Shopping Like a Mom

Many moons ago when my now seventeen-year-old niece was just a chubby little baby I remember her mom (my like-a-sister-sister-in/out-law) doing something I swore I would never do. She bought clothes... without trying them on. Oh the horror! At twelve or thirteen years old I clearly remember thinking this was a beyond wasteful activity (sorry J!). How often do you experience trying something on in the store only to find you don't really like it once you get home? If you don't even try the clothes on the chances of this happening greatly increases. You are almost guaranteed to be making a return trip to the store with your unwanted merchandise or just tossing the item to the back of your closet never to be seen again. Surely she could see this. Surely it mattered!!

Sixteen plus years later I sit here ready to confess: I buy clothes... without trying them on. (*gasp!*) Not only that, I do it on a regular basis. Don't get me wrong, I still occasionally put in the effort to try things on, but only to get a general idea of how the sizing works in that particular brand. Once I know I'm not a medium but am in fact a large (WTF? No seriously What. The. Fuck??) I can just go from there and buy without trying.

Why do I do this, you ask? Well let me paint you a little picture... I live in a small little beach town where everything is little, the parking lots are little, the shopping centers are little, the stores are little with little aisles and the dressing rooms are tiny. Impossibly small. No problem right? It's not like I'm a giant. And my baby? Well he's only 28.5 inches (inches not feet!) so how could that pose a problem? Well in case you don't know, babies come with an enormous amount of gear, gear that is in itself enormous. Enormous diaper bags, enormous carriers, enormous strollers... you get the idea. This makes trips to anywhere but big box stores completely impossible. Shall I remind you of my first experience trying to get Starbucks with G-Man in the stroller? Or how about the time I tried to find non-mom jeans while G cried hysterically in the changing room?

So, since I would like to start buying my clothes from places that don't also sell toilet paper, I decided to start taking G in the Beco carrier while I shopped. No stupid ladies cutting in front of you, hands are free to pick up items and I don't have to try to figure out how to cram an enormous stroller into a minuscule dressing room. Genius right? Yeah, except for the part where you have a kid strapped to you, which pretty much makes taking your clothes off (a necessary part of trying on new clothes) impossible. Luckily my town is so impossibly tiny that the only department store we have is Macys and since I'm not really a $200 pair of jeans kind of girl the desire to go shopping has been limited. That is until they put in a Forever 21 (Don't judge! Just because I'm 29 doesn't mean I can't shop there too.). My little town was finally getting with the times. My first trip there was kind of rough because I had to do the whole stroller thing in order to try on a few items. There were many glares and generally snooty looks from all the teenyboppers that pretty much made me want to run right out of the store. That and the ridiculously loud music. (When did I get old?)

BUT! The next day, Monday, I returned because I wasn't able to go to the top floor due to the fact that their elevator was broken and I had my darn stroller with me. With G strapped into his Beco I found a whole new world; softer music, fixed elevators and the best part... about fifteen other moms all with strollers and similar carriers. I casually perused the merchandise, picked out tops with lace and "skinny" jeans (if we call them skinny does that in fact make me skinny? I hope so.) and then when G-Man started to protest (as men inevitably do while shopping) I marched straight over to the register and paid. I returned home, a bag of new clothes and put my little darling to bed. As he snoozed I had a quick little fashion show in my room. The stuff that didn't fit? It was exchanged on our next trip to the mall. No big deal. Turns out my wonderful like-a-sister-sister-in/out-law had it right all along. :)

***As a slightly random aside I will leave you with this... Trader Joes parking lots suck ass! I have never ever been to one and found a spot to park in under five minutes. Today, as my baby cried I circled the lot for twenty minutes when I finally saw a car pulling out. I got as close as I could and put my turn signal on to indicate to the world that it was in fact MY spot. Then, just as I was about to pull in two teenage girls, driving a BMW with a pink feather boa and tiaras in the back window swooped in and stole my spot. The entire scene was caught on tape, complete with my reaction. Check it out:



I kid! I kid! But that did happen in my head. Towanda!