Quick Hits: Clothes Shopping Hell, Oodles of Braces & No Second Dog (Yet)

Clothes Shopping Hell

The Picket Fence Post kids keep doing this growing this, lately in giant, sudden spurts. The amount of time in which they have to wear their clothes before they turn into high-waters or become so tight that they look like something the Hulk might wear seems to be shrinking. It seems like we're buying new shoes and cleats constantly. The boys' pants aren't worn enough to get rips in the knees.

Thus I took the three kids to Old Navy this week in order to pick up some inexpensive shirts and sports shorts, given that they said, "Nothing fits anymore!" It proved to be bad timing. Did every other mother with kids home for spring vacation have the same idea? The place was mobbed. Between following my offspring around to make sure they picked out the right sizes and nothing too expensive (or inappropriate, like 2-inch long shorts that the store was peddling to girls), it got chaotic, prompting me to start sweating and my patience to evaporate, which is why I think was of the kids who shall remain nameless, was able to sneak in a Lakers shirt without me realizing it. I'm not much of a shopper anyway, so having to go clothes shopping with three children in a packed store . . . well, let's say I'd rather have my teeth cleaned.

The spring shopping excursion then led to another one of my least favorite tasks, one I avoid as much as possible: Going through the kids' clothing to find items that no longer fit, determining which items can be passed down to someone else and making the kids try on certain items, even when they swear that they didn't fit when, in reality, they're just trying to get rid of the unwanted item so I can no longer bug them about why they don't wear it any more. (When I make them take the item back, they resort to cramming it in the back of a drawer hoping I won't see it until another clothing purge session.)

And we didn't even have an open bottle of wine in the house.

By the time all the sorting and shouting was completed, and after I'd uttered my version of "money doesn't grow on trees" and "do you know how much these clothes cost?" parenting classics, we all so needed the laughs that Modern Family afforded us. I love Manny.

Braces, We've Got Braces

Adding insult to the whole shopping debacle was the fact that The Eldest Boy got braces on his lower teeth before our Old Navy trip. Plus, his top braces were tightened. The kid was in some serious pain. And Tylenol didn't really help.

The Girl, meanwhile, was informed that in two months' time the palate expander on the roof of her mouth -- which has been pushing her teeth outward to make more space -- will be removed and replaced with a full set of braces on the upper and lower teeth. Cue the groaning and teenage complaining. Times two.

This ought to be fun: Two pubescents enduring frequent pain in their teeth, begging for milkshakes, soft food and Tylenol. I think I'd better buy the Tylenol by the gross.

No Dog #2 (For Now)

This searching for a second dog is stressing me out.

We've tried several times in the past month to adopt rescue dogs I've seen on PetFinder -- dogs the Picket Fence Post family thinks will fit in nicely and get along with our 3-year-old, 25-pound Max -- but our efforts have thus far been fruitless. We came close last week to getting an adorable Havanese puppy mix (Max is a Havanese/Wheaten mix), but alas, we submitted our application after another nice family who eventually adopted the little guy.

A few days ago, I scared the pants off of The Spouse when, after bringing some donations to a local dog shelter with The Girl, I wound up placing a $25 deposit on a puppy with whom The Girl absolutely fell in love. She'd insisted on returning to the puppy area multiple times, after I said it was time to go, and snuggled with this one adorable, silken puppy. Although I can now admit that the puppy, whose lineage is unknown, would grow to be a fairly large dog, larger than what The Spouse and I had agreed upon, I was in a vulnerable place having lost out on the other puppy last week. I foolishly acceded to The Girl's request to put a 24-hour hold on the puppy and even allowed myself to begin thinking of names for her.

However when I showed The Spouse photos and a video of the dog, he said aloud what I was thinking but didn't want to admit: The cuddly dog would be bigger than we wanted. I sheepishly followed The Spouse up to The Girl's bedroom and informed her that we wouldn't be adopting the puppy. I think I took it harder than she did.

I've decided to stop trolling the PetFinder web site for a while. I need a break.

Image credit: PetFinder.

Notes from a Rainy Spring Break: Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Potter Mania, Patriot's Day, Passover, Clothes Shopping & a Visit to the ER

If you asked the Picket Post Fence kids, I'm guessing they'd likely tell you that they did "nothing" during their spring vacation, nothing of note anyway. We didn't go away to a warm, tropical locale like several of their classmates. We didn't go to an amusement park or a super-fun venue. We stayed home and I didn't arrange for them to party their way through the week.

