‘I leave the house proud: this can’t go wrong’
Image: Nine IJf
Laura Hogendoorn is editor-in-chief of Mamaplaats and a columnist for Kek Mama. She lives in ‘t Gooi, together with her boyfriend Oscar and their children Roef (8), Sierd (6) and Maia (4).
Early in the morning I sneak down in the dark. Before I go to work, I make three piles of clothes. One for each child. I put their shoes directly under it. This way, when they get up, hubby doesn’t have to think about this anymore and he can devote all his attention to breakfast. I proudly leave the house with the reassuring thought: this can’t go wrong.
In good spirits I am waiting in the afternoon after work at the schoolyard to pick up my offspring. In the distance I see a child stumbling towards in an oversized sweater, pants that sagged off his ass and shoes that are four sizes too big. How come he’s wearing his big brother’s clothes? At that moment I realize that it also went wrong the other way around. And yes, there comes from behind a tree a rather unhappy boy, dressed in a kitty bellybutton sweater with pants so tight that you can barely breathe.
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Sense of fashion
Their father’s sense of fashion and practical insight is truly unprecedented. In the middle of winter, the children often walk (when mother is away) in a T-shirt with shorts through the freezing cold. And in the summer in a wool sweater, because they like it so much. With matching red hot cheeks. And it also went wrong last Sinterklaas. Our youngest was allowed to dress up as Pietje. At the end of the day I received the photos on the class app: thirty children dressed up and one child (mine) without a Piet suit. Not such a disaster you would think, but the painful came from our middle class. There was one fully dressed Piet among his 28 classmates.
“Top designers such as Mart Visser and Viktor & Rolf can once again draw inspiration from this”
Oh well, it’s all well-intentioned. It is certainly not my intention. Even when he recently took our daughter to a birthday party, dressed in tights. Tights only. Very handy, according to hubby, because if you pull up tights properly, you have socks, trousers and a (strapless) shirt in one. Look, top designers such as Mart Visser and Viktor & Rolf can once again draw inspiration from this.
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