Owen was sitting on the changing table and I was getting him into a diaper and pajamas before bed. Owen was staring upward at the hanging shirts on clothes hangers in the boys’ closet. Owen said, “I want to wear that one!” and pointed to a red button down shirt. It is a dress shirt, something that has only been worn once (Kyle wore it to Sadie’s Christmas Dance Recital in Maine over our Christmas vacation; on that evening Owen wore a similar blue button down shirt), the boys only have 2 button-down shirts each right now and they have generally been reserved only for wear to special occassions. I was shocked by Owen doing this since NEVER before has he ever ever ever requested (or even seemed to notice) any piece of clothing – ever! I even went through a phase when I tried hard to get the boys to show some preference/choice/care-at-all for their attire. I failed miserably at getting them on board with style-consciousness. I gave up after awhile since they truly could not care any less about what they are wearing at any given moment. So last night when Owen suddenly said this about the hanging red shirt I had to be sure I wasn’t misunderstanding. I said, “What? Say that again?” And he tugged at the red shirt and said clear as day: “I want to wear that one!” I said, “O.k., you want to wear that shirt to daycare tomorrow?” and he said, “Yup!”
This morning Braydon ironed the red shirt for Owen and another button down shirt for Kyle. As I was putting the red shirt on Owen, my boy was deliriously thrilled with all the buttons: “Look at this button Mama! And this one! And this one! And this one!” Once the shirt was on him, my boy strutted over to the big mirror and took a good long look at his handsome little self. He stood there, pacifier in mouth, lovey lion squeezed tight up to his face, and just smiled at himself. I said: “You look gorgeous!!! I like your shirt!!!” Grinning ear-to-ear he said to me, “Cute alert mommy?” And we did what we do on a lot of mornings: “Cute alert! Cute alert! Sound the sirens! Rrrrr Rrrrr Rrrr! Cute alert!” He could not have been more pleased with himself.
Can’t we just bottle some of that self-confidence now and place it carefully on a shelf so that when he’s about 14 years old we can whip it out and tear off the cap?
Today was the first day that Owen wore a shirt that he had actively independently and unpromptedly PICKED OUT for himself. A button shirt.