And though I still attempted to work from my home office this week -- one day resorting to hanging a blanket over my windowed office door and banishing the children from the room so I could finish something -- between The Spouse and I, we still managed to do a bunch of stuff with the kids so they can't say they just sat around all week. Well, they can say that they sat around all week, even though they really didn't:


-- After The Youngest Boy's hockey team blessedly lost their playoff game, thus ending the season (*wild fist pump from this hockey mom*), we went out to dinner at the 99 Restaurant near us, which boasts that the day after the Red Sox win, kids eat free. Suffice is to say that the restaurant haven't been serving up many free kids' meals lately as the last place Red Sox haven't exactly gotten off to a stupendous start, and our kids certainly didn't eat free the night we dined there.

-- One weekend night, the five of us went to see The Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, which was at least better than the first film version of one of my family's favorite kids' book series by Jeff Kinney. In this sequel, Greg Heffley wasn't a raging, inconsiderate narcissist and actually had a heart, unlike in the first film where he was nearly soulless.

The Picket Fence Post kids spent the whole car ride home afterward telling me how much nicer Mrs. Heffley is than I am and how, compared to her, I'm "wicked strict." I don't know whether to take that as a compliment or not.

Image credit: Boston Breakers

-- The Spouse and The Girl went to see the local women's professional soccer team, The Breakers, play their home opener. The Girl got to meet and get photos/autographs with players after the game, including with her new favorite professional soccer player, Alex Scott, who plays defense, like The Girl frequently does. I was thrilled that she got to enjoy a game where female athletes took center stage for a change.

-- On Patriot's Day -- a holiday in Massachusetts commemorating the beginning of the Revolutionary War -- The Spouse woke The Youngest Boy up in the 3 a.m. hour (yes, he really did) so they could drive up to the town green in Lexington, Mass. and secure a good spot from which to watch the reenactment of the first battle of the Revolutionary War. They returned home like twin ice cubes from being out in the cold for so long, even though they'd just spent an hour in a toasty warm & cozy restaurant eating goopy, syrupy breakfasts.

While The Spouse essentially slept the rest of that day, I took The Girl to the Emergency Room to have her wrist X-rayed and learned she'd only sustained a sprained wrist -- as opposed to a broken wrist -- during her weekend soccer game. (A follow-up orthopedic appointment took place later in the week for more laughs and wasted moments spent lingering in a waiting room, after The Girl's pain persisted.) After our ER visit, I cooked up a Seder dinner for the Picket Fence Post family. The Spouse made the brisket, while I made everything else.



-- There was ample Harry Potter mania at the Picket Fence Post household over the vacation week as I finally allowed The Youngest Boy to watch the fifth movie in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, seeing as though we finished reading the book aloud together last month as part of our Harry Potter Reading Out Loud Project. (We're at the beginning of reading the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.)



Early in the vacation week, I purchased Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 on DVD and finally got a chance to see if for myself because when it came out in theaters last fall, events conspired against me being able to see it, though The Girl saw it twice and took The Spouse with her once. It was a fantastic film -- much better than the Half-Blood Prince film -- and it left me feeling depressed and sad for one of my favorite characters from children's literature. I have a soft spot for Harry Potter.

-- Later in the week I took the two older kids (The Youngest Boy was visiting some classmates at the time) candle pin bowling in a bowling alley that looked and smelled like it was 1965, only minus the cigarette smoke. (I half expected to see Sally Draper there.) We met a friend of mine and her three children and I got to jabber away with my college pal while our kids bowled and I intermittently humiliated The Eldest Boy by cheering "too loudly" and embarrassing him . . . which only made me want to do it more.

-- The kids and I also spent several hours in the torturous shopping mall near us (I HATE shopping, except for books) seeking clothing items that would be appropriate for Easter, Passover and a first Communion we'll be attending in a few weeks. It always feels as though I just went shopping to get them clothes, but they keep doing that growing thing, necessitating frequent clothes shopping excursions. During our trip, The Youngest Boy was for some reason trying to press me into buying him a suit (?!), this from the kid who spends most of his waking hours trying to convince me that 40 degrees is shorts weather.

It was general chaos as I tried to oversee not only what the kids were trying on -- checking on the sizes and the price of the clothing, as well as whether the items fit them when they emerged from the changing rooms, sometimes all at the same time. I started stressing out, which generally leads to bad shopping decisions on my part. When we got home later, The Eldest Boy told me I had left some of the stuff that was designated as being in the "to buy" pile behind, though I think he accidentally left those items in the dressing room. But I could be wrong, perhaps that last discussion about boys' undergarments unhinged me. Who knows?

-- An ice cream sundae party with their younger cousins was canceled after one of my nephews got ill (before coming to our house) and we ate the sundaes without them. We visited the library once, had two of the kids' friends over to play at the house on Patriot's Day and The Girl had a sleepover with a friend one night.

Now I need a vacation from their vacation where they didn't "do anything."

Image credits: Cinemagie, Boston Breakers.