Compromise

This morning was the girls' last day of gymco for the summer. They've really loved the two mornings a week they've spent there these last weeks, and this morning us parents got to go in and observe for the first hour in the gym. They blew us away with the things they could do: Annie swinging up and down on the parallel bars; Jemma doing a backwards somersault; Annie casually walking across a very high balance beam; Jemma walking across hers, and stopping halfway to do a little pirouette; lots of jumping and rope-swinging and far more coordination than I would have expected. The girls are sad to see it end, and Jason and I are, too.

Except for one thing.

Nobody in this family can take one, single more day of negotiating with Jemma to get her to wear SHORTS to gymco two mornings a week. Both girls have lots of opinions about what they like to wear, and both pretty much pick out their own clothes every day. Both prefer to be as "girly" as possible, but Annie understands that one of the rules for gymnastics is that students must not wear skirts or dresses since they get in the way of all that aforementioned jumping and flipping and swinging. Jemma has fought this rule almost each Tuesday and Thursday morning of the summer, culminating in this morning, where, for a finale, she went through the whole ordeal twice, since after we wrangled her into her outfit the first time, she took it off while I was in the shower and zipped herself instead into a baby-jammie onesie she dug out of a Rubbermaid container in an upstairs storage room. I made Jason do the second round of "You're welcome to come out of your room as soon as you've put these clothes on; No, we're not going to talk about any other clothes; These are the clothes you have to wear today; Are you ready to put on your shorts, now? No? Then go back in your room until you are," complete with lots of screaming and protesting. She is happiest when wearing head-t0-toe purple, preferably with some some of ruffle and a coordinating accessory. (See above.)

This afternoon, the girls ran through the sprinkler with neighbors. When we came in the house, I toweled them off, then instructed them to go put on the clothes they had been wearing before they put on their swimsuits. And AGAIN with the having-a-fit and wanting to get out a dress and lobbying for a change (it was 5:00 and I don't need to add to my laundry load by letting people change complete outfits with two hours to go before bedtime). I told her I wouldn't be getting anything new down, and that she was welcome to wear her clothes from the morning or nothing at all. (Luckily, she can't reach her hanging clothes yet!)

This is what she finally came out of her room wearing:

-bathing suit top

-Cinderella underwear

-princess slippers

I let it go.