Chubby Bunny

When I asked a friend how he got his twin boys to not view Level 1 readers as medieval torture devices, his answer was simple: "A five pound bag of Mike & Ike candy."
"So you give your sons a piece of candy after reading each book?" I asked.
"Try every page," he said.

After doing some quick math, and adjusting the results to fit my kids' personalities and attention spans, I figured that if this plan was going to work, I would need at least 20 pounds of Mike & Ike candy.

On the way to the store to purchase said candy, I came up with the great idea of letting each of my children pick out their own treats. When we reached the candy aisle, Camber went straight for the jumbo Hershey bars.
"Smaller," I said.
She held up a bag of orange peanut-shaped candy.
"Something a little less gross, please."

Camber quickly settled on a bag of Starburst, while Cortlen chose a large bag of Skittles. Kellen, however, had a more difficult time deciding what kind of candy he would get to pop into his mouth each time he sounded out a monosyllabic word.
I tried to move things along by validating each of his selections.
"M&M's are a very good choice." "Oh yes, Smarties are good too."

Unfortunately, all of my positive reinforcement was being undermined by the two critics hanging out in the shopping cart.
"Eeew!" barked Camber, holding her nose, "M&M's are disgusting!"
"Don't get Smarties," warned Cortlen, "They are hard to bite."

"Ignore them," I told Kellen, pushing the shopping cart down the aisle with my foot.
"What do YOU want?" I asked.
"Marshmallows."
"That's a wonderful idea," I responded, leading Kellen around the corner to the baking aisle. I tried to forget about the contents of the shopping cart in the next aisle over, but the loud screams emanating from it ("AHHHH! She's going to leave us in Wal-Mart forever and ever!") made that impossible.

Next to the bags of regular miniature marshmallows was an unexpected prize: a bag of multi-colored mini-marshmallows. The moment that Camber and Cortlen laid eyes on the fruit-flavored nasties, their own selections became downright repulsive.

"I want one of those," said Cortlen, pointing at the bag of marshmallows with one hand and tossing his bag of Skittles on the nearest shelf with the other.

Sadly, there was only bag of colored marshmallows left. And Kellen had it in his hands.

"Too bad!" I said, tossing the bag of Skittles back into Cortlen's lap. "Take it or leave it."
Camber and Cortlen looked at their brother, who by now was gripping the marshmallows to his chest. Fear was rising in his face.
"If you touch his marshmallows," I told Camber and Cortlen, "You are going to have a serious problem."

I am sad to report that they both chose to have a serious problem.

Wild Animal Kingdom

After catching a family of ants attempting to squeeze an unidentifiable object underneath the door frame of my back door this morning, I decided that it was time to break down and mop the kitchen floor. This relatively simple task was made difficult, however, by three screaming children who were running laps around the room. After ignoring my repeated requests to turn off their engines, Camber, Kellen, and Cortlen found their race course suddenly diverted through the front door and out onto the front yard.

"If you're going to act like wild animals," I told them, "Then go play with the squirrels."
It took less than two minutes for my three to come to grips with the sad truth that the squirrels did not want to play with them.
They returned to the front door, only to be met by a locked screen.
"Let us in!" they wailed.
"Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!" I replied. "In five minutes, I'll be done mopping and then you can come back inside."

My suggestions for filling this ridiculously long interval of time--riding bikes or playing on the swing set--were soundly rejected on the grounds that the named activities were "too boring" and "no fun." Evidently, what was not boring and lots of fun was hurling insults at me through the screen door.
"You are so mean!"
"If I get a zillion mosquito bites it is going to be all your fault!"

"Those wild animals are making very ugly noises," I said as I closed the door completely, "And I don't want to listen to it."

Having lost their initial audience, the wild animals moved to the middle of the cul-de-sac, where they attempted to acquire a larger one by increasing the volume of their howling.
"My mom is never ever going to let us inside ever again!" screamed Cortlen.
"We are going to have to sleep outside forever!" cried Kellen.
"And eat sticks!" added Camber.

