Dress Code

I have a little girl who thinks that little girls should wear dresses everyday. While this was common practice a hundred years ago, it's really not that practical today. Cami doesn't own thick warm dresses for cold days and she can't ride her bike side saddle. We have been trying to teach her modesty and there are just some times when she needs to wear pants.

To help encourage the wearing of pants, my wife stumbled across a brilliant idea. While out shopping the other day, she saw a pair of hot pink shoes that would look good with jeans, but clearly not with a dress. They were on sale for $3, so she picked up a pair. Now, if Cami wants to wear her new shoes, she would have to wear pants with them. What we learned from this is that kids are really smarter than us sometimes.

As we were preparing to go a a family bike ride to the park one evening, I looked at Cami and said, "You can't ride a bike in that dress. You need to change before we leave." It was a warm evening, so I assumed she would put on a pair of shorts and we'd be on our way. While she was changing I went out to the shed to pull the bikes out and hook the trailer onto mine so I could tow the littlest ones.

It wasn't until after we arrived at the park that I realized that Cami had done what I asked. As she was running around and having a good time, I noticed that the dress was gone and the hot pink shoes were on. They even matched the hot pink shirt that she had picked out. I shouldn't have been surprised when I saw that she had found the perfect denim skirt to complete the ensemble, but somehow I was. While she looked adorable with her long brown hair blowing in the breeze as she played with her sisters, I couldn't help but think that she had missed the point of the new outfit. I don't have any experience in this area, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I would imagine it is quite difficult to maintain modesty in a jean skirt while riding a bike or swinging on a swing. Fortunately, the makers of the skirt anticipated the quirky fashion desires of a free-spirited six-year-old and sewed a pair of shorts inside just for this occasion.

I guess I'd better start being a little more specific when it comes to things like this.