The War Has Begun

This is just the first battle.  I assume that there will be many many more battles with carnage and casualties left and right.  I thought I had a little more time before I had to strap on my armor and start fighting.  At least until Bailee was in school, but these are trying times for young mothers with young kids and I am afraid I will be fighting this war for many many years.  So I call this battle, the Battle of Spiderman and the Baggy Pants.  This battle began around the first of August when we were buying the kids' school clothes.  I saw the "cutest" brown shoes for Jeremy.  Thankfully, I had him with me and I showed him the shoes.  Sidenote:  I am a shoe snob.  I am of the opinion that you buy your kids one pair of really nice shoes that will last the whole year.  Jeremy hated my "cute" shoes.  He did pick out a pair of brown "skater" shoes so he could be like his dad.  Thanks a lot Matt.  So we buy them. A few shopping trips later I see that JC Penney's has their jeans on sale.  $8.  You can't get that at Walmart.  So I picked up a couple of pair for Jeremy.  Fast-forward a couple of weeks.  Sept. 10 to be exact.  The previous weeks I had noticed that Jeremy was wearing his crocs to school everyday.  I am not even going to start on what a fashion faux-pas it is to wear crocs with socks, so moving on.  I asked him why he wasn't wearing his skater shoes that he picked out and I spent $30 on.  Before you say anything, I know that trying to engage a 5-year-old in a battle of logic is doomed before I even begin, but I couldn't help myself.  I HATE those shoes.  I liked my perfectly proper dark brown leather shoes that he had no interest in.  So imagine my uproar when he says he HATES those shoes and he wants character shoes.  "ALL the kids at school have character shoes AND Ammon AND Sam."  I told him too bad.  He picked out those shoes, and those shoes are the ones he is wearing.  Sometime during the next few days, I related that story to Cindy and she begged me to let her get him some character shoes.  I told her as long as they weren't Power Ranger (that's a story for another time) she could get him whatever character shoes she wanted. So she comes up on Sunday with Spiderman Character Shoes.  Jeremy was in Heaven.  He slipped those puppies on and ran outside to climb a tree.  Apparently those lame skater shoes aren't any good for climbing trees.  In fact, his detest for them is so great, he separates them as much as he can:
 
So a few more days pass and I notice that he isn't wearing those jeans that I picked up for him.  He would his ratty old wranglers or shorts, but never the jeans.  Finally I couldn't take it any more.  I sharpened my sword and I prepared for battle.  This 5 year-old had nothing on me.  I survived the Prom Dress debacle of 1996 so I totally had him.  The start of the next week, I woke up Jeremy and told him to put on the jeans that I bought him.  "No, they are too baggy.  I hate them."  "Put them on or I will put them on for you."  "I don't care if you wear them."  "No I mean I will put them on you (5 year-old minds amaze me sometimes)."  "I won't.  I hate them."  "Alright, you asked for it."
I then preceded to wrestle him to the ground and sit on his legs.  You would think that I could incapacitate a 5 year-old.  He was kicking and screaming the whole time.  It took me ten minutes, but I managed to get him dressed.  Now, by this time he was throwing a MAJOR Tantrum. Sharon can vouch for the massive tantrum Jeremy was throwing.  I even think Linsey heard it clean down in Newcastle.  So before I reach the point of wanting to glue horns and a tail to him, I take him over to Grandma's.  She calms him down and says that he needs to wear clothes that he is comfortable in.  So she gets him some different clothes and sends him off to school.  I am fuming.  He is 5, he shouldn't care what he wears.  If it is this bad now, how is it going to be when he (and Bailee) are teenagers.  So I come home from work that day and see that mom has taken the liberty of sewing his pants so they are no longer "baggy".  And now Jeremy is fine with wearing them to school, and he hasn't given me a problem since then (with the jeans).  He still refuses to wear his brown skater shoes.  Not to worry though.  I am prepared to fight this battle until they have children of their own.  And when Jeremy brings me his little boy who is screaming because his shoes are lame.  I will be the one to make the problem disappear. Ahh, the circle of life.