Making Life Decisions

Originally written September 25, 2007

So, Angela is going back to wearing glasses. Not a huge surprise. What WAS a huge surprise was what happened when we went to pick out frames. Alright, knowing Angela I guess I shouldn't feel that surprised. Anyway, she wouldn't consider one single pair that I handed her to try on! Nope, she kept picking out these god-awful colored frames. I kept handing her more neutral things to which she'd say, "Mmmm I'm not into brown. I'm not into silver."

.....ummm....Where did "I'm not into..." come from?

Instead she kept pulling out every purple, red, and neon green frame she could find. There was one style I really liked on her, if only they weren't DARK VIOLET! I wanted to see what the brown ones like like so they ordered them for me to check out.

We went back today to try on the brown....they are very dark brown. With her dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, and dark brown frames....it was just too much brown. That didn't really matter though because Angela isn't "into brown" and only wanted the violet ones. With all the other frames, she'd look in the mirror quickly, then put the violet ones back on, then proceed to look at her reflection from all kinds of different angles....sideways left...sideways right...chin down...chin up...magnified...you name it, she tried it. She really enjoyed looking at herself in the mirror with the violet frames.

I know that this is a game God is playing with me. He knows this particular color is probably one of my least favorite in the entire rainbow. I KNOW that's why He has Angela so attracted to that color. Apparently I'm still getting lessons on how to not give into the control issues I have. I could see Him at work during the whole visit, like he was speaking in my ear saying, "It's not about YOU. It's about HER and what SHE likes."

GAH!

So we ordered the violet ones, and I'm hoping this will mean she actually wears them. In the meantime, I'm now shopping for lots of clothes with a particular shade of violet in them. I'll post a picture when we pick them up at the end of the week.

Speaking of clothes, we're having issues in this area. For kids who have DS, fit is often a problem, but now I'm having different issues. This issue is called, "I want to choose my own clothes, and you're not going to like what I choose."

Angela has about 15 t-shirts and about 4 pairs of pants. (read here to find out why) In the morning she gets in the shower, and I put her clothes for the day on her bed. When she's out of the shower and getting dressed I go get the dogs fed. She ALWAYS comes out with different clothes than what I put out. At the very least, a different shirt. Now, one smart thing I did was get rid of all the too-small t-shirts she had. (sometimes I'm slow about this, which causes problems when the favorite shirt that is now too small is still in the drawer.) I've also gotten rid of the really junky shirts, so at least she's choosing shirts that are wearable. But still....purple sparkly capri leggings with an orange shirt and all kinds of colors on the front doesn't look too good. Add red socks and the purply/silver shoes her dad bought her.

I sent a note to her teacher that said, "Angela is now choosing her own clothes" because I don't want to take the blame.

There is a store called Justice for Girls that my friend told me about. It has lots of "Hannah Montana" and "That's So Raven" type of clothing. I want to take Angela there and let her pick out her own outfits. At least then maybe she'll wear something that matches...one can only hope.

I never had this problem with four boys!