Since Berta started her new job this summer, I’ve been responsible for getting the kids to school. I wake both kids at the same time, if Abby doesn’t get up on her own, and get them both ready in time for Abby’s bus. As the seasons change and the weather gets confusingly colder, it’s been difficult getting Riley ready for school in the mornings.
Riley is very picky about the clothes that he will wear. There is no pattern to his preferences as far as I can tell. He will seem to like the shirts with motocycles on them, and then the next day, hate all shirts with motorcycles. Also, I have to watch carefully to make sure that he doesn’t re-wear the Spiderrman socks day-to-day, since he seems to love those. But the biggest challenge in the colder weather has been switching to long sleeves and pants.
Whether or not it’s true that Berta put away all of his short-sleeved shirts for the fall/winter, that’s what I told him, and he seemed to be ok with that. The pants have been a real issue, though. In an effort to appease him and keep my sanity (he does this crazy thing where rather than tell me his problems with his clothes, he’ll just sit in his room and not get dressed, throwing off the whole morning schedule), we’ve made a little deal.
The deal is this: If I make him wear pants on a day that the temperature goes above 70 degrees, I will take him out for ice cream. So far, this deal is utterly failing to avoid ice cream.
The problem is the uncooperative weather. I’m not sure what the deal is with this weird weather where it’s 50 degrees in the morning, but then 75 in the early afternoon. I guess that’s fall.
I’d think he’d be more comfortable standing outside in the morning in long pants. I do remember tolerating the weather differently when I was a kid, so I’m trying to be flexible when the kids say, “But I’m not COLD!” Still, I would like some absolute measure of tolerability that we can all stand by to get the morning going. I should make a chart and put a thermometer in his room.
Meanwhile, Abby completely dresses herself. She’s going to be one of those kids in high school that wears the somewhat questionable “artistic” clothing styles. That’s my prediction. But at least she accounts for the weather. For everything but her shoes. If I see those blasted Crocs one more time… I should just accidentally drop them in the trash.
So yeah, ice cream. That’s the deal. And we’ve had to go out for ice cream inconveniently on demand at least once already.
In case anyone wonders, I did eventually find a reasonably reliable source of historical temperatures, which is useful when you’re trying to prove to your 4-year-old that the temperature did not, in fact, exceed 70 degrees. You would be surprised how hard this information is to come by. You can find the historical weather (at least for the current day passed, which is all I wanted) over at the Weather Underground.
