I made a pile of several pairs of trousers for him in the summer... All the full length ones are TOO SHORT again!
He wants some base layer fleece shirts for the winter. I said I would buy the fabric, but he has to make the shirts. The fabric came from Point North the other day. I downloaded a pattern from the Shelby website. He needs a Medium for width, but we've added several inches to the length!
We've done the tiling, he added all the seam allowances, and has cut out the pattern.
You all remember when he was my Cherub and looked like this:
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Not so long ago... Except that he now looks like this!
We were at a tournament this past weekend and "Brent", a boy a year younger than mine spotted my daughter and came careening up to her and asked her, breathlessly, "Is your brother here?" It had been several months since we'd seen them - the last time would have been early spring, in Pacific.
A little background: Brent is a year younger than mine (so 13, now), very small for his age and ADHD out the wazoo. His mother races with another local club. When he runs he looks like a marionette on crack - there's arms and legs everywhere, he's always knocking things over, and he gets bitten by his own dogs and other people's (and snapped at by handlers as well) because he moves like wounded prey, he never pays attention to what's going on around him and he has no respect for personal boundaries.
My son has always been very kind to the kid, sharing his video games and comic books and as a result, Brent has attached himself to our club and sticks to my son like a barnacle.
His mom is good people, so I generally invite Brent to eat lunch with our club so she and her friends can go out and get something to eat at a sit-down restaurant without having to ride herd on Senor Spaz. The first time, she came to our crating area looking for him and I told her we'd invited him to stay and have pizza with us, and if she wanted to go out and grab something I'd keep an eye on him. She said, "My god, really? Are you sure?" I assured her it was fine and she literally got teary-eyed when she thanked me.
When he approached my daughter, her brother was standing right next to her. She said, "He's right here", and pointed. Brent looked up. And up. And in his inimitable "Brent" fashion, blurted out, "Holy crap, dude, what happened to you?!"
Yup, James is 5'11" and 14 and one month! He has two older cousins: George, who is 6'3" at 17, and John, who is 6'2" amd 15. George plays rugby and stuff, and is reasonably substantial (well, a string bean with muscles!), but John is a total elf! Turn him sideways, and except for The Nose (inherited from my pa, via his mum), he'd vanish. James is not like his two tall slimm cousins. He is not fat as you can see from the pix, but he IS built like a brick wall! Swims and plays rugby...
My working hypothesis is that by the time he's 18, I'll have a Saxon looking version of this:
Well, Lady Kate, it *does* happen, and when we least expect it. Hubby marked a Sunday funny for me, Baby Blues, one of our favorites. Mom had just finished hemming her son's pants and he was preening in them when, BAM, growth spurt. Her question was why he always had to have growth spurts AFTER she just finished hemming his pants and he replied that he didn't plan them, they just happened!!...Oh so true!!
In my case, it's Bek that's going through a growth spurt right now. I bought (yes, I said bought) her some jeans and sneakers before school started thinking she'd have at least until January before I'd have to buy new ones (just for the record, I don't make her jeans because I don't want to be bald when I'm done. But I do make most everything else for her). Well, school started in August, and she was in 4T jeans and size 10 (US) girls shoes. It's barely November and she's wearing 5 (NOT toddler!) jeans and 10.5 (US) shoes!!! Tom is still my skinny monkey and can wear size 8 pants...he seems to go up a size a year. However, his feet went from a 12.5 (US) to a 2(US) between the end of school last year and the beginning of school this year. WHen I asked him if his old shoes were hurting, he said they were, but he didn't know if we had the money to get him new shoes....ARGH!!! Needless to say, I told him not to worry about family finances, and the next time he feels the end of his shoe with his toe, he needs to tell me so that we can get him new ones.
Ah well....pretty soon they'll both be in the Jr/Adult size clothing and that's about the time I will have gone completely grey. Aren't kids great?
Bummer! Can you hem them up to shorts length so he can get a bit more use? I know it's probably getting coolish there, but USA kids seem to wear shorts year 'round, even in cool damp OR.
I do that, too. I'm comfortable in shorts and a fleece jersey down to about 35. Below that I want long pants.
I subbed at one of the high schools last week and one of the boys was concerned that his shorts might be too short. They were about mid knee length - school rules specify that your butt cheeks have to be covered, so this was about fashion, not dress code.
He asked the opinion of his male classmates and the concensus was that they were marginal. One of them suggested loosening his belt a notch and letting the waistband ride lower on his hips. This was tried and it got him the extra leg coverage, then he pulled his shirt up in the back and asked if he was likely to get busted for sagging. The peanut gallery was of the opinion that if he left his shirt untucked nobody was going to get on him about it.
I had a terrible time keeping a straight face through all of this. I do not remember boys being this fashion conscious when I was in high school. I kept waiting to hear him ask if they made his butt look big.
When I was James's age (1970... Yeah, back in the Dark Ages!), and complained that there was something wrong with my hair, my dad's reply was always: Shave it all off and paint flowers on instead! I have tried this one on James when he complained about his hair being 'too long - it sticks out above my ears!' For some reason this concept earned me a
*very* old fashiond look, and flew like a lead canary.
James complained that one pair of trousers was too short, so I suggested I made it into a skirt for him, a la the jeans skirt. That one also plumeted...
LOL! You never met my brother! HE was the one who read fashion mags and spend hours in front of the mirror. I was the hippy girl was (and still is) militantly against conformity and mindless consumption! I was probably the only young woman in the entire american South who never once had "Texas cheerleader bangs" during the 1980s! :-D
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