Sunday, December 7, 2008

Because she's nine, that's why

Carlie (age 9) wears a uniform to school every day. You'd think that would make things easy in the morning, no? Unfortunately, of the 97 white polo shirts she owns, she only likes two of them. Two. So she rotates them and just wears those two shirts, every day.

This, plus another unfortunate event in which she made a sass-mouth comment about her lack of clean laundry, resulted in Carlie learning how to do her own laundry and now being responsible for washing her own clothes.

So tonight, with school looming in the morning, I said, "Hey, you need to put your clothes in the washer so you'll have something to wear to school tomorrow."

And she said, "Okay," and she took a basket of laundry down to the basement.

Before she went to bed I said, "Hey, you need to put those clothes in the dryer so you'll have something to wear to school tomorrow."

And she said "Okay," and she went downstairs and took the clothes out of the washer and put them into the dryer.

I was feeling all smuggy at bedtime, thinking wow, I've got that kid trained! And when I went into the laundry room to wash a load of towels, I decided to be a kind and generous mom and retrieve her clothing from the dryer and bring it upstairs. That way, in the morning, it'll be right there and she won't have to trek down to the basement.

Imagine my surprise when I opened the dryer and the contents were: two pairs of jeans, a tee shirt, three bath towels and one sneaker.

No white polo shirts, no plaid skorts, nothing that she can wear to school.

Tomorrow morning should be interesting.

3 comments:

Cat said...

Angst who is 16 has been doing his laundry competently for about 3 years now, granted it is pretty much jeans and black tees. I don't think Hippie who is 13 will ever be able to do her laundry. She does a lot of other things around the house so I kind of give her a break on the laundry.

Amy *aka willa* said...

Um hellloooo...bath towels are like the hottest fashion trend nowadays!!

Perhaps she was mistaking today for a weekend day?

Anna Whiston-Donaldson said...

I feel your pain. I strongly encouraged M to sleep in the uniform she wore all day today, so she would be such a pill in the morning. I'll let you know how it goes.