The Shrine Of Disney

Before I had kids I promised a lot of things, no dummies (lasted 6 days!), no crazy flashing light up musical toys (my eldest wasn’t even born before we started collecting them!) and a minimal amount of characters.

I’m not sure what my issue with characters is. I think partially it’s the difference between a $11 pair of generic shoes and the $25 that can be spent on the same pair with a picture of Spiderman on. It’s also the thought of turning my child into a walking billboard, I don’t want him advertising for Disney or Nickelodeon or whoever. Primarily I think it’s just bitterness at asking for an Ariel doll one Christmas in my childhood and receiving a generic redhead mermaid doll, hell, if I didn’t have it then my kids can’t either. Santa had a lot to answer for that year.

As with all good intentions it has slowly dissolved. The boys have an older cousin, he’s just over two years older than Declan and my sister in law’s  last child, so most of Declan’s clothes for the first two years off his life (until he caught up size wise with my tiny nephew) were hand me downs. I’m not a complete idiot, so I’m not going to take someone’s generous gift of clothes and say “Actually, no thanks, they have Thomas The Tank Engine on them” and hand them back, so things started creeping into his wardrobe that way. Anything I bought new for Declan back then either featured generic images or was completely plain.

Then Dan and I discovered, through my nephew’s clothes, how much easier it made everything, a battle to put on the “blue pyjamas” turned into sheer excitement and even a rush to the bedroom when we said “time to put on your Thomas pyjamas”. Suddenly all the arguing about getting dressed eased as I slowly started slipping in character vests and pyjamas  – of course, nothing that would be seen outside of the house, because then he’d be back to walking billboard status.

Then my baby became a toddler, and then my toddler became a preschooler with a mind of his own. We now can’t walk through a store without him pointing out every single character he can see – and we don’t even have a television! He watches a minimal amount of shows and yet somehow everything gets sucked in. Dan had a picture of Batman as his desktop background for a month or so, and well, if Daddy thinks it’s cool then it’s probably awesome, he’s never watched any form of Batman, the movies, the TAS, even the old campy version, and yet it’s still so firmly engraved in his brain that it’s the most awesome thing EVER and so he must have anything and everything that features the caped crusader.

We went into Big W for some shoes today, we walked out with a Batman vest, a Roary vest, a Spiderman t-shirt and a Lightening McQueen hat, come night time Declan unpacked them and took them all to bed with him. We have no shoes because Dan and I started to argue, Dan (and Declan) wanted the Spiderman shoes, I wanted the generic We both refused to back down and ended up walking out of there with everything but something to put on the kid’s feet.

Dan’s argument, which I can understand, is that this is basically the first time we’ve bought him an entire wardrobe of clothes, with absolutely no hand me downs, so he should get clothes that he wants and loves.

My argument is that this is the first time we’ve bought him an entire wardrobe of clothes, and I’d rather not spend twice the amount because they have Lightening McQueen on the front.

Cue standstill. Dan says I have to be less of a tightarse, I say Dan has to pander less to what his two year old wants.

Do we give him what he wants and so keep this enthusiasm for his clothes and getting dressed still strong, or do I say “Sorry kid, Best & Less only from now on, say goodbye to Ironman.”?

I say we swap our son for a child with a little less fashion awareness. He couldn’t care less about branded toys over generic ones or duvet covers with XYZ on them,  just the clothes. I thought I had another ten years before I would have to deal with such self-awareness!