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Matching Coat and Shoes FTW

An early incident where I vividly recall eyerolling and face palming occurred when my oldest turned two years old in Germany. He was born in Texas and it was June and not all that hot by our standards.

Completely coincidentally, I bought him new shoes right before receiving a package from my mother. His brand new shows were a combo of primary colors: Blue, yellow and red. In the package, my mother included a hand-me-down coat in good condition in the exact same colors.

OH. MY. GOD. THEY MATCH.

So he's psyched and wants to wear them TOGETHER!!!!!!! Matchy-matchy!!!

In summer.

So I roll my eyes and tell him he's allowed to wear the winter coat IF he doesn't zip it all the way up AND leaves the hood off. I explain to him "You lose half your heat through your head, so if you leave the hood off, you should be fine."

SCIENCE EXPERIMENT TIME!!!!!

He puts the hood on and off a zillion times to check if that's true while trying to look up to see it. So now I'm face palming but I say nothing. He's allowed to check if that sciencey science is true all he wants.

And when I took him to daycare I told them "Let him wear the coat. It makes him happy. As long as he's not passing out from heat prostration, it's not worth the fight."

Years later, he told me that when he went to elementary school in Kansas, which was colder than where we lived in Germany, he was able to stay outside longer for recess in winter than other kids because he understood how to use clothes to keep himself warm. Other kids got too cold and went in early on really cold days. 

This is very similar to the lesson he got the same summer in finding his physical limits in terms of exhaustion. 
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