Pretween

After spending a lovely morning at church, and enjoying a nice lunch out with the family, I decided it was time to stop procrastinating and go shopping for Easter outfits.

It shouldn’t have been such a task, but it seemed very overwhelming.  The boys don’t like fussy dress clothes, and I am just not in the mood to buy new clothes for myself, so the only person really excited about the shopping adventure was Addie.  So, she and I set off to see what we could find.

Addie is in an interesting stage: not quite a “tween”, but definitely not such a little girl anymore.  I mean, I guess she’ll always be our “little girl”, right?  But you know what I mean; she is starting to have an opinion (and sometimes an attitude) about what she wears, the activities in which she participates, the music she wants to hear.  This previously subtle change was a bit more obvious today.

She immediately found a pair of sandals that she fell in love with and begged me to buy; being in Ohio, I know better than to expect the weather to be nice from here on out after just one weekend of nice weather. I told her that we were going to hold off on sandals for now, but that maybe we could get them when it’s closer to summer.  Plus, she couldn’t wear those sandals for Easter, and that was the reason for shopping today.

Cue the whining.  And the bargaining.

“I’ll make a deal with you!” she offered, which meant that she was ready to agree to do chores that she would never complete, in order to get the shoes today.

“Not a chance,” was my response, as I sifted through racks of clothes.  She persisted, I continued to refuse, and ended up threatening to forego the new Easter dress if she didn’t drop it.  Bingo.  She really wanted a new dress, I guess.

She found four different dresses that she liked, tried them on, and selected the dress that twirled the best.  I tried on several different things, got frustrated because they all looked ridiculous, and put everything back.  I did find shirts for the boys, which aren’t very dressy but are at least a springy shade of blue.  We’ll call it a satisfactory shopping trip.

Although we had a rough beginning, my pretween did at least thank me as we left the mall, both for bringing her along and for buying her a new dress.  I definitely call that a success.  I know in the years to come, we’ll continue to butt heads, but if she can still say “thank you” at the end of the day (without prompting!), then I will be willing to look past the pretween/tween/teenage/beyond attitudes.

Now, if only I could convince Andrew to drop his little five year old attitude.  That one will take some work.