Pants vs. Shorts

It finally happened!

The sun has appeared over the Pacific Northwest!  There’s no telling how long the sunny weather will last, but we got a gorgeous weekend out of it – especially Saturday.  We finally made it back to the zoo (along with a large chunk of the population of Seattle, judging by the parking situation), and with the lovely warm weather, I started breaking out the sunscreen and summer clothes.

Ane was thrilled.  Tad was not.

Ane loves warm weather, shorts, sandals, sundresses, short-sleeved shirts and tank tops.  I don’t actually know if she just loves wearing fewer layers, or that they seem like such a novelty after so many months of wearing warm/waterproof clothes.  And until Saturday, Tad had never had an issue with summer clothes.  He likes his new Keen sandals just fine, he wears short-sleeved shirts all the time without complaint.

I brought out a new pair of jean shorts for Tad to wear on Saturday, and he had an absolute fit over them.  “No, Mama, I no wear these!   They’re too small!” he protested adamantly.  He was more than happy to wear sandals, not gripe too much about wearing sunscreen, but wear shorts he would NOT.  I decided that I didn’t care enough to have this battle (plus, time was ticking away and I knew that parking was going to be an issue), so he wore regular jeans to the zoo.  (There will be pictures tomorrow.)  Plus, I didn’t have to put sunscreen on his legs.   Rerun was wearing jeans, too, but that was more because I haven’t had the time to dig out the right-sized shorts out of storage for him yet.   And then I could skip the sunscreen on his legs, too.

Fast-forward to Sunday evening, when the weather is still warm and Friend and Doc and their boys are over for dinner.  The weather is nice enough for the kids to be playing outside.  Tad, who was still in the khakis that he wore to church, needed to change clothes to something that could get dirty without Mom worrying about it.  So, the Webmaster took him to change his pants.

You can see where this is going, right?

When I came into the boys’ room, Tad was wearing shorts (the same ones I’d brought out the day before) and whining loudly.  The Webmaster was trying to convince him that nothing was wrong with the shorts – while Tad was trying to pull the shorts down to cover his scrawny little legs.   “No, Daddy, this is too small,” he kept insisting.

I pointed out to Tad that Daddy was wearing shorts, but it was a losing battle.  After trying to talk to Tad for a few more minutes, I gave up and changed him into jeans with a large hole in one knee.  Satisfied, Tad went out to play.

“This is gonna be a long, warm summer for him,” the Webmaster muttered under his breath.

I’m actually surprised by Tad’s reaction, but I do think that when the weather gets even warmer, he will wear shorts.  He may prefer jeans, but I do think that the complaint of “too hot” will eventually override the complaint of “too short.”

And I have a secret weapon.   Two words: shark pajamas.  His summer shark pjs have shorts.  ALL of them.  I doubt his issues with shorts will extend to his favorite summer pajamas.

Then again, this is a boy with almost no body fat, so I guess he could want to keep wearing thermal and flannel to bed all summer long.  I have learned never to underestimate Tad’s stubbornness.   After all, that’s one thing he inherited in spades from both of his parents.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 6th, 2011 at 1:14 am and is filed under Autism Adventures, Children, Life in the Pacific Northwest.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed and Both comments and pings are currently closed.