For the majority of my life I’ve been a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy. Sure, there was that period in the 90’s when I was in college and all I owned were stovepipe-legged Jeanco pants that nearly hid my shoes. I had a chain wallet, dyed part of my hair blue and I wouldn’t be caught dead near a pair of jeans. Nowadays I couldn’t be caught dead near a pair of Jeancos, although the chain wallet is tempting...but I digress.

My daily dressing routine is pretty easy. I open my closet full of t-shirts (mostly black, of course), and decide which shade of cool/geeky I want to be that day. All of my shirts go well with jeans, so there’s no concern over clashing or having a fashion faux pax. However, now that we have a daughter that I have to dress, my world of easy fashion is clashing with her world of girly, colorful and exotic clothes.

I can’t lie: getting our daughter ready for the day has been a bit stressful for me, and this was taken to new heights one day when I prepped her and took her to daycare. One of the ladies took one look at her as we walked in and commented that “daddy must have dressed you today.” Even though I didn’t think the outfit was that bad, and to my knowledge she didn’t have a Baby Cosmopolitan photo shoot that day, I was embarrassed. Ever since then, when it’s my turn to dress Miss O, I get a little worry in my head that I’m going to dress her like she salvaged her clothes from a plane crash on an island with a smoke monster.

This past week my belief of what looked good, and limited knowledge of fashion rules, were turned upside down while I was watching my wife get the little one ready for the day. She began by putting on a purple and white striped top, and then proceeded to pull out red pants with white polka dots on them. I immediately went to Defcon 3, readied our air force, and reminded my wife that striped and polka dots do not go together. In my head, I had saved our daughter from going to daycare dressed like a clown. However my wife decided to drop some knowledge on me that I’m still scratching my head at:

Her: “Don’t worry about the stripes and polka dots thing. As long as the clothes are made by the same company, it’s ok.” (She later told me that the clothes need to be in the same line for this to work)

Me: “Wait, what? So you’re telling me that she can wear anything as long as it’s made by the same company? How does that work? Plus, I thought breaking the rule about mixing stripes and polka dots was a no-no.’

Her: “Well, I wouldn’t personally wear an outfit like this. But, she’s a toddler so she can pull it off.”

Apparently I need to read up on current fashion rules, as well as everything else that toddlers can pull off that adults cannot. I’ve got a lot of learning to do.