Battle line drawn

Another installment of why I should be getting my Mother of the Year Award any week now played out this morning. I had been waging a not-so-secret war against my daughter's outfit selections since school started. I have no one to blame but myself if she doesn't wear something that I grabbed on a bargain hunt outing, or anything that I just thought might be cute. However, when she is pulling stuff out of her hamper instead of wearing perfectly good (and clean) items from her closet that she picked out, I get irritated.

I tried to grab some items during the return period, but she claimed she was most definitely going to wear them. Not happening. I just kept doing the laundry every Monday, and would then see her wearing the same select shirts over and over. This week I decided that I would do the laundry, but not put any of the freshly cleaned shirts back in her closet. There are so many choices in there, I wanted to see how long it would really take for her to "not find anything to wear". Of course it was no secret that I was doing laundry, as clean bottoms were appearing (as in the same black, dark gray, and black yoga pants that have become the sixth grade dress code). The shirts were all being stacked in the guest room. Yesterday was the first day I saw a shirt not in the usual rotation, granted it was a favorite a couple of months ago, so we still weren't wearing the "new" stuff.

I had laid back down this morning after waking her up, in an attempt to pretend that the day wasn't really starting, even though I had been up over an hour. My body was just rejecting its time on the elliptical and I was trying to make peace with it. Suddenly, the girl was at my bedroom door. I said "hello", and she just kept walking closer. I started to get concerned about what she was going to tell me that couldn't be broadcast across the room. When she got about two feet from me, she looked me in the eye and said, "You've been hiding my clothes." I made a lame effort to play dumb, "You have clean pants?" She inquired about her shirts and I told her I saw several in her closet. She informed me that she had worn something different yesterday (at least she wasn't playing dumb about what was going on) and wanted the purple Nike long sleeved shirt. I tried to send her for any number of other long sleeved shirts, but she said that one was comfy and it was a gym day. How could I argue with gym day?

I told her she had to stay put as to not know where my hiding place was. I tried to make noise in a variety of places before bringing her the purple shirt. For some reason it seems important to note that this is some random shirt that I purchased for myself, only to realize that human sausage was not the look I was going for. Normally she pooh-poohs anything that comes out of the mother's closet, but not this. In fact, just the other day she asked where it was purchased because she wanted more just like it.

Am I being foolish for fighting this battle? Sure, maybe a little. I think she's being crazy too though, and this morning I think she saw that she has competition in the totally unreasonable department!