My Thoughts on Back to School Shopping

Recently I took three of my kids shopping for back to school clothes. Check out what they ended up with and my thoughts on the whole process…………………………

Typically my kids get whatever I grab for them at Target. I used to shop at Gymboree and Hanna Andersson, but now that they’re older, I realize they can get a t-shirt with a puppy on it or a pair of gray joggers pretty much anywhere for a lot less money. But, for whatever reason, I decided to take the kids WITH ME….to do the back to school shopping….at the mall!! Yikes.

We started off strong by hitting Crazy 8. Both little kids found several shirts they liked….big kid deserted us for Sephora…whatev. LOL! Joshua found 2 jackets he loved but he has a couple of jackets already, so no. We quickly figured out that Crazy 8 no longer has dressing rooms (I’m pretty sure they used to!) so we bought the shirts and some joggers for Sofia and moved on. Gymboree was lame so we tried The Childrens Place.

At the Children’s Place Sofia honed right in on the stupid, all the rage, flippy sequin shirts and surprise, surprise, Joshua found a jacket. (what’s up with the jackets??) But me?…I was so incredibly overwhelmed! There was so much stuff crammed into such a little space! and the colors! and the noise! UGH! I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. We grabbed up some leggings and a top for Sofia and in a moment of weakness, I bought the jacket Joshua just HAD TO HAVE. He really, really doesn