Dressing Herself

Since Lindy was pretty little, I have let her have input into what she wears. That input has become stronger since she can now undress herself! Most of the time when I give her two outfits to choose between, she rejects both and very politely says "No tankt you, mama." When I ask her what she wants to wear the answer is almost always "dresh" meaning her Christmas dress. It has been removed from her closet so that I no longer have to wrestle her into pajamas as she points at her closet and screams "DRESH! DRESH!"

Now that she is so proficient at undressing herself, we seem to go through many more outfits. I am going to admit that I just give up some days and let her wear whatever she feels like, as you will see demonstrated below.

Lindy has a fever of 101 barely being controlled by Motrin and Tylenol in this picture, so she looks how she feels.

This is actually her swimming suit. I found one in a catalog and she carried the picture around going "ooohhh, tute (cute)" for days. I wasn't going to spend $40 on it! I found this one at Target for $10. When I pulled it out of the bag, she immediately stripped, put it on and didn't take it off until dinner when she didn't want to get lasagna on it!
This is the fourth outfit of this day.
I gave up.
I would dress her and 15 minutes later she would be naked.
I finally told her to go and find something in her drawers she would like to wear.
Here it is.
Elmo, striped leggings and cowgirl boots on the wrong feet.
She was very proud of her choices.
Yes, we went out in public in this outfit.


Mama, I can put them on myself.
Miss Independent now attempts to put on her own jammies.
Most nights it ends with "Mama, help" after about 30 seconds.
This night, it lasted longer!

I am trying to remind myself to just let the matched outfits go and be relieved that she is interested in self help skills for daily living. This is not so successful at 7:15 in the morning when she should be in the car but is stripping in living room after it took me 20 minutes to get her dressed! I keep telling myself this is what I will remember fondly and laugh about in 25 years!