Sock Tales

One of the Christmas presents Kayla picked out for me was a pair of thick, knee-high socks. I later asked Joe why he bought them knowing I don't wear socks like that. He said Kayla saw the socks and was so excited about them; insisting she wanted to get that particular pair of socks for me.

I initially thought I would just return the socks to the store, but then decided to wear them since Kayla was so excited about picking them out for me. I figured I would wear them once and then they would remain untouched in my sock drawer because they were knee-high and I just knew the elastic feeling under my knees would bother me.

To my surprise, I love these socks. I wear them often around the house, especially at night, because they are soft, warm, comfy and light-weight. I hardly even notice that the socks come up to just under my knees.

Kayla started calling these my 'silly' socks so I when I saw these socks at the store, which are similar in material (just not knee-length), I bought them for her. She was happy to have some 'silly' socks of her own.

I'm the first to admit I'm far from a fashionista - especially when it comes to socks. I stick with easy. The big package of white, ankle socks. Those are the kind of socks I buy for Kayla, too. The only color on the socks are across the toes and on the heel.

Since Kayla seemed to like the 'silly' socks so much I went looking for some fun, printed, regular socks for her to wear out.

I bought a set of 3 knee-high socks, and a set of 6 ankle socks. She was exited about all of them. Before I cut off the tags and opened them I asked her repeatedly if she was going to wear them and she insisted YES!

I opened the ankle socks first and she seemed to like all of them. Then I opened the knee-high ones and she was even more excited about those. She picked out a pair to wear to school and I guess she felt new socks were meant to be displayed so everyone would be able to see them. She wanted her jeans rolled up high enough to see the socks. Then when I told her not to have her jeans rolled so high she wanted to pull the socks up over the jeans.

I tried to explain to her we don't wear our socks like that. Then I had flashbacks to my own childhood. I know I'm dating myself here, but I'm sure some of you out there remember pegging the bottom of your jeans and rolling them a couple of times? And then you had the 'scrunched' socks - or made your socks scrunched? We may even have pegged our pants legs and pulled our socks up over those but I can't quite remember ... it's been too many years.

So she wore the knee-high socks, and wore them proudly. And then came the morning when I tried to give her the cute ankle socks with an animal face ... the ones she excitedly said she would wear. Now it was, "I don't WANT those socks! I want the OTHER socks!"

Now Miss-Never-Had-An-Opinion-About-Her-Socks has all but refused to wear the ankle socks; she only wants those knee-high socks. Which I only have 3 pair of. I've managed to get her to wear the ankle socks a couple of times when the knee-high pairs are in the hamper, or she reverts back to her old white socks (which are also ankle so I know it's not a problem with the length...except I guess now she prefers knee-high socks so she can pull them up.). Hopefully this summer she'll start wearing those ankle socks.

Speaking of socks ...

World Down Syndrome Day (WDSD) is on March 21. This is the 8th year for this global recognition and 2nd year of being officially observed by the United Nations. Down Syndrome International (DSI) announced that the WDSD Conference will once again be held at the United Nations Headquarters in NY. This year's conference is entitled Right To Work.

DSI also announced the "Lots of Socks" campaign for raising awareness on WDSD. I'm not quite sure what socks have to do with Down syndrome, or how it will raise awareness.

The idea is to wear brightly colored, or mismatched, or long, or printed socks and that people will notice and maybe ask you about your socks?