"O" Mama Talk
If you still intend to take my Benjamin quiz but haven't yet and don't want an unfair advantage over the other people who already took it, you should wait to read this new mama talk.
I’ve always been a fan of cool colors. Purple’s my favorite, but blue and green are also quite nice. They’re plenty masculine and both complement my son’s deep skin tone. So those are the colors I chose for most of his outfits in his first year and a half. Sometimes I’d throw in a few items that were gray or deep red. But certainly nothing intense or blinding.
But now 19-month-old Benjamin cares what he wears. And what has he chosen as his favorite color?
Florescent orange. The brighter the better. Orange is quite possibly the ugliest color on the planet. I could handle mud brown or army green before bright orange.
Every day, he wants to wear his orange shorts. Not the red ones or the blue ones - the orange ones. He does not care if they are covered in mud or last night’s dinner. Finally, I gave in and told his “Nama” that we could use a few more summer clothes.
“What color?”
“He likes orange,” I said with a cringe.
She assured me that babies go through stages with this sort of thing and that he’d probably want another color by next week.
At that point, I thought the problem might be that he didn’t know the other colors very well. He’s been doing well with counting and his alphabet but we hadn’t done much with colors yet. So I started talking to him about all the colors I see.
I point out red cars, blue water and green trees. He points out orange traffic cones, orange signs and orange basketballs.
When we sit down to color, he wants the “O” crayon first (he can’t actually say orange yet) and then he might add a few accent colors to the drawing if he feels like it. I’ve started offering his artwork to grandparents, because there’s only so many orange scribble drawings you can hang up before they all start to look the same.
I certainly don’t want to squelch his personality. I’m not going to make him use the other crayons or wear a blue shirt as long as an orange one is clean.
But I have this image of his future room, (I’ve been waiting to decorate until he is old enough to both sleep alone and choose what he wants on his sheets) being filled with bedding, curtains and accessories - all in bright orange.
I think I was hoping for something cute like puppies or monkeys. Even fire trucks would be fine with me. I know I could just choose sheets with puppies on them myself, and he’d probably like them. Ben’s always been interested in animals, especially dogs.
But there’s still a part of me that remembers being little, and having people tell you what to do and what not to do every single moment of every single day. Anytime there was a choice to be made, I was all for it. As a teenager, I promised myself I wouldn’t be one of those parents who made decisions for their kids based on their own preferences.
Of course, there’s a certain joy that comes from reliving your favorite childhood memories with your kids. I will be taking Ben to the zoo this summer, because I remember loving it when I was a kid. And I’m not so in to allowing him to make his own decisions that I would let him choose cake for lunch. I’m still the parent, and some things are more important than his growing autonomy.
But in my heart, I know that orange isn’t one of them.
Darn.
that said, if you are still wanting to take it, ahem katielovesjoel, you should hop to it! ;-)
I’ve always been a fan of cool colors. Purple’s my favorite, but blue and green are also quite nice. They’re plenty masculine and both complement my son’s deep skin tone. So those are the colors I chose for most of his outfits in his first year and a half. Sometimes I’d throw in a few items that were gray or deep red. But certainly nothing intense or blinding.
But now 19-month-old Benjamin cares what he wears. And what has he chosen as his favorite color?
Florescent orange. The brighter the better. Orange is quite possibly the ugliest color on the planet. I could handle mud brown or army green before bright orange.
Every day, he wants to wear his orange shorts. Not the red ones or the blue ones - the orange ones. He does not care if they are covered in mud or last night’s dinner. Finally, I gave in and told his “Nama” that we could use a few more summer clothes.
“What color?”
“He likes orange,” I said with a cringe.
She assured me that babies go through stages with this sort of thing and that he’d probably want another color by next week.
At that point, I thought the problem might be that he didn’t know the other colors very well. He’s been doing well with counting and his alphabet but we hadn’t done much with colors yet. So I started talking to him about all the colors I see.
I point out red cars, blue water and green trees. He points out orange traffic cones, orange signs and orange basketballs.
When we sit down to color, he wants the “O” crayon first (he can’t actually say orange yet) and then he might add a few accent colors to the drawing if he feels like it. I’ve started offering his artwork to grandparents, because there’s only so many orange scribble drawings you can hang up before they all start to look the same.
I certainly don’t want to squelch his personality. I’m not going to make him use the other crayons or wear a blue shirt as long as an orange one is clean.
But I have this image of his future room, (I’ve been waiting to decorate until he is old enough to both sleep alone and choose what he wants on his sheets) being filled with bedding, curtains and accessories - all in bright orange.
I think I was hoping for something cute like puppies or monkeys. Even fire trucks would be fine with me. I know I could just choose sheets with puppies on them myself, and he’d probably like them. Ben’s always been interested in animals, especially dogs.
But there’s still a part of me that remembers being little, and having people tell you what to do and what not to do every single moment of every single day. Anytime there was a choice to be made, I was all for it. As a teenager, I promised myself I wouldn’t be one of those parents who made decisions for their kids based on their own preferences.
Of course, there’s a certain joy that comes from reliving your favorite childhood memories with your kids. I will be taking Ben to the zoo this summer, because I remember loving it when I was a kid. And I’m not so in to allowing him to make his own decisions that I would let him choose cake for lunch. I’m still the parent, and some things are more important than his growing autonomy.
But in my heart, I know that orange isn’t one of them.
Darn.
that said, if you are still wanting to take it, ahem katielovesjoel, you should hop to it! ;-)