Khaki is the new black

I was sad not to have girls only because I love clothes. I could imagine adorable dresses… sparkly sandals… flowery headbands. Oh, well. I love my boys and it turns out I love not having daily clothing wars, like my friends who have daughters. There have been a few clashes, of course. Ned refused to wear overalls starting at age 2. (”That’s for BABY,” he declared.) And around age 5, Alex decided he would only wear black t-shirts.

Black t-shirt (photo courtesy Kansir, flickr.com)

Fine, I thought. Even though Alex and Ned mostly don’t seem to care what they wear, they have occasional outbursts of opinion. I was kind of relieved that Alex had a preference. Except that it’s not all that easy to find black t-shirts in very small sizes — especially for a very small boy. Luckily, in hipster New York City, you can find black t-shirts at Uniqlo and occasionally Old Navy.

One trick to getting Alex to branch out is to take him shopping. Unfortunately his tolerance for this is quite limited. But today we had to hit the stores for khakis (no blue jeans for this boy — sad, really, after I finally found a source for blue jeans that would fit a very skinny boy with longish legs). Children’s Place is no help. Their trousers, even the slim sizes, seem cut for a heftier kid. Old Navy has taken a huge dip in quality these last few years. So off we went to H&M, the Swedish chain known for its well-priced, fashion forward line.

We found pants and shorts, decided to hit another store, and in a desperate attempt to get us to stop shopping, Alex said, “Train? Train?” and pulled us toward the subway.