Pajama Fashion Critic

My boys have so much clothes. Between birthdays, Christmas and hand-me-downs, they have bags of jeans, shirts, hoodies and pajamas. Cool pajamas that match. When I was a kid, we were lucky to have socks that matched, much less pajamas. I blame it on the public laundry dryers. They separate a matching item like Angelina Jolie separates married couples.

Come bedtime, my boys are a Nickelodeon nightmare, a Marvel comic billboard. One time, when the younger one was about two, we couldn't go to bed until we located a specific Spiderman PJ'. For an hour we went through the different Spidey tops while he repeated "Where's my Piderman janomas?!"

To this day, they never have to wear the same outfit to bed twice - I'm sure it would drive Freddy Krueger nuts.

Of course, when you add my mother into the mix, they become pajama-fashion-tragedy. She likes to add wool vests to everything, so the other night my four-year old was sporting a Spongebob shirt, argile vest, Cars bottoms and two-toned socks - my husband came up to kiss them goodnight and said, "who dressed you?"

My mom's intentions to keep them warm could have been avoided if we kept the house at human temperature. My husband's a New Englander at heart - they're used to keeping their houses at temperatures that are normal for the Exorcist. After all, if you can't see your breath while you're sleeping...you could be dead.

Until my mother-in-law gave me a pair of flannel bottoms for Christmas, my night clothes were just shirts and pants that were too embarrassing to wear out in public. The flannel bottoms that I got for Christmas, mind you, are not any classier than the sweats - but it's suitable for the other strange New England practice of going to Dunkin' Donuts in pajama bottoms and a parka.

It's a functional look.

I may knock it but it's coordinated and that's more than I can say for myself. I used to think, who's going to see you in your pajamas? But then I got to thinking, there's that chance if, God-forbid (as the Fire chief kept saying), there was a fire in the middle of the night and I had to run out of the house. I could picture the emergency workers being Blackwell all the sudden, "Did you see her pajamas? She should've burned down with the house!"

No. I don't want to be that Pajama-faux-pas person. If my flannel bottoms must be plastered with images of Eeyore or Tinkerbell, I'll make sure my tops are solid.

It's the vests that "make" these pajamas work!