Dressed

Yesterday morning, I woke up to a little voice saying, "Mommy, I dressed."

I opened my eyes and in a fog (for, my friends, I am not a morning person), I saw that she was indeed dressed.

"Wow," I said in as calm of voice as possible so as not to set her off, "You are dressed. Very nice."

So, in order to honour this momentous occasion and do my very best to reward her with a quick response, I drug my sorry butt out of bed and I quickly got dressed. 

Well, as quickly as I could when still moving at half speed.

Upon closer inspection, I realized that both her top (pockets now in the back) and her pants (orange and pink butterflies going down the back of her leg) were on backwards. And while she didn't clash, it was certainly not an outfit I would have chosen for her. And I have no idea if she's wearing underwear or not. Like seriously, no clue. 

But she got dressed. All by herself. Without me having to ask or tell her to. With absolutely no prompting and to me, that's a victory given that a few months ago, had you asked me what the worst part of our day was, I would have said it was getting dressed in the morning. 

That was before we changed the rules. Now, she's not allowed to go downstairs until she's dressed. So now, her stomach is her motivation. Sounds like a pretty good motivation to me. Not that it's been all peaches and roses, because it hasn't. Most mornings we still have a pretty big ordeal over the getting dressed thing. She throws her clothes across the room and refuses (a little loudly for my liking) to get dressed. But I just shrug and say, okay then… we're not going downstairs until you're ready. Some mornings we cut it close to not getting out the door on time, but we've always made it. So far. 

Yesterday morning though, that was pretty cool. A dressed child and not one fight. I'm still in mild shock.