After 9am, such outbursts go unacknowledged, but at 7:45am, I was worried that the beasts' tortured moans might prompt one of my neighbors to call to animal control.

"Get over here right now!" I hissed through an open window.
The three animals started slinking toward me. As they did, I noticed a strange shadow out of the corner of my eye. It was Marge, the older, slightly surly single woman who lives in the house across the street. She was watching the scene unfold through the drapes in her living room. Unfortunately, she closed the curtains so quickly that I couldn't tell if the object she was holding up to her ear and speaking into was a phone...or a pop tart.

Mummies

Last week, I took my kids to my ultrasound appointment in the city. They were so fascinated by images of the baby's skeleton that after the appointment, I decided to take them across the street to check out some real ones.

Penn's Museum of Anthropology contains an impressive collection of Egyptian mummies in various states of undress. Before entering the mummy room, I thought it would be a good idea to put what my children would be seeing in some sort of historical context.
"Mummies are people who lived and died in Egypt around the time of Moses," I told my kids.
"Who?" they asked.
"Never mind."

I was a little worried about how my children would react to the sight of a mummified corpse, but I shouldn't have been concerned; they hardly paid any attention to the human remains, as they were far too busy examining a mummified dog that was lying next to its owner.
"I want one of those," said Kellen.
"Can we do that to Biscuit (our cat) when she dies?" asked Camber.
"We're going to need a lot of band-aids," said Cortlen.
"Lots," repeated Kellen.

I knew where this was going and I have to say that I was touched. My children are obsessed with band-aids, so much so that we use them as rewards for good behavior. My kids' proposal to cover their pet with several hundred of them represents the ultimate sacrifice, for band-aids that are placed on the cat are band-aids that cannot be placed over their own imaginary injuries.

"We should start buying band-aids for Biscuit now," suggested Camber, "Just in case."
My child's generosity warmed my heart. Maybe my kids were not as self-absorbed as I thought.
"And if she doesn't die soon," said Cortlen, "We can use them."
Then again, maybe not.

National Treasure

I could barely sleep on Friday night, due to the excitement and anticipation of Saturday's $7 Kids' Jeans Sale at Old Navy. My husband vetoed my first two proposals: 1) that we camp out in the parking lot the night before and 2) that we leave the kids' soccer game a half hour early to be at the store when it opened.

I paid dearly for my poor choices. By the time I made it to Old Navy (an hour after opening), all of the jeans in the store were piled into a mound the size of King Tut's pyramid in the middle of the store. Completely covering this eighth Wonder of the World was a swarm of treasure hunters wearing bicycle shorts, ball caps, and their husbands' t-shirts. The store employees--all of whom will be returning to college this week--were standing around the perimeter of the excavation site, mouths agape in fascination and horror.

"Do you have any girls' flare leg jeans, size 6?" I asked a teenage worker named Misty.
Misty was a lot smarter than she looked. Without taking her eyes off the treasure hunters, she decided that she would rather forgo her summer bonus than risk becoming a human sacrifice.
"Um, I seriously doubt it," she told me as she walked away.

Forced to fend for myself, I walked slowly around the perimeter of the mound and tried to find the safest point of entry. I said a little prayer to myself before I closed my eyes and jumped in. What I found once inside was terribly disappointing. Instead of the five-pocket treasures advertised in the circular that I received in the mail, all I found was a heap of bleached denim and black skinny jeans.

Since any treasure is better than no treasure, I snatched whatever I could get my hands on and followed the other treasure hunters up to the cashier. As I heaved my merchandise onto the counter, a young man named Greg, who weighed approximately 50 pounds less than me, told me that I was only allowed to purchase 3 pairs of jeans at the sale price. This was bad news since I had 9 pairs of jeans.
"But I'm pregnant," I told him.
Greg failed to see how this information was relevant.
Realizing that appealing to reason and rationality was going to get me nowhere, I resorted to another strategy to get what I wanted. Specifically, I stared into Greg's eyes until his level of discomfort reached the point where he was able to come up with the idea that he could ring up my jeans in three separate purchases.

