Put On Your Big Girl Shoes

We did some serious back to school shopping this weekend. We took 5 kids shopping in 4 different stores on Saturday. We also attended the high school marching band's family picnic and an American Girl tea party at the local library just to balance out the day. Saturday was like a three-ring circus and The Big Guy and I were the ring masters- kids like clowns doing donuts and wheelies in the aisles.

This shopping trip was a bit special. We were purchasing all of the typical school supplies- stacks of post-it notes, reams of paper, cases of binders, a truck load of pencils (I'm so kidding- we only bought 9 boxes of pencils)- but we were also bringing home a brand new razor for the newest shaving member of our family. Oh the joy. She could hardly contain it. She couldn't wait to get to the razor aisle but then...

I sidelined her in the lingerie department and announced that we would also be purchasing a bra. And there went all of  her joy.

I'm not sure when the back to school shopping shifted away from cute character backpacks and chunky crayons to bras and razors but I'm not very happy about it. I was looking forward to bra shopping with 3 girls about as much as I would look forward to kneeling on Lego blocks. The lower the age of the girl, the higher the level of pain associated with picking an acceptable bra. As painful as I knew bra and razor shopping would be, it could not prepare me for what I encountered in the shoe store.

The mission in the shoe store was fairy simple: Fit and select shoes for 2 girls while keeping the other 2 girls' hands and eyes off of all shoes, socks, backpacks, purses, and other people's belongings. Oh, and try to keep the 2 being fitted up off the floor. And get all of the rejected shoes back in boxes and on a shelf so as not to leave a trail of mass destruction in our wake.

We hit a roadblock fairly early in the game. Little Bean sized in at a girl's 5.5. That is a 7 in women's shoes. A  S-E-V-E-N. Suddenly, the cute little black Nike shoes with the hot pink stripe for $50, $25 with the buy-one-get-one-half-off deal and a 20% coupon to boot were up to $74 because Nike doesn't make those shoes in a girl's 5.5.

After I recovered from the initial shock of having to pay a whole lot more for this kiddo's shoes, I started to crumble emotionally. I wanted to cry, in the middle of the shoe store. After 18 years of shopping for little shoes, I realized I would never again shop in the kid's shoe department.

That was it. It was over. I felt cheated. Life is cruel that way.

Sometimes you just have to put on your big girl shoes and move on.