Saturday, July 4, 2009

Ollie and Me: Who wears the pants in this family?

Not Ollie.

He doesn’t want anything to do with pants. Why? I don’t know. It’s not like he’s spent his early years with a family that walks around naked.

My grandson is 2 years, seven months old and growing like a weed. His vocabulary is increasing, sentences are getting longer, he enjoys food from every food group (and jelly beans, like me) and he loves to play outside. Above average in every way, in my humble opinion.

But trying to put pants on the kid before leaving the house is becoming a major battle.

My attitude is - it’s a phase, let him play outside without his pants on. Fewer diapers for the landfill, plus, he can water the flowers when he feels the urge.

Grandma, however, thinks he needs to learn to wear pants and not run around naked for hours on end - especially if we want to include a trip to the local coffee shop in our routine.

Which we do. But what a struggle.

“No diaper, Nana. No shoes, Nana. No pants. No pants,” he says, as my wife tries every trick in the book to get him to cover up before we walk out the front door.

“Papa wears pants, Ollie,” she says. “Nana wears pants. Daddy and Mommy wear pants. Papa Roger too.”

[This is the short version of my wife’s routine. She mentions everyone we know to try to get Ollie to believe in the goodness of pants. Allow me to sum up by saying that if you’re reading this and wearing pants then you’re on her list. BTW - keep up the good work.]

“No pants. No pants, Nana.”

We do get out the door eventually, though we’ve come close to being held hostage by a wee tad wearing nothing more than an undershirt and his Diago shoes.

***

It’s just a phase, right?

.

1 comment:

bobbie said...

You had me laughing with this one! (But no picture?) Reminded me of one of my four. She hated clothes. When we'd go to church she liked to sit down on the kneeler, and sometimes we would be involved in the service and forget to look down. When we did, she usually had most of her clothes off already.