"Come look what I got!" I shouted when I returned home. With that level of enthusiasm, my family expected a puppy or at least a Cherry Slurpee.
"These are jeans?" my husband asked, holding up a pair of the skinnies.
"That's all they had!" I said defensively.
"They're not even the right sizes," he pointed out. Carried away by the thrill of the hunt, I seemed to have overlooked the small detail of sizing, resulting in the purchase of two pairs of girls' size 10 jeans, one size 8, and a 7 slim.
"If I didn't buy them, someone else would have!" I cried.

My husband failed to see why this was a problem. Rather than explain to him how a rational mind works, I left him alone in his ignorance. As I marched out of the room, I couldn't help but wonder what my family would do without a fount of reason such as myself in their midst.

They wouldn't have 9 pairs of skinny jeans in an assortment of sizes, that's for sure.

Halloween Costumes

Halloween is over two months away but I have learned from experience that unless you buy your costumes early, your children will have to choose between being a brown M&M or a hippie.

Because I live by the mantra "Only the Best for My Children," I take them shopping for Halloween costumes in mid-August, when the thrift stores in my area have the best selection. Usually there are a wide variety of costumes of choose from at this time of year, but this time around, the options were downright scary: the "Halloween" rack was filled with an assortment of ratty pumpkin sweatshirts, a princess dress made out of what appeared to be a plastic tablecloth, and several Kung-Fu warrior ensembles that I recognized from last year's Halloween line at the Dollar Store. Fortunately, in addition to these undesirables, there were also three furry animals that were roughly the same size as my three children.

"But I want to be a snake!" yelped Cortlen when I took the animals off their hangers.
I looked around the store. "Hmmm... I don't see a snake costume," I told him. "Your choices are panda, koala, and... (# 3 required some interpretation)...baboon."
"But none of those animals are poisonous," he whined.
"That's true," I told him, "Except for the koala."
Cortlen looked at me skeptically. As I squeezed my son into the costume which turned out to be least two sizes too small, I told him about the rare breed of flesh-eating koalas that live in Southern Australia.
"Perfect!" I said. "All you need now are some vampire fangs."

Having pacified Cortlen, I turned to Camber, who was holding the baboon costume in the death grip.
"I love this one," she told me. She continued to love the costume until her Dad came home from work and asked to see her in it.
"Mom's making me be a monkey with a red bottom for Halloween!" she cried.
There's $3.50 down the drain.

That left Kellen with the Panda costume. He wasn't too wild about his outfit either, until we went to Panda Express for lunch and he recognized the resemblance between his costume and the fast food restaurant's mascot. Now when anyone asks him what he is going to be for Halloween, he simply answers "Orange Chicken."

Overall, my husband was very impressed with my Halloween purchases.
"I hope you washed those things," he said.
It took him a few minutes to get into the Halloween spirit. Eventually, though, he came around.
"What am I going to be for Halloween?" he asked jokingly.
My husband stopped smiling when I pulled out a pair of skintight khaki short-shorts and a matching button-up shirt from the thrift store shopping bag.
"A zookeeper!" I answered.

The Kindness of Strangers

Hurricanes are a bummer. "Fay" cut short our vacation to Florida by several days; however, we can't really complain. The time that we did have on the beach was great. Our fifteen hour drive home yesterday (hence the lack of a post) was marred only by one noteworthy episode which, remarkably, did not include my children.

Lucky for me, we hit bumper-to-bumper traffic at exactly the same moment as the baby started jumping on my bladder. By the time we got to the nearest facilities--a seedy McDonald's in the middle of no where--I was starting to perspire. While the parking lot was overflowing with cars and mobile homes, the restaurant itself was virtually empty.
"That's strange," I thought.
I didn't have to wonder where all of the cars' occupants were for very long: I found half of the state of South Carolina in line for the women's restroom. As I took my place at the end of the seventeen-person line, I tried very hard to block out the faint sound of the soda fountain dispensing liquid. By the time that I spotted the bathroom door, I was feeling very grateful that I had read a book on Lamaze breathing techniques.

