School Uniforme

That is not a typo, in Spanish we call it a uniforme.

And my eldest daughter has decided she doesn't like the white polo.  Before you get annoyed, let me tell you a little tale:

Last year at the kids' school, families asked me if we were going to do new uniforms along with the new school name and charter.  At the time I said "there are no plans to do that, but even if we do, we will allow the old uniform until people grow out of them."  But apparently I lied.

This summer someone decided to get a new uniform, new colors, new everything---and not let the old ones fade out of existence slowly.  If I were a real environmentalist I would be annoyed on behalf of all the cotton grown and then thrown out in favor of getting a new pritty color.  But I am not a real environmentalist, so I will just be cheap and say that with three kids and only planning on staying here for 6 months, it was annoying enough to have to drop $150 on approximately 3 T-shirts, one white polo, and one aqua polo per child.  The office staff was kind enough to let me know that I needed at least one aqua polo for field trips.

So... three weeks into the school year AFTER I have spent my money, a nice little noticia comes home stating that the T-shirts are only for Fridays and we must have a polo during the weekday.  Well, since I have already spent the money, I don't really want to go out and get more polos, right?  I mean, you are with me on this so far, no?

But Bridget is not with me--or anyone at the school on this as she feels it somehow violates her personal freedom to have to wear a polo.  So she wears the T-shirt a few days in a row until she is informed that she will "lose free dress day the last Friday of the month" if she wears the T-shirt on any other day.

I almost told my daughter that if they can't enforce the uniform policy on her now, how could they enforce it on free dress day and were they going to expel her or something? But decide to lay down the law and support the policy even if I think it was badly done.

This morning, Bridget awakens to discover that she has no clean aqua polo, only a white one.  So she actually refuses to go to school.

Steve, being the super genius that he is tells her that she not only is NOT going to get to do dance (the special SWAT team at her school that just started) but that she cannot go to Disneyland again....(insert crying)... unless she works it off.  So her total chore set today?

--10 loads of laundry (it was 8 but since I mistakenly posted 10 on my fb status I will stick with it here)
--dishes
--spot carpet cleaning with a brush and carpet cleaner
--random other chores that we could think of
--unloading and putting away laundry
--cleaning off her dresser
--putting away the groceries
--babysitting Megs

I asked her "how was your day today?" and she predictably said that she missed school.  I said "what would you do differently?" she said "I would just deal with it."

When I asked her if she would wear the white polo she said "no" so I am not really sure we reached her, but we talked about finding the shirt the night before. Which she did not do, so wish us luck in the morning.