We're in trouble

Lately, Elizabeth has become very opinionated about the clothes she will wear. She has to pick out her outfits "all by herself," and we quickly noticed that she will not agree to wear anything that is not bright pink. This has caused a little bit of a dilemma, as occasionally (like today) she does not have any clean pink clothes, which means we then get to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to convince her to wear something else. (And for those of you who might want to tell me to just shove her into something, I have several thoughts....the strongest (and most printable) include "pick your battles" and "MYOB," which are closely followed by, "I'd rather try to dress a rabid raccoon than a screaming, writhing 2-year-old.")

This morning, as I was pulling out outfit after outfit (the girl has drawers and drawers full of very cute, practically new, non-pink outfits) and trying to convince her to wear one of them, the stark reality of the next phase of the Clothing War hit me. I held up a perfectly good one-piece outfit (which had some pink on it even!), and she looked me square in the eye and said, "NO! That's for babies!" While I was laughing at the absurdity of the statement coming out of the lips of a just-past 2-year-old, I realized that I hadn't seen anything yet! Now she's rejecting outfits based on their "style"! The horror of it all sunk in even further when she insisted on carrying her black velvet purse outside with us when we went out to the mailbox...

What on earth have we gotten ourselves in to?