white shirts for children and other jokes

Time really sneaks up on you. A lot of the time with little kids, you wake up in the morning and fight your way till bedtime and it seems like endless hours of the day, but then you notice that your baby is a kid and it's a cosmic sucker-punch.

That is why, this week when I got the chance to buy them new summer clothes, I was disturbed to find myself in the big kid clothes for the older 3. It doesn't make any sense, because obviously they are still little babies and they are never going to leave me ever. Speaking of that, sometimes I think I'm only a couple traumatic life events away from dressing my adult children in sailor suits and making them pose with giant lollipops and balloons for family portraits.

I did okay for the boys. Lucky for me we live in a totally unrealistic eternal youth Peter Pan kind of culture for men, so I will be able to buy them Star Wars undies and Sesame Street shirts well into their thirties. Girl's clothes, on the other hand, are not cool. I have a SIX year old. Sometimes I think maybe everybody else's kids must be really calm and still all the time, because there are white clothes out there for children, and even white shoes... I don't think we've ever had a white item last one wearing before it is irreparably stained. Is it just us? And do other people have 6 year olds who can wear dresses with gauzy thin overlays? Because mine would shred that before I took it out of the Target bag. And I'm not even getting into the little sleaze-slogans, because that's a whole 'nother blog. Just the flowy, sequinny shiny grownup clothes for people who still consistently try to climb fences to meet neighborhood Rotweillers and carry tree bark and rocks in their decorative pockets.

I imagined, (as I looked hopelessly for a basic playdress with a nice pattern that could handle a lot of spaghetti sauce) a family of 6, like mine, only with children whose hair laid flat on their heads instead of rising in massive cowlicks as soon as it dried, hair that could be parted and controlled, and these children had no chocolate on their faces and clean fingernails and white shirts and blue jeans with knees and matching shoes. They sat on the couch on their bottoms, not even one family member was upside down or gleefully smashing a banana into the cushion or just barely touching his sister with one finger to make her scream, and not even one sister was smacking her brother hard. in the face. This family could eat a meal without a dish ever falling on the floor or a cup of juice being knocked over 3 times, even the mom in this family ate at the same time as the children! No one poured sauce down their shirts or rubbed pudding in their hair. The mom had white pants. And she had worn them multiple times.

I don't know these people, but I know that Target knows them. Evidently they are their (wait for it) target demographic. Me, I'm okay with my upside-down chocolate-covered heckraisers. Makes life interesting. Maybe I'll wear white pants when I'm 80.