As I lay in bed this morning nursing Boy, I overheard the following conversation emanating from the hallway:
“Bear, I prefer to be naked today.”
“But Bug, Mom said that we cannot be naked.”
“Yes we can.”
Right now they are.
It all started with the pants-free potty training. The general idea is that toddlers love to be naked, so parents should capitalize on said love of nudity to facilitate this most dreaded of parenting tasks. There are fewer accidents (obviously, without pants to pee) and less laundry. And it’s supposed to work really fast. Less laundry and speedy potty training? Sign me up! It worked like a charm, but nobody told me the horrible catch—after allowing your children to run around pantless, it is nigh on impossible to convince them that they now must wear pants.
Every time I tell the children that it’s time to get dressed, they ask, “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere! It’s what people in America do. They wear clothes. You don’t have to be going anywhere to get dressed!” I explain for the thousandth time. No matter. Every day it’s the same routine.
Bug is getting better since she does actually go places, like kindergarten and karate. Bear is particularly hard to convince, especially since she likes to pretend to be animals. Most days we have some version of this conversation:
“Bear, we need to get you dressed.”
“But I am Spirit/Balto/random animal! Horses/dogs/animals don’t wear clothes!”
One day out of sheer desperation, when she was pretending to be a dog, I googled pictures of dog clothes. “See?” I said. “Dogs do wear clothes! Look, this dog looks just like Balto, and it’s wearing clothes. You can still be a dog and wear clothes.” The girls giggled at the pictures, and it worked for an afternoon. Unfortunately, Balto does not wear clothes in the movie, so she returned to her naked ways.
Bear also makes the frequent claim that her clothes make her feel itchy. It’s a ploy. Offers of lotion or a softer outfit are generally rebuffed, leading me to believe that she’s playing me. The problem is that she does have genuinely sensitive skin, and I wouldn’t want to force her into clothing that would cause her true discomfort. If we’re not actually going anywhere, she usually wins, but I’m gaining ground. The one hard and fast rule is that they must be wearing underwear to sit on the upholstery or at the dinner table, and they listen to that one.
When I consider the mountain of laundry that awaits me daily, I wonder if the kids might be onto something. Why spend all of this time, water, and electricity to wash clothes that nobody wears? Maybe we could all move to a nudist colony in Florida. Supposedly there’s one close by in West Virginia, but that would probably get cold in the winter. Do they all just stay inside and crank up the heat six months out of the year?
There are probably rules prohibiting minors from nudist colonies, and rightly so. Plus I have zero desire to be a nudist. I imagine that job opportunities for Frankie would be limited, and he would constantly be dressing/undressing to go do hospital visits, funerals, weddings, and other pastory things. The nudists might feel deeply judged when the only clothed person in their colony sports a clergy collar. I mean, the first thing that Adam and Eve did after their fall from grace was get dressed.
So we’ll just stay here, fighting the good fight against nudity, keeping the blinds closed, and doing laundry. But I will not be doing pants-free potty training with Boy, even if it means more laundry.
