How to sew a button on a pair of pants…sort of.

“Hey Mom…the button came off my dress pants. Can you sew it on before school tomorrow?”

Spider-Man’s entire hockey team wears dress clothes to school on every game day and today will be the last day where the boys will look their handsome selves…all spiffy in their dress pants, shirts and ties…standing out as the respectful team players they are. (Well…handsome despite their play off scruff!)

We’re heading into Provincials this weekend. A fabulous way to end the entire season that had me chasing back and forth from one exciting game to the next despite Spider-Man’s 11-week collar-bone break.

Wait…was he talking to me?

“Your button fell off your pants? Can’t you just put a belt on?” I asked.

“I saved it…it’s in the pocket,” he replied from upstairs ignoring my request for buttonless pants and not having a sweet clue what was going on inside my head. These are the moments where my mothering skills are greatly lacking. Sewing and I don’t get along….but admittedly, he didn’t ask me to re-tie his necktie or that would have been worse!

Each and every time I’m left holding that ridiculous piece of cloth while looking up “how to tie a necktie” on youtube and having to repeat it over and over until I finally get something resembling a knot. Sigh.

This morning, while barely awake, the search began for needle and thread! A hunt through the kitchen junk drawer uncovered a few old house keys, the knob from the closet door, two locks, several packs of stale gum, multiple memory sticks, a few dead batteries, my missing sunglasses and one of those fabric tomato things.

You know…the one that holds the sewing needles with the little nub thing that dangles from a string with some sort of rocks in it that supposedly, when you put the needle in and out, sharpens the needle to a fine point.

Which would be fantastic…except it was empty.

Well…empty but for a darning needle…for all the socks I darn…where, regardless of the blunt thick end of the massively large instrument, I still went ahed and tested it on the fabric of the dress pants…to no avail. The needle wouldn’t go through despite me shoving it back and forth in the tomato nub sharpener thingy and trying again.

So the hunt continued.

Eventually, I found a needle (and a paperclip) attached to an “I heart NY” magnet at the bottom of the drawer.

Step one…complete.

Next…find thread.

There was lots..all wrapped in tangles throughout the various items in the junk drawer but nothing that resembled the colour of his dress pants.

I emptied the drawer atop the kitchen counter and was delighted to find a bag of wee little bobbins that, at some point, I must have purchased AND had the foresight to put in the bag! But there was no black…or dark grey…or brown.

Purple would do.

This morning, before tea, still blurry eyed while my boy slept, I criss-crossed purple thread back and forth until his button was securely attached to his dress pants.

Satisfied, I poured my tea, put my feet up and patted myself on the back for another successful mommy moment just as he walked down the stairs with disheveled hair and boxers asking in his thick morning voice “Did you sew the button on my pants?”

“Of course,” I answered in my “I can do anything” voice.

“Thanks” he said as he picked up his dress clothes and started back up the stairs…but not before turning back and throwing that dreaded piece of thin silk fabric my way and saying “Oh yeah, and can you tie my tie.”