I tried to be discreet in my suffering, but the woman in line in front of me--who was wearing purple gauchos and a green t-shirt with lizards on it--noticed that I was uncomfortable. After unabashedly staring at me for several minutes, the woman stepped up to offer her support and encouragement. Turning to me she said, "I'm so glad that I wasn't desperate to use the bathroom when we stopped." At that moment, the lone bathroom stall swung open and the woman pranced into it.

While the woman (by her own admission) wasn't desperate to use the bathroom, she was in no hurry to get out of it once inside. She stayed inside the stall for at least five minutes, plenty of time for the lady behind me (who had heard what the woman said) to tell the ladies behind her, who, in turn, told the ladies behind them. By the look on the ladies' faces, it was clear that by the time that the story reached the end of the line, the woman holed up in the bathroom stall had not only called me a "fat lardo," but vowed to stay glued to the toilet seat until I peed my pants.

I didn't see what happened to the bathroom hogger, as I practically dove into the stall the instant that the woman emerged, but I did hear "reports" from several ladies still in line when I was on my way out.
"I'm so sorry about what that woman said to you," said Number 8. Her eyes were basically welling up with tears.
"We all made ugly faces when she passed by us," said Number 13. I felt strangely touched.

I also felt bad for the bathroom hogger. I hope that she had enough sense to stave off the lizards for a few miles before feeding them some french fries. If I was her, I would have been desperate to get back on the road.

The Little Red Hen Goes to the Pool

Once upon a time, a girl and two boys and their mom all lived together in a cozy little house. One of the boys and the girl liked to "do their own thing," leaving the other little boy and his mom to do all of the housework.

"Who will help me bring in the groceries from the car?" asked the mom.
"No thanks," said Cortlen.
"I'm busy," said Camber.
"I will!" said Kellen, and he did.

"Who will put on your swimsuit without dumping the contents of your dresser on the floor?" asked the mom three times.
"I will!" said Kellen right away.
The other two preferred to chase each other around the front yard with sticks.

"Who will help me pack the cooler for the pool?" asked the mom.
"Me! Me!" said Kellen.
Camber and Cortlen were too busy stomping on a colony of ants to be bothered.

"Who is ready to go to the pool?" asked the mom.
Kellen was already in the car. The other two laughed and ran into the backyard.

"See you later!" said the mom to Camber and Cortlen as she backed her car down the driveway. She stopped at the bottom of the driveway long enough to pick up two screaming children before continuing on to the pool.

"Who wants to go swimming?" asked the mom to her three kids when they arrived at the pool.
"I do!" said Kellen.
"Me too!" said Cortlen.
"Me three!" said Camber.

"All right," said the mom. "Hop in."
"But I don't have my swimsuit," said Camber.
"Me neither," said Cortlen.
"Where is it?" asked the mom.
"In my room," said Camber.
"Mine is too," said Cortlen.
"That's very sad," said the mom. "I guess you'll have to watch from the pool deck today."
And they did. With much sadness and regret.

And from that day forward, the mom never had any trouble getting all three of her children to help with the chores (well, that's not exactly true, but it makes for a nice story ending and a good start to the weekend).

Bad Naked

My children have a deep and, to use an appropriate pun, growing fascination with my belly. I am not overly prudish about my body, but I don't make a point of walking around the house in my birthday suit either. If the kids want to examine my stomach, they are more than welcome to do so, as long as it is not at the grocery store, on the train during rush hour, or while we are waiting for a table at Chili's.

Yesterday, I laid on the couch for a half hour and let them poke and prod at my midsection with plastic stethoscopes and chainsaws. Clearly this act of generosity was not enough to satiate my children's curiosity about my changing shape because later that afternoon, in a rare act of cooperation, they built a battering ram out of their bodies and burst into my bedroom...only to find me folding laundry.

"I thought you were getting dressed," said Kellen. His disappointment was almost palpable.
"Are you going to change your clothes sometime soon?" asked Camber hopefully.

