Many Sizes Fit One

Originally published on DC Metro Moms, 11/07/09:

 It's that time of year again, right?  The temperatures are steadily cooling down, sidewalks and lawns are awash in crunchy fallen leaves, and each glance out the window confirms the not-so-long ago disappearance of summer.  Okay, perhaps I'm a bit late on the realization that summer is now just a memory, what with the Halloween decorations packed up in the attic for another year and the disturbing presence of a snowflake montage on the Target door the other day.  Keeping all of this in mind, can anyone explain to me why my daughter is still pulling out tank tops from the dresser in the always joyful morning experience of getting dressed?

The whole changeover of seasonal clothing thing should be an easy task, right?  (Excuse me for a moment while I guffaw at that silly, silly statement.)  With three children spanning seven years, this process needs to be done at a time when nothing else needs Mommy's attention, and said children are happy to oblige requests to try on articles of clothing again and again.  Oh, and just once more, I promise.  Said another way, let's dump a ton of clothes all over the floor and listen to the children whine and complain for an hour or two.  Yippee!

Clearly the dresser contents need to be rotated as the clothing options just don't cut it anymore on the cold mornings, and I actually do find some joy in going through the many boxes that occupy the closet, chock-full of hand-me-downs from friends.  (Note to new parents: be sure to include parents of children older than your own in your friend network.  Hand-me-downs rule; call it recession-couture if you will.)  For my youngest two children, there is much fun to be had in pointing out which friends have lovingly shared their clothing with them, and I get to sit in shock at the realization that my little ones are getting big enough to wear the duds I remember my friends' kids donning years ago.  But there's one small... no, medium... um, perhaps large problem.  You got it- sizes.

I think I can confidently speak for many other mamas when I say that it shouldn't be this complicated.  I've got a 3.5 year old daughter and a just-about-2 year old son sharing a large dresser, and the clothing that inhabits the drawers ranges from 18 months to 5T.  And it all fits someone!  Some items could be worn by both, if I was in a really desperate laundry predicament.  We saved some items from our now-9 year old son's toddler days, but with his tactile sensory issues, his clothes all eventually came to feature a stub of a former sizing tag at the neckline or waistband, adding even more confusion to the process with a stack of clothes that require me to rely on my faulty memory to attempt to match up clothes to ages in our oldest's younger years.  How is it that I can hold a Gymborama size 4T pair of stretchy pants next to a 4T Circo pair of similar style and see a difference of an inch in length, as well as a large enough discrepancy in waist size to necessitate at least a year's worth of growth?  Should an 18 months sweatshirt be bigger than a 2T one?  For the love of all that is holy, could we just have some uniformity in sizes, please?

Once the boxes and bags of clothing have all been sorted, and the wide ranges of clothes have been placed neatly in the drawers, we're prepared for a new season of temperatures that vary as wildly as the sizes of my kids' clothes.  And dear friends?  Please keep those hand-me-downs coming.  I'll make room.

This is an original DC Metro Moms post.

Dawn blogs nonsense about her family at my thoughts exactly, but tries to sound intelligent when she reviews books at 5 Minutes for Books.