Some parents let their toddlers pick out their own clothes.  I prefer not to let my daughter out of the house with pants on her head (or in a striped shirt with striped pants and striped legwarmers as pictured above), so this doesn’t work for us.  I am, in fact, very particular about how I dress my girls.  Mr Superhero always asks me to pick out their outfits because really? It’s just easier that way. In my perfect world, I would dress them in nothing but clothes from Tea Collection and Crew Cuts, but that would limit my funds for feeding them.  Therefore I shop a lot of sales and consignment stores.

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The best way to buy clothes on the cheap is to have a very clear idea of what your child’s style is. People sometimes mistakenly tell me that babies don’t have a style, but I swear they do.  Sometimes I pick up an item and think well, it’s nice, but it’s not really Wonder Baby’s style.  This means that it doesn’t fit their colouring/body shape and that it doesn’t follow the rules.  I’m sure everyone has different rules when dressing their children.  My friends with boys only have one rule “would my husband wear this in a bigger size?”  These boys are adorable and stylish, but it’s much more complicated with girls.  I am sadly not someone who looks amazing in an empire waist bubble dress. My rules are as follows:

1) Prints beat graphics which beat licensed characters.  I am one of “those moms.”  My girls don’t watch TV and my 2.5 year old doesn’t know who Elmo is.   We don’t even have Dora panties (although I totally don’t judge, she just likes the butterflies more).  Wearing licensed characters on your clothes to me feels like I paid to advertise that character on my child’s body.  And usually they are more about the character than the style.  Graphics are sometimes cute but often tacky, so it’s a bit hit and miss.  Prints are safer; I especially love stripes.


2) Nothing on the pants.  How hard is it to find girl’s jeans without a rhinestone butterfly on them?  Very hard!  Half their pants are boys’ pants.  Pair it with a cute top and no one is the wiser.  As a side note, another pants rule is “no stiff pants until they can walk” (jeggings win over jeans), at which point we switch to the “no sweats in public” rule (the jeans below are actually very soft).

3) No rhinestones or sparkles on anything.  This is a bit of a backlash on the whole girly girly culture that has sprung up in recent years.  Oh, and it doesn’t apply to hair accessories.  I think that you can be feminine without glittering.

4) Pink is a nice colour, but not the only one. Also a girly girly backlash.  Now I don’t want you to think that I dress them like boys; Toddler Girl wears dresses more often than pants, but these dresses come in many colours.  This is especially annoying with a tiny baby as it seems like all the clothes are super girly and super pink so that no one thinks she’s a baby boy (and sadly, some old lady will still tell you that your son is adorable in that lacey pink dress).  I don’t understand why it’s so hard to find purple baby clothes; isn’t purple a girly colour too?  I also often balance a gender neutral outfit with a cute hair clip, which honestly is needed to keep Wonder Baby’s hair out of her eyes.

5) Would either I or a classic children’s book character wear this?  Cute clothes often fall into one of these two categories.  I would totally wear her stripey hoodie if it came in my size, and I love simple, classic dresses.

Those are my main rules.  There are other, subtler things (like don’t wear a onesie with pants, it looks like a tucked in t-shirt, or all hats should ideally have bear ears) but these help me sort through hand me downs, sales, and consignment stores to come up with wardrobes for them that I love.

Do you have rules for dressing your kids?  Or I am the only crazy one here?