My Creative Space: A Last Ditched Attempt at Clothing the Kid

The smallest has thus far waltzed through the majority of Autumn almost entirely naked. Certainly without sleeves. Whenever there are inevitable scenarios requiring clad arms and legs, it is necessary to factor in an additional half hour for ‘getting dressed’ negotiation. This is not because I am an always negotiating, walkover parent. This is because this child is as wilful as I. This is because this Houdini-kid could escape a fleece-lined straitjacket.



I have had enough experience as a parent of very smalls, to fathom that life runs smoother when you choose your battles. This battle ain’t worth it. So the toddler chooses what she wears and it’s usually all entirely ghastly and aimed at a heatwave and when (if) she finally declares herself chilly, I pull out the the mobile back-up wardrobe.



On Mondays, the small goes to child care, wearing clothing of her choice, with back up warmth stashed in the bag. Upon pick up, last Monday, I immediately noticed the kid was wearing sleeves. No legs, but sleeves at least. I congratulated the fill-in carer person on the sleeve victory and received a small lecture on control and who’s the one wearing the pants in the house anyway? (quite obviously, not the toddler).

The words of the lecturing carer wafted in one ear and quicksticks out the other – but may well have planted a small seed on the way through. The next day I peeked into an op shop looking for a fish tank. Ours has sprung a sneaky leak and any minute now there threatens another ghastly fish death scenario. The ghastly fish death scenario is increasingly probable, because I flatly refuse to buy anything other than secondhand for a fish who suddenly turned on his comrades and ate them for breakfast. Naturally, not an op shop fish tank to be found – not even a plausible punch bowl – but there was a soft, warm, mauve, size 16, ladies jumper. With sparkles.

It took longer to pull out the sewing machine, than to morph the (pre-felted) sparkly jumper into a toddler dress. There was none of that ironing of seams, no finishing of sleeve cuffs, no decorative bizzo – not until toddler wearing and proof of approval.





Two hours of continuous wear later, the kid was deemed won over and I took the dress back, to spend ten minutes finishing the seams and turning the original cuffs into pockets and talking myself out of accidentally removing all the sparkly stuff and remaining focused on the big warm and fuzzy toddler picture.



The kid loves it. She says it’s ‘BEWDIFUL’. She carries it around and snuggles it in bed. She never, ever, not ever, (not even when hell freezes over), wants to wear it again.

You might want to invest in an urn for continuous tea drinking sustenance on Thursdays. There are enough Creative Spaces to be found via Kirsty’s to keep you going all day and into the night...