Such unapologetic invasions of privacy have forced me to start getting dressed and undressed in the closet or bathroom. Unfortunately, this has only served to heighten the desire to catch me partially clothed.

"I know you're in there," said Cortlen through the bathroom door this morning.
"This is mom's private time," I told him. "I'll be out in a minute."
"I don't care if you watch me get dressed," he said.
"Yeah," I said, "But I do."

The fact is, I never really minded if my kids caught me in the middle of one of my three daily wardrobe changes (I sit next to Kellen at the table and sometimes he mistakes me for his napkin), that is, until their commentary on my body started to hurt my feelings.

"Your stomach is big enough to fit Sparky (our neighbor's Labrador retriever)," remarked Camber at the pool the other day.
"It looks like you ate a Duke basketball," said Cortlen.
"Thank you," I said to my children. "I feel really good about myself right now."
"Your welcome," they said, and then skipped away.

* Sorry about the late post; my internet was down all day.

Mr. Mouse

Smack in the middle of his mid-year review, my husband spotted a tiny field mouse scurry across the back wall of his boss's office (there are major renovations taking place at my husband's office building which explains, but does not justify the presence of a small rodent).

Good decision-making skills run in the family, leading my husband to interrupt the meeting to catch the mouse, which he did successfully. His boss witnessed the capture from the top of her desk.

After serving as his department's mascot for the rest of the afternoon, the mouse was treated to a road trip. At the end of his journey, he was met by three jubilant members of the neighborhood welcome wagon.

"I've always wanted a pet mouse," said Camber.
"If we get a snake, the mouse could be its food," suggested Cortlen.
"Mr. Mouse is going to live outside," I said, crushing my children's hopes and dreams.

After watching the mouse run laps around the box for five minutes, we decided that it was time to grant the small rodent his hard-earned freedom.
"What should we do with it?" my husband asked me.
That was a very difficult question to answer since our neighborhood butts up to a wooded preserve.

My husband did not feel comfortable releasing the mouse into the woods behind our house, but he did feel comfortable letting the rodent go in our weird neighbor's yard across the street.* That seemed sensible enough, so I released the hounds.
"Gently dump the mouse in the woods behind Marge's house," I told the kids.

Tim and I stood on our driveway watching the solemn procession to the tree line. Kellen was smiling because he was carrying the box; Camber and Cortlen were crying because they were not.

All went well until Tim spotted Marge watching the processional from her front window.
"Stop! Come back here!" he yelled at our kids in his best neighborhood watch voice. But it was too late. The kids were already running at full speed toward the tree line. Having given it his best shot, Tim retreated to the garage, where he hid behind his lawnmower.

"Hey Marge," I said, sauntering up her driveway. "How are you today?"
Marge responded by slamming the door in my face. At least she wasn't mad. We got the same reaction last December when we brought her Christmas cookies.

*In our measley defense, the wooded area behind Marge's house is much deeper and more dense than that behind our house.

The Chicken Foot

Last Friday, I took my kids to Reading Terminal Market, a famous indoor farmer's market in downtown Philadelphia. There are lots of Amish vendors at the market and I wanted my kids to learn something about Amish culture, food, and crafts. As it turns out, my kids were very interested in Amish cinnamon rolls; the people making them they could do without.

I felt bad for the Amish saleswoman; she was so nice and her food was so good. Yet I have to admit that it was hard for her to hold even my attention given what was in the refrigerated display case of the Asian butcher shop next door.

"Can we get one of those?" asked Cortlen, pointing to a severed pig's head.

"Negative."

"How about one of those?" asked Kellen, gesturing toward a pile of decapitated frogs.

"Double Negative."

"One of those?" asked Camber, staring hopefully at a plastic tub filled with chicken feet.

"All right," I said. The request seemed reasonable enough.

I purchased a single chicken foot for 18 cents. The saleslady put the foot into a clear plastic bag, the same kind used to bring fish home from the pet store. Of course there was a fight over who could carry the chicken foot home. To ensure that no one was deprived of special time with the chicken foot, I set my stopwatch alarm to go off every ten minutes.

