End of an Era?

This may be the end of an era. After 34 days of wearing one of two Christmas dresses, Emily may have finally reached the end. It happened quite by accident--literally. Yesterday afternoon I heard Emily calling from upstairs something about "potty", which means you better run and find out what's going on. She had completely changed her outfit and her beloved Christmas dress and black leggings were soaking wet and lying on the floor. For the next 15 minutes I desperately tried to find the puddle and the missing wet panty. Emily was no help. She thought it was a fun game and started "looking" in funny places. Finally, after finding nothing and stopping to think, I remembered that Emily had been playing with my large water bottle. She had spilled water over herself--not had an accident in her pants. Phew!

However, with a really wet favorite dress and her back-up in the wash, the revolutionary result of this little adventure was the rediscovery of a cute, hand-me-down "butterfly" dress that Emily wore a few times when it was actually warm enough last fall. She paired the dress with a beautiful pair of rainbow pants and a new outfit was born.  She even changed her headband from red to purple.   She had the dress back on before she even came downstairs this morning. Granted, both Christmas dresses are still in the laundry, but I think she may be moving on. The only problem is that this is more of a fall/spring dress, it’s short-sleeved, it really would only look “good” with white tights, and there’s only one. I did purchase another pink cotton dress last fall, but Emily refused to try it on then, so I thought I’d try again in the spring. Sigh.

I had already decided that Valentine’s Day was going to be the cut-off, after which both Christmas dresses would be retired to a secure and undisclosed location. In the words of my mom, “That was fun, but now it’s done.” ;o) I may have a bigger problem now. We might have to start a new system where Emily gets to choose what she wants to wear from several choices I give her. The hard part is that she can reach all her clothes and get herself dressed before I can even get to her in the mornings. Maybe we’ll have to decide the night before. It will be an experiment. I’ll keep you posted.