Much Ado About Nothing

Or, The Great Dress Debacle.

When it gets to be warmer out, I dress Gabby in one of her gazillion dresses. She likes to wear them because she can twirl the skirt, dance and see the fabric move. Of course, she also still behaves like a perfect tomboy... but no big deal. All of these dresses come with knickers which, at the moment, cover her pull-ups.

So on Monday and Tuesday, she wore this one and on Tuesday, she wore this one. Both at the knee or longer, and again, both with their knickers. On Wednesday, Bill came home with a verbal from the lead teacher in the classroom: it seems that Gabby was lifting her dress (to dance, no doubt), and the teacher wanted us to send something along to "cover her legs". This of course brought my inner Feminist out, and she was screaming with Indignant Outrage. This being Bill, there weren't a lot of details, but it seems that the teacher was suggesting that since Gabby was lifting her skirt, that there should be something more than knickers and a pull-up underneath.

Gabrielle, by the way, is two years old. All of the children in the classroom use the same bathroom and are not restricted from walking in to wash their hands while someone else is using the potty either. There is also a changing table set about four feet off the ground. So it's not as though they're not seeing each other's legs (and other body parts) anyway, and kids will make a big deal about something only if the adults around them do so.

So the bottom line is that this teacher is erring on the side of ridiculous. Had this been a dress code issue, I would have happily complied, coming from the educational system that I have. But the school has two hard-and-fast dress code rules: clothing must be temperature-appropriate, and closed-toed shoes are to be worn at all times. That's it. Nothing further. I told Bill that if the teacher says anything about Gabby's clothing again, that she should give me a call so we can discuss it. Quite frankly, if she wants to impose her cultural mores on my child (she is an older woman from another country) then she will definitely have quite the battle on her hands.

Furthermore, now that it's warm out, Gabby has a whole wardrobe of dresses I can exploit. It's on.