"What are you going to do with that?" asked the train conductor when he stopped by our seats to punch our tickets.

I was slightly annoyed by the question, given that he was the fifth person within a thirty minute period to ask me the same thing. Did anyone really need to ask? I mean, what can't you do with a chicken foot? The possibilities are endless, really.

After showing the foot to the two nice ladies sitting on the seat behind us on the train (and watching them switch seats at the next train stop), we set to work planning the chicken foot's day. I estimated that we had about 5 hours before the foot started to stink, so we had to exercise good time management skills. After showing it to Joan, our elderly next door neighbor, the chicken foot would get its toenails clipped before being submerged into Kellen's fish tank for a quick bath. Once it was clean, it would be generously offered up to our two cats as a chew toy, but not before it was served to my husband for dinner.

Cortlen won 2 out of 3 rounds of "Rock-Paper-Scissors" and thus earned the honor of serving Tim the foot, which we nestled amongst a field of baby greens and mound of new potatoes. Much to the delight of his three children, the foot's presence on his plate genuinely surprised Tim. Once the shock wore off and the foot's exciting adventures had been narrated, my husband turned to me.

"Must you?" he asked, shaking his head.

My husband's reaction bothered me, but not so much that it would deter me from buying another chicken foot the next time that we go to the market. If I'm in a particularly good mood that day, I might even be able to be talked into a headless frog.

Shoe shopping for me is one of my favorite things to do. Shoe shopping for my five year-old daughter is not. The main problem is that on principle (what exact principle, I’m not sure), Camber refuses to try on shoes that are in her size. Upon entering J.C. Penney’s famed shoe department last Friday night, Camber was pulled by forces beyond her power to a pair of women’s leopard-print kitten heels. She scowled at me when I told her that they don’t allow open-toed shoes at kindergarten.
“For church then?” she asked.
“Maybe when you’re six,” I told her.

When I made the fatal error of looking too long at a pair of girls’ Keds, Camber hissed and grabbed a handful of crib shoes.
“These are so cute,” she said, holding up a pair of pink booties with fluffy lambs’ heads hanging off the toes.
“Yes they are,” I agreed, “But you are five years old, not five months.”
That revelation too came as a disappointment.

After twenty minutes of examining and reexamining every shoe in the store, only one pair of girls’ sneakers managed to generate any enthusiasm in my daughter, and of course they were hot pink and cost $60. If the shoes didn’t come with a free tube of lip gloss, I would have thought that I was getting ripped off.

I was against the shoes for a number of reasons (they had pictures of the Bratz dolls on them for starters), but the deal breaker was that they came with shoelaces. Back in April, our school district sent us a letter that included a list of important skills that rising kindergartners needed to work on over the summer. Tying shoelaces was one of them. As the proud owner of an extensive collection of shoes with Velcro fasteners, I was personally offended by the letter and threw it in the trash. Shoelace tying is an overrated skill in my book.

After explaining to Camber that it was against my best interest to buy shoes for her that she couldn’t put on herself, I did what any sensible, level-headed mother would do. The next morning, I went to Target, Marshalls and Payless and bought every shoelace-free shoe in my daughter's size that cost $20 or less. When I got home, I arranged all of the shoes on the dining room table.

“Let’s go shoe shopping!” I chirped.
“Ohh!” said Kellen, as he reached for a pair of pink polka-dot pull-ons. “I like these.”
“Not for you,” I said, and took them back.
Camber was not impressed with any of my selections.
“I like the Bratz shoes a lot better,” she said, turning up her nose at the bargains that lay before her.
“Choose one of these,” I told her, “Or I’ll choose for you.”
“I’m just going to wear sandals to school,” she announced as she backed out of my shoe store.
You can’t,” I reminded her. “You’re not allowed to wear shoes that show your toes.”
“Sandals won’t show my toes,” she pointed out, “If I wear socks.”

