A Boy and His Shirt

For Colton's third birthday back in March, a good friend of ours (with a severe mild superhero addiction) gifted our boy a superhero shirt.  Our friend was crazy excited to give it to Colton, so I didn't have the heart to tell him that Colton had shown zero interest in superheroes, and had no idea who anyone on the darn shirt even was (there are a handful of heroes on there).  Colton wore it once or twice over the next month or so...just like any other shirt in his rotation.
But around June, something changed.  Colton literally became obsessed with the shirt.  He wanted to wear it every day.  And when he had it on, he wanted to wear it for multiple days at a time, insisting on putting it back on after his bath, to bed, once he woke up again in the morning, etc.  (obviously we came up with some rules for this, but he still ended up wearing it about two days a week...).  On top of that, not only had he learned all the names of the guys (don't ask me how because I, most certainly, had no idea who they were), but also what some of them said or did.  "Hulk says 'don't make me angry'," "Wolverine does two claw," and so on.
When we were packing for Florida a few weeks ago, I had saved the superhero shirt for Colton to wear on the plane.  He spotted it in his closet and was absolutely insistent that he wear it in Florida.  I tried to explain to him that he would wear it in Florida if he wore it on the plane.  But that wasn't good enough.  He informed me that he wanted to wear it in Big Papa's house, and promptly took it off the hanger and put in the suitcase.
And sure enough, on our first full day in Florida, he put his superhero shirt on to go over to see my granddad.  Luckily, Papa was duly impressed as Colton gave him the low down on who was on his shirt...

As weird as his sudden infatuation with the shirt was (I think it had something to do with the amount of comments he got from friends and strangers alike every time he wore it), what's even stranger is that since we got home from Florida he has point blank told me he does not want to wear the shirt anymore.  He even cried this morning when he saw that it was what I had pulled out for him to wear (after we got past the "use your words," obviously I didn't make him wear it!).  

So it looks like the superhero shirt may be in retirement, and perhaps we are on to the next phase.  I sure hope it's not skinny jeans...