kids

This week I picked up Jessica from school aftercare.  She already wore her jacket and was ready to go.  Under her jacket I saw a dress I'd never seen.  Thinking it was very pretty, we were walking to the car, when she said 'I am wearing my beach cover-up'.  Recognizing the beach cover-up then - pink, with a ruffle at the below-the-knee-point - I asked if her mother knew she was wearing it.  'No', she answered. 
'All right' said I, 'let's call her and tell her!'
So we call her mother, I handed her the phone, and hearing just one side of the conversation,  Jessica tells her mother that she is wearing her beach cover-up.  'I didn't want to!' she says.  Hmpf.

She hangs up, and I ask what her mother said. 

'She'll have a talk with my dad when she gets home.'

I just had to grin.  We get home, and her dad hears she talked to her mother.  'I thought it was going to be a secret' says he.  'You were going to take it off when you got home, and no one was going to know!'
'But I didn't want to wear it!'  says the five-year-old.

Her mother got home about an hour later.  'Jim', she says, 'in what universe is it all right to let a girl go to school in her beach cover-up?'

'It was the only way I could get her to eat her breakfast'  was the answer.

And Jessica got even stricter rules on what is okay to wear to school.