Damn you, winter attire!!!

How do you decide what to wear each day? The weather? The occasion? After work plans?

Not me - -my daily attire depends SOLELY on the carefully calculated risk stratification and probability score that my brain frantically calculates in the short 5 minutes of dressing-showering-accessorizing-waking-up-me-time that I am allotted each morning. It’s this probability score that helps me to determine the daily potential of snot/food spillage from my son. Some days, when he’s particularly green, snotty and overtired, I go for the casual look. On other days, when my mom is around, I branch out to my nicer clothes and even sometimes wear a blouse.

I THOUGHT I had my self-dressing system down pat until today.

Today was the day I made my fatal error.

If I were a computer I would have frozen, crashed, beeped, blank screened and then completely shut down and ignored the world no matter how many times someone pressed my reboot button.

It was THAT bad.

I woke up to a nice white blanket of fresh snow. Which made me happy - -mistake number 1 – NEVER let your good mood tempt you into wearing something that should not be worn. ALWAYS REMEMBER the CHAOS that lives with you.

Mistake number 2 - -I got wooed by the weather. It was snowing and sunny and bright. And I was cheerful for those 5 minutes of dressing, and decided I’d waited LONG ENOUGH to bring out my new light pink knit sweater and lovely pleated-likely-will-require-dry-cleaning plaid pants. Because they were my new winter clothes and I couldn’t wait ONE MORE DAY to wear them.

Those of you who don’t have kids may be thinking that there’s nothing WRONG with wearing your nice new winter clothes on the fresh crisp first day of snow fall. AHA! There’s the CATCH! Because not only did the first fresh day of snowfall mean a new outfit for ME - -it ALSO meant a new outfit for Toby…specifically, winter boots, a hat, his winter jacket and….mitts.

We had numerous temper tantrums this morning. The first three being about the boots, the hat and the mitts and the fourth and fifth ones being about his then runny nose being wiped on my clean pants and new sweater. (Respectively.)

Finally, we reached a snotty-nosed compromise and settled for no hat, no mitts and his RAIN boots. (He DID wear his winter jacket – that was my only victory of the morning) I assured him that ALL of his friends would be wearing winter boots but hey, if he wanted to be the ODD BALL of his daycare, he could go ahead and wear his shiny RAIN boots if he wanted to.

As we pulled up to daycare, my lovely new winter outfit covered in snot and drool and his lovely new winter accessories scattered all over the car, I prepared how I was going to justify sending my kid to daycare in RAIN boots while it was SNOWING outside.

But I didn’t have to - -the line of outdoor shoes that morning consisted entirely of….RAIN BOOTS.

So apparently we’re NOT the only family suffering from winter-transition-crisis.