I put on some knee-high black boots one day as I was getting ready to take my daughter to kindergarten.  My five-year-old put on her boots.

My two-year-old looked from my boots to her big sister’s boots and asked, “Where my boots?”

“Um, you don’t have boots sweetheart.  You can put on your tennis shoes.”

“But I want boots.”

“Well, we don’t have any boots that fit you.”

She looked around at the colorful display of shoes lined up against the wall and saw that there were indeed no boots among them.  She sat herself down with a pout and said with a dramatic sigh, “I never have any boots EVER!”

Both of my daughters have always had a distinct sense of fashion.  I haven’t been able to tell my five-year-old what to wear for years now.  She always chooses her own outfits and accessories, and becomes very stubborn if I try to suggest that she wear anything in particular, right down to the rubberband that holds her ponytail.  When she was less than a year old, I remember one time when she struggled to take the shoes off that I had put on her, and then she crawled into her closet, chose her black patent leather shoes, and handed them to me.  She pointed to her black pants and then the black shoes, as if it was obvious that they should be paired together.

When my husband sees things like this, he  is baffled by their desire to wear just exactly the right shoes for a particular outfit.  He insists that he still has a difficult time some days just coordinating the colors of his shirt and his pants.