Malakai: the ring-bearer

Malakai is going to be a ring bearer next month for the 2nd time. The first time was for my sister-in-law, Kristi's,  wedding back in September. It was interesting, to say the least. I don't recall if I've blogged about it specifically, but I do know I've mentioned Malakai's aversion to clothing. Recently, that has changed some, but I'll get to that later.

So prior to Kristi + Nick's wedding my mother-in-law did a fantastic job prepping him for the big day. Months before hand she talked it up. She made his vest for the big day and his wearing it was our main concern. Not only because it was a piece of clothing (because that alone, was enough to stress him out) but it was a piece of clothing different than T-shirts and shorts.

Now, I do take some responsibility for his attitude toward clothes, I did let him frolic around our house in just his undies for a very long time. I mean...doesn't everyone wish they could do that? I digress. So, when it was time to get dressed, it became a fight. It did get easier as he understood that if he wanted to go   that he'd have to get dressed. He was still picky about what it was that he wore. T-shirts and shorts and occasionally jeans. 

We spent so much time focusing on getting him to wear the vest, that we did forget about the dress pants and button-up shirt. The day before the wedding we were preparing to leave our house for the rehearsal and dinner when Malakai threw the most epic fit about wearing a polo shirt ("buttons!"). He got himself so worked up that he was irretrievable. Then, the puked. He was that upset about it. So, we let him wear whatever he wanted that day and knew to be really careful about how we approached him on the wedding day. We were all a part of the wedding and couldn't risk getting vomited on before walking down the aisle.

After a lot of running around (literally), some tears, and a lot of angry birds graham crackers this is what Malakai wore...

{why yes, that is a yellow Avengers T-shirt underneath his vest}

see, he wore the vest. The rest of the outfit, not so much.

Things have gotten better since then and it got even easier after I made him a list of daily routines, that he started to call his "projects", 3rd on the list is to get dressed.

 He doesn't ask me "where are we going" or "who's coming over" when it's time to put clothes on. He just does it, a lot of the time by himself.

{look mama, it's red, your FAVORITE!}

However, when my cousin Valeena asked me if Kai could be the ring bearer in her wedding next month I was apprehensive. Not because I didn't think he could complete the task, but because I wasn't sure what she'd want him to wear. I warned her about last time and that I'd totally understand if she'd want to back down, but she didn't. So, for this wedding he is going to wear a white T-shirt (hallelujah!), dress pants, shoes, and suspenders- all in brown. I have the shoes, the rest we'll have to work on. I do however have blue suspenders. I can't recall if they were Ben's when he was little, or perhaps my younger brother Cody's. Either way, I decided to warm him up to the idea of them and he blew me away with how curious and almost excited he was about trying something new...

How precious is he in that funky little outfit. My husband threw out the word "hipster", which Kai immediately repeated over and over again. whoops.

So here's hoping we can get him to wear the whole outfit this time around. And hey- anyone have recommendations on where to get the rest of his outfit?... especially brown suspenders?