Imagining your kids dressed up for the holidays might conjure up adorable skinny jeans, handsome button-downs, bow-ties, ruffled tops and frilly dresses. Until reality sets in and you realize the likelihood that you’ll be out for five minutes before they’ve already spilled something on themselves or have managed to tear a hole in their stylish outfit. Here are some tips to get you through it.
Comfort
One tip for maintaining a well-styled kid for the holidays is balancing comfort and agility with clothes that balance classic looks with some cute trends. Soft pants with a slim leg and stretchy band around the waist are easy to pair with a patterned shirt. Long sleeve cotton dresses in seasonal colours are both practical and festive. It’s also a good idea to invest in quality for certain items, like a versatile winter jacket and pants they can wear for school or parties, while finding great deals on others, such as fun socks, underwear and T-shirts that wear out faster and are most likely to get dirty.
Layers
Although we typically dress kids warmer than ourselves to protect them from the elements, they tend to run and jump around a lot more than us. If we could bottle all that energy, we would probably drink it ourselves. Winter is tricky enough as it is with changing temperatures and bundling up to go outside only to sweat from all the bundling. The best solution is to go for the sweaters you wanted them to wear, but be sure to layer them over lighter t-shirts.
Change of clothes
Spills, rips and other issues are less dramatic if you have a change of clothes for your kids. Most parents do this before their kids are potty-trained or while they’re teething and drooling all over the place. However, even bigger kids can have bathroom accidents or have some run-ins that require a costume change. It doesn’t require much effort to bring an extra of everything (top, bottoms, underwear and socks) to leave in the car or toss in a tote bag. It’s better to be safe than sorry.
Bring pajamas
If you’re going out for holiday or New Year’s parties to the homes of family or close friends, you might want to anticipate that your kids will get hyper, then cranky, then fall asleep. Rather than cut the night short, pajamas are a good way to get kids more comfortable sleeping outside your house for the night, even if you’ll be driving back with them strapped into the car. All the better to transfer them into their beds once you get home anyway.
