Coco Penguin? Yves St. Penguin? Penguin Lauren?

(c) 2009 Ms. Huis Herself at musenmutter.blogspot.com

Penguin, at 2 years & 4 months, is at a stage I mostly love. She's got some reasoning, a great vocabulary if less than stellar pronunciation, and the best sense of humor. Her favorite way to justify things lately is, "I bigger!" Today at the playground it was even, "Do it mySELF! I bigger! Two-half!" Ok, Babes, you're ALMOST two-and-a-half, but go ahead and do that on your own... I'll just be right here behind you 'cuz that particular climbing thing is designed more for 6 1/2's!

But "I bigger!" is not the specific gem I got on-line here to record for posterity. No, that would be her particular fashion choices. That girl's got opinions on what she's gonna wear! I don't remember Pumpkin being so... choosy, other than also loving the same pair(s) of socks - a set of pink Dora socks and a set of matching-but-reversed-pinks Boots socks, which were turned into a two sets of "Dora/Boots" socks, which, you know, sort-of-basically-match well enough. Both girls wore/are wearing them WAY longer than they actually fit - the sock heel is mid-sole on Penguin right now - and I'm sorry to say that one of the Boots socks just wore a hole in its heel. But still, they are loved! In fact, if they were stuffed animals, they'd probably be real.

We've also got a specific set of shirts which are the favorites. They are, fairly much in order, I think, with #1 being the definitely most preferred...

1. "Soccer ball shirt" aka a yellow MN Vikings shirt, which occasinally gets comments from Packer fans we know.
   
2. "Dora shirt" (a) the pink camouflage background shirt with Dora, but (b) the other pink shirt with Dora being an acceptable second choice.
3. (tie)"Blue's Clues shirt" Not that we watch much/any Blue's Clues, but at least this one is white with Blue and some pink and yellow in the design, so I can pretty much match it with anything.
4. (tie)"Froggie shirt" Often chosen over Blue, this is a lime green shirt from Gramma Yori's latest trip to New Orleans with Penguin's name on it. Oh yeah, and a frog. :)
   
5. "New shirt" Actually one of Pumpkin's shirts that Gramma Pet had laid out for my eldest, now appropriated by Penguin. It's a deep coral polo shirt with white collar with a few small "jewels" instead of buttons.

All the other shirts in the drawer? Yeah, apparently not so favorite. Will be worn on occasion, or under duress, but not favs. She wanted to wear her "soccer ball shirt" to church on Sunday, which, to all those fellow non-American-football-followers out there, was the opening of football season, but we told her that we only wear dresses to church. So that saved us a little grief there! :)


But oh, if you've read this far, I've got my favorite current fashion trend for you... legwarmers. For the past couple of weeks, Penguin's been obsessed with her legwarmers. Which she calls "leg-arm-ers." Which suits, since she likes to wear them on her legs AND her arms. We've got 3 pairs of them: pink, white with blue/green designs, various pink stripes (until today when I picked up 4 more pairs of Baby Legs). At bedtime now, she wears the pink stripe ones on her arms, and the plain pink ones (preferably, but white are ok) on her legs. Fine, it keeps her warm since she kicks off all the blankets at night. Also good, since I'm choosing to not fight the "out of your pjs; into your clothes" battle in the school mornings by just dressing her in clothes at night. Since it's been warm during the days, she mostly wears T-shirts (see above) & capris or skirts to bed, so leg- and arm-warmers work great. In the mornings, when she gets hot, she just peels off her arm-warmers and goes about her merry way.

We've gotten a few funny looks at school, when she's wearing legwarmers on a 80+F day, but I can live with it. Hopefully she'll like the 4 more pair we got today (plain off-white, pink/green small stripes, cherries/huckleberries?, larger blue/yellowish stripes) as we descend into more fall-like weather and struggle to stay cozy in our no-insulation old house this winter! Bonus is that her older sister can wear them, too, once it cools down a bit and they're actually, you know, needed for warmth!