Josh's Coat Exchange

Josh (10) didn't have a winter coat as of Wednesday. Tuesday night the weather decided to drop (what felt like) 60 degrees overnight. It's freezing here. Literally.

Some back story about Josh- He is always cold. He thinks 95 degrees outside is splendid. He has often said he wants a face mask to wear outside in the cold.

So we leave lunch with my grandma (post below) and head to the coat store. I'm a little emotionally distraught. I wait patiently as he tries on two-thirds of all the coats in his size. He decides he likes this letterman jacket style one. It has no hood. I point that out to him and suggest a bright green, Antarctica ready parka, complete with hood and velcro to close the hood over his face. He declines in favor of the letterman jacket. Okay. We go pay for his new coat. He immediately rips the tags off and wears it out of the store.

Well, almost out of the store. There are those quarter gumball machines at the door and the boys spend far too much time longingly staring at them, asking me over and over again if they have any quarters in my purse (they don't).

I should note here that Bug (3) got a terrible night's sleep and is coming down with a cough. He's all sorts of grumpy at this point. We make our way through the frigid wind to the car, and wait a painstaking amount of time for Bug to navigate his 5-point harness with a coat and gloves on. The instant his last buckle clicks, Josh says, "Wait, this coat doesn't have a hood. Man, I want to go back and exchange it for the green one."

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Deep breath, in and out. I contemplate telling him he made his choice and he'll just have to suck it up until next year. But that's not how the real world works and that's not how I want to roll. So in we go to exchange for the green one. He handles the whole transaction and then comes to me with the best, "Thanks, Mom" I ever heard. He knows how much self control and patience it took for me to handle that situation gracefully, and he really appreciated it.