Back to School Shopping

Since we'll be on our great road trip for the month before school starts, we did all our back to school shopping this week.

It was...OK.

First, I only buy my kids one new outfit for school, so really it's not that bad.  For the most part, they have drawers teaming with clothes and they don't really care.  But it's nice to have a new outfit for the first day.

Second, I bribed my kids.  They love Auntie Annie's Pretzels.  So if they behaved, they would get one.

And they did.  Rex didn't dawdle.  They didn't ask for tons of stuff.  They didn't touch everything.  They stayed close.  They didn't fight.  Aside from Henry holding his hands out of the stroller to push several piles of clothes over, I can't think of a single thing they could have done better.  They even picked out their outfits in about 15 minutes.

But the mall is horrible.

First, Rex had diarrhea (he won't read this until he's much older if he ever does so I can say that), so we had to hide our things away and run to the bathroom more than once, which was...annoying.  Then none of the clothes were cute.  Because I only buy one outfit per kid, I don't worry too much about the price of things.  I am willing to spend the money to buy something cute and nice.  But the selection was...limited at best.  Add to that my kids, apparently have super bad taste.  Maybe it's all the years of wearing hand-me-downs and consignment store stuff, but they picked out not cute stuff.  I have a pit in my stomach over the shirt Alice picked out.  Really there isn't anything wrong with it.  I just really don't like it.  I tried to talk her into a different one but we were already in line and there were people behind us and we'd already made one emergency trip to the bathroom.  I'm going back this week to buy the shirt I like and will work harder at convincing her she should wear the one I like.  Rex...just picked out a t-shirt and shorts.  Nothing special.  Just boring.

But my kids got to use their agency to pick out their outfits.  Maybe next year I'll give them a budget on what they can spend since that seemed to work well with Rex with the Olympics.

The kids got their outfits and pretzels and we all survived a day at the mall, but I was once again asking myself how my mother managed to do anything like Christmas shopping without Amazon.  Malls are just horrible, unpleasant, crowded, smelly places to be.

Rex didn't feel good so he laid on the floor while he waited for Alice to try her clothes on.

Zora entertained herself by rearranging the shelves for the workers.

Henry entertained himself by playing under the bench in the dressing room.

Alice waiting outside the bathroom for Rex...again.