from the issue of quantity, there's the issue of outfit quality. This has been far more intriguing because I'm beginning to suspect a method to her madness... We began the summer with outfits of the strangest combinations of colors and styles. After a few ineffective confrontations, I decided to take the route of forcing a change only when it truly mattered (i.e. rarely). But over the last month or so, the outfits have suddenly begun to "click." Sarah will come down to breakfast fully dressed most mornings, and often she greets us with an enthusiastic review of her clothing choices for the day/moment: "Ta-da!" (She literally says "ta-da" with every entrance.) "I am wearing my pink skirt, and my pink shirt, and my pink headband!"

And sure enough, it looks pretty good. All the way up to the headband.

I had begun to relax a little, hoping that I'd made the better choice in giving up the fight and resigning myself to the laundry cave all summer. Maybe we had reached the end of the endless costume changes and would now be in for a season of matching and less-frequently changed outfits!

And then last week. A new trend. Sleeveless tunics over fancy dresses:

Whyyyyyyyyy????

(As if that's not enough, she has also begun to insist that I follow her fashion advice and often brings me a necklace or head scarf to wear. She has even made me change into a different pair of earrings. I draw the line if I know we're going out in public, but if you happen to drop by our house unexpectedly and think that a gypsy has moved in, don't worry. It's just me, being forced into yet another of my daughter's nefarious fashion schemes.)

I suppose we will survive this like every other strange phase of child development. And I have a hunch that a whole lot of laissez faire will go a long way towards both keeping the peace and showing love towards my singular daughter and her textile expressions of God-given creativity.

And just so it's clear, I'm quite thankful that it never occurred to me to drop Sarah off with my sister - even if Caroline might have been better equipped to handle her. This isn't our first battle and it won't be our last; we may spend most of our lives trying to better understand each other. But perhaps those very differences will enrich our lives in ways we can't even imagine. And I'll just say it: I love this girl too much to have it any other way! Now if I can only control my facial muscles long enough to convince her that I am always as excited about her unique creations as she is...