Rachel the Fashionista

Rachel has become something of a fashionista lately, and while it's cute, I have to admit that I was not expecting her to have such strong opinions about clothing quite so soon. Getting dressed is occasionally fraught with disagreements about what is appropriate to wear. (Example: there is this adorable pair of pink polka-dotted capris that Rachel adores. Any morning that she spies them in the drawer, she insists on wearing them and will submit to poke her legs into nothing else. The weather here so far this spring has not been, how shall we say, conducive to wearing capris. More like snow pants, but that's another discussion. This weather-clothing correlation is difficult for the 18-month-old mind to grasp, even one so brilliant as our shining star's, and suffice it to say that we have had some interesting mornings.) One morning during our recent visit to Texas, she spied her windbreaker and had to put it on first:

She wore it all day, warm weather be darned!

Rachel's main interest in clothing is focused on socks. If I try to put a pair of socks on her without her having specifically chosen those socks, they come right off. Her preference is for pink socks, but when all the pink socks are in the wash, another bright color will do. (You should see bright yellow socks with the pink capris. Quite a sight.) A big shout-out to Maia for the green socks with butterflies on them. She found those in a box this morning, and they absolutely completed her outfit. (Note that I didn't say they complemented it!) At playgroup the other day, Rachel found a pair of Emma's socks (pink and white striped) and promptly stripped off her shoes and purple socks in anticipation of help putting on the pink ones. For the rest of the day, whenever she spied her feet, she would announce: "Eminema." She was very proud of wearing Emma's socks. Hope Emma didn't have cold feet that day!

Her opinions do not end once she has all her clothes on. We're still working on the idea of how many barrettes are enough:

And she's quite an accessorizer. Can you see what she's wearing around her neck?