Stretch

There's really no reason I would have known that my kids were outgrowing their winter raincoats. It's not like we had any rain, or even cold weather, before January (nya-nay!) I was keeping up with the growth spurts in the pants department. I had let out all of the hems in November and December. But when my kids were gearing up for the wet walk to school last week, I noticed this:

When I was Ben's age, going through growth spurts, I could tell that my arms were ridiculously long. Chimpanzee long. Knuckles dragging on...OK, so that's a bit hyperbolic. But my father was also self-conscious about his arms in his teenage years. So now that I am seeing limb-focused growth-spurts in my own children, I am particularly sensitive to the fact that long sleeves really are supposed to go ALL the way to the end of your arms. I deal with it for myself by buying women's tall sizes, which are about an inch longer in the arms. But what do you do for kids? They don't make tall sizes for children. Regular, slim, and husky, yes, but nobody makes a "boys 12 tall." I buy Ben's pants from Lands End, which offers a few styles of pants unfinished/unhemmed, allowing me to make them as long as he needs them. But for shirts and jackets, I'm still hosed. Despite my sewing skills, I can't buy fabric of high enough quality (locally, at least, I have had some luck with online fabric shopping) to make it worth the effort to make daily wear. He's waaaay to thin for men's sizes, so no go for men's tall departments. But what about women's?

Aha! Women's tall sizes for Mom and Ben for the forseable future. More expensive, but self-confidence is worth something.