Tackle It Tuesday: School Clothes

I think it was about this time last year that I posted a similar post. The "fun" of trying on pants with little boys.

Knowing that we were going for a school clothes shopping trip with Grandma on Wednesday, I bit the bullet and searched through the house and pulled out every pair of shorts and pants I could find. I put them all into two piles: Noah potentials and Aaron potentials.

The very minute it began, so did the protests.

"No I don't want to"
"Do I have to"
"They all fit already"

and so on....

So I laid down a few ground rules.

A. Noah gets to go first, since anything too small automatically goes into Aaron's potential pile.

B. After several years of forcing pants with button holes, I decided it isn't worth the fight and anything with buttons automatically went into the give away pile. Noah will actually NOT use the bathroom at school if he has to deal with buttons instead of snaps. I'd rather he be comfortable and take care of business at school.


C. As long as you keep the pants going, you can watch TV as we progress through this "torture"

Noah's went better than usual. We ended up with four pairs of blue jeans and one pair of black. Plenty. Woo Hoo! His khaki's for church are really close to being too short, but I think they'll work to get started.















Aaron was another story. Unlike past years, his pile of try ones was absolutely huge. He started off strong, but after about five pairs, he decided to throw a MAJOR temper tantrum, resulting in numerous time outs before the affair was over.














It used to be that when I was doing laundry, I could glance at the size and know whose pants belonged to whom. That is no longer the case. Between shorts and pants, Noah wears anything from a 6 to an 8, and Aaron wears both 6 and 7, depending on each pair's fit. So I had to break down and initial all of the pants this time. I know I will have to later this a little when Noah's pants become Aaron's but I'll worry about that next year.

So when I was done, I ended up with four piles:
N for Noah's pants
A for Aaron's pants
X for pants that are too big for them right now and need to be stored
a separate pile for give away.




Now, as we head into school clothes shopping tomorrow, I am much more prepared for what the boys need. Noah will be thrilled to know that he doesn't have to try any pants on. Aaron will not :(

Although he gets all of Noah's hand me downs, not a single pair of Noah's denim jeans seems to have survived. I do a lot of my clothes shopping at a local resale shop, so by the time Aaron gets jeans, they have not only been worn out by his big brother, but by someone else who had them before Noah. He has a TON of sweat pants and other kind of "play" pants, but we will definitely need to revisit this FUN tomorrow in dressing rooms in order to get Aaron some jeans for school.




But I think a reward of ice cream may in the cards for the "torture" that the boys were put through.





Does anyone else have this struggle, especially with their boys each year?