Parents of many children have tricks they use to cut costs, and to keep order and sanity. When I was growing up in a family of seven children, one trick my mother used was to dress the girls all in the same outfit.
While it made for a great family photo, it also meant that that little pudgy one on the end (me) ended up wearing the same dress passed down from above for the next decade.
In case you wanted to know, that’s a pink tulip with a green stem on the front of that dress. Ask me how I can remember that little fact after so many years.
Here is another holiday photo and yup, I ended up wearing this snappy dress style for the next few years (for the record, I hated the feel of that “fake velvet” in front.) At least this one, though, had a bit more panache.
It was useless to argue. “Not going to throw a good dress out.” I can still hear my mother say.
When I’m grown up, I’d start my mantra, I am NEVER …
But then I left the house and all the things I thought were cruel to subject children to, all of the sudden started to make sense once I began having baby after baby, my own little flock.
Many kids cost money. Many kids get lost in crowds unless you know what to look for .
And besides, many kids dressed alike makes for a great family photo.
What is it they say about what goes around – it comes around?
Gotta keep those chicks in line.
***
Wendy Thomas writes about the lessons learned while raising children and chickens in New Hampshire. Contact her at Wendy@SimpleThrift.com
NH.com
Lessons Learned from the Flock 
We only have two, but we regularly dress them alike. In fact, we went to the Children’s museum last year and we all wore Captain America shirts. The teenagers thought it was dorky, the parents thought it was brilliant. One comment was ‘Wow, it’s great that we can tell who the kid belongs to right away.’ Lucky for me, as one of five, I was the only boy, so I didn’t get hand-me-downs…much
I love this post. Love it.
It’s the Family von Thomas!
Wonderful photos! I have BBG triplets and I dress them in the same color everytime we’re in public for the same reason….easy to pick them out in a crowd! We have backyard chickens, too…..my efforts to keep the farmgirl gene active in our suburban brood.
My mom made a lot of our clothes when my sister & I were young. You guessed, all three of us got dressed alike. Unfortunately, people tended to assume that my sister & I were twins. Given that we’re 3 1/2 years apart, don’t ask me why they thought so, but it came up surprisingly often.
I’ve inherited two big boxes of family slides – now I’ll have to go through them and see how many of these trio outfits were ‘documented’.