May the Force Be With You

I can usually tell what kind of day it is going to be by the location of the cereal boxes in my kitchen. If Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam are perched on the counter or are in the middle of the table, things bode well. If, however, the boxes take the form of force fields that are strategically positioned around each of my children's place mats, I start to pray that the force will be with me.

On such days (including yesterday), the opposing armies had assumed their positions while I was in the shower. By the time I made my way down to the kitchen 10 minutes later, the force fields were beginning to break down.

"Stop looking at me!" screeched Cortlen.
"I'm not!" barked Camber in quick reply.
"I can SEE you looking at me through the crack between your boxes!"
"The only way you know I can see you is if you are looking at me!"
"I'm not looking at anyone!" piped Kellen, who smartly had his eyes squeezed shut behind his force field.

Breakfasts that begin like this usually end with all of the force fields being confiscated and one or more of the combatants being forcibly ejected from his/her chair and sent to the corner for saying or doing something unbecoming of a Jedi knight. These breakfasts, in turn, typically breed lunches that involve under-the-table warfare (chair kicking or deliberate leg touching) and verbal assaults that result in the immediate loss of lunch and afternoon snack privileges. Similarly, these sorts of lunches have the bad habit of producing dinners where all of the combatants are given exactly one chance to eat their food without making eye contact with any of the other table occupants. Not surprisingly, these dinners produce bedtimes which are, on average, one hour earlier than normal and are accompanied by warnings of "stay in your bed or there is going to be a big problem."

Back-to-School Muumuus

My daughter will wear anything as long as it is a shapeless, short-sleeved pink dress devoid of buttons, zippers, or elastic arm cuffs. With a style range as vast as this, I am free to shop just about anywhere for back-to-school clothes.

Camber and I began our shopping trip at one popular children's clothing store in the mall. There were no shapeless shifts in sight, but fortunately, we did luck out and spot a table containing its fashion equivalent: a pile of fluorescent t-shirts. Each t-shirt had a picture of a large monkey on the front, coupled with an uplifting message that read "I'm a spoiled brat!"
"What do these shirts say?" Camber wanted to know.
They say, "Not for kindergartners" I told her.

Our next stop was Limited Too. We found some very nice jeans in there for $42, but we left them on the rack because they cost $42.

Over the next few hours, we went upstairs to J.C. Penney, downstairs to Macy's, and across the street to Old Navy and Target. At each of these stores, we encountered more friendly monkey shirts, as well as a vast selection of clothing that was perfectly unoffensive and reasonably priced. However, because nothing remotely resembled the highly coveted and rare muumuu, we left all of these stores empty-handed.

Exhausted, frustrated, and more than a little grumpy, we dragged ourselves into Gymboree 30 minutes before closing. I knew that my only chance of success was to show absolutely no interest in both my daughter and the articles of clothing she was looking at, so I stood in the store entrance and did my best to look bored.

This was Camber's cue to leisurely flip through the racks of clothes. I cried little tears of sadness when she skipped over the plaid skirts and matching apple-print sweater vests, but I bit my lip and bore my loss stoically. A few minutes later, the picky dresser approached with an armload of waistless knit dresses that eerily resembled the maternity dress that I was wearing at the moment. Each dress was appropriately marked $3.60. I was about ready to do the happy dance when a store clerk pointed out that the price tags actually read $36.00.

Two hours earlier I would have shuddered at the thought of spending so much for the same article of clothing that you make in a beginning sewing class, but I was so thrilled that none of the dresses had monkeys on them that at that moment I would have paid double or even triple what was on the price tags.

Camber plopped the dresses on the check-out counter and I got out my purse. As I gave the cashier my credit card, the woman could tell that I was in severe pain. Not wanting me to have a heart attack in her store so close to closing time, the cashier gave me a 20% off coupon. This numbed the pain of having to pay $115 for 4 muumuus and matching hair clips.

Over an ice cream cone at the food court a few minutes later, Camber and I assessed our progress.
"Now all I need are some new shoes!" she said excitedly.
"I can't wait for that shopping trip," I responded, trying hard to mean it.