is it a kind of dream?

It was no uniform day at school for Children in Need. Pumpkin wanted to wear a pretty dress, but, in her words, 'only a dress i can step into, not one goes over my head...' she said.

We've been having a LOT of difficulty getting her dressed lately, and sweatshirts/jumpers are right out, as is anything that pulls over her head. She panics inside and starts fighting and screaming to get it off.

I got a couple out of her closet and she picked the gorgeous red corduroy Next one with a zip up the chest, which she's been photographed in before.  

This is the very dress. http://pics.livejournal.com/leoniedelt/pic/003c6742

Its supposed to go over the head, but she desperately wanted to step into it. 

So we tried. She got one arm into it and it cinched up around her body (the more she pulled, the worse it got), and the panic began.

The blood curdling screaming unlike most of you have ever heard in your lives, as the child fought furiously to get the one arm out, and as i tried to get it off her.  She's powerful strong and really hard to deal with when screaming at 100000 decibels. No matter what i did, i couldn't comfort her or calm her, and it was escalating to ear piercing shrieking.

So I ended up taking hold of the dress at the front where the zip stopped, and ripping it apart down to the bottom, to get her out of it and end the panic.

She screamed and cried about having been 'stuck' (if she had stopped pulling, i'd have gotten her into it, but it was like wrestling an alligator) - and then screamed and cried harder because we ruined her dress. I was trembling myself, because it was so upsetting, the sound of her voice as she screamed, that high pitched panic-scream of 'oh god i'm stuck'... i was almost in tears.

The remains of the dress are in the bin, its irreparable. The zip got shredded, in addition to a tear down the front from zip to the bottom of the dress.

So, after we dropped her at school (in trousers mind you!!) then we went to Asda to buy her a new red cord dress, but this time one that buttons down the back. Ended up buying quite a nice outfit (dress and top to go under it) for £10, which is far more than we like to spend (i do charity shops, kthnksbai), but it was worth it.

She was elated when she got in the car after school and found the new dress waiting for her.

Tomorrow is family portraits day.  There will be cute pictures taken of lovely girl in her new red dress that buttons down the back. Yes.