Tugging at those heart strings

Tomorrow the kids are having their class pictures taken at school. It's almost strange how excited they are about them. When Migc got home from school, he could barely make it through dinner before he went to pick out what he was wearing. He was so excited to pick out his clothes.

Upon finishing dinner, he promptly left the table to get it all squared away. I was in Kristen's room helping her figure out what to wear, when he came up to ask me where his "tuxedo" was.

Back story - the kids came home from Chicago at Christmas with some new clothes. Their dad had taken them to pick something out with a gift card that someone had given him. Migc picked out a white dress shirt and a tie. I have no idea where this came from because no one around him wears ties. Justin sometimes wears them to church and but no one, including his dad, wears them regularly. Well, that's great - dress shirt and tie, except that the dress shirt was too small. The shoulders were small, the length was small and the arm were small. And the tie...*sigh*...was a toddler tie. It would have fit a 4 year old nicely, not an 8 year old.

I didn't have the heart to tell him they were too small. He was excited about them. In fact, I took him to meet people with those clothes on because he wore them home on the airplane. They were embarrassingly small.

When I started packing stuff up to put our house on the market, I packed those up and I'm pretty sure that I gave them away. I honestly didn't think it would ever come up again. But tonight...he wanted to know where they were. I told him that they probably got packed and he left the room looking very sullen.

I finished helping Kristen and went downstairs to talk with him. He was sad looking when I walked in. I asked him to sit on the bed with me - that I wanted to talk to him. I explained to him that the clothes were too small and that I was very sorry that he'd come home with clothes too small. He cried so hard. His heart was completely broken. I asked him if we could find something else and, as Migc is, he'd shut down by then and didn't even want to talk. He just sat there with tears streaming down his face.

I couldn't take it. I told him that I would take him up to Wal-Mart and buy him a new dress shirt and tie that would fit him if that is what he wanted to wear. I asked him if he'd rather wear something "cooler" for the pictures. If he did, I could help him pick something from his closet. He agreed to go to Wal-Mart...and still sat there. I asked him for a hug and he said no. I asked why and he said because he didn't want a hug. I told him I wanted one, but he wasn't giving it up. He agreed to look through his clothes to see if there was something in there.

We looked through them and he found something that he could wear if he didn't find anything at Wal-Mart that he wanted.

Then, he walked a few steps toward me and hugged me. *melt*

He found something at Wal-Mart that he fell in love with! Dress shirt and tie with a mohawk it is!