I have no problem admitting that my wife is much better at dressing my son than I am. She factors in the morning and afternoon temps, she knows exactly what does and does not fit, she's in tune with what my son likes to wear, and her shoe selection is always perfect. It takes a bit of work to nail all of those seemingly minor details, and send Nyles to school looking like a champ, but my wife pulls it off each and every day. I tend to just grab what I want him to wear (aka what I would wear), and I could give a damn about the weather or Nyles' comfort, and I just basically impose my will on him. Sometimes it works, most times it does not.

When it doesn't work, my wife unapologetically (and discreetly) removes my (un)carefully crafted outfit, instantly comes up with something that's infinitely better than what I've chosen, and sends my son to school looking like a champ. And then to add insult to injury, she will make fun of my outfit through fake-ass, sarcastic conversations with my son:

"Let's see what Dad put on you in today?"
"Oh, I see Dad picked out your little outfit today"
"Now what do we have here? Dad has you wearing pants and it is 98 degrees today, how special is that?"


Yesterday I put my head down, powered through, and decided to come up with an outfit that she could not jump in and replace. The temperature was tricky yesterday (cold in the morning, mild, but not hot in the afternoon) so I knew had more options and more leeway to f**k or luck up--and I"m happy to say the latter happened. I picked out a long-sleeved shirt that was relatively thin, and I picked out khaki shorts just in case the weather warmed up. When the morning forecast turned out to be a bit colder than I thought, I replaced the khaki shorts with khaki pants which really set the outfit off. When my wife saw the outfit Nyles had on, she could not help but notice how handsome he looked. I know I shouldn't blow my own horn, but after nearly three years of trying to pick out bullshit outfits for this little monster, I'm happy to have finally nailed it.

On top of that miracle, my son has recently decided to start wearing his Despicable Me backpack. He loves the movie and all the characters in it, so my wife bought him the matching backpack. Instead of gleefully wearing it to daycare every day, my son would throw a tantrum if either one of us tried to put it on, and he insisted that we wear it, even though the backpack is clearly made for people three feet tall and shorter. So when I leave to drop my son off at daycare, I have to carry my bag and his backpack. Not cool.

But yesterday, on top of wearing an outfit I picked for him, he finally wore the backpack. The daycare staff attributed this to the other kids in his class who have miraculously decided to start wearing their backpacks, but I choose to attribute his change of heart to the outfit. Of course that theory when out the window this morning when my wife picked out his outfit, and he still wore the backpack. My wife is probably reading this and saying to herself, "It is not a contest Rashad!" But it SO is, and I'm losing big time.

Here's the visual evidence of our son's outfit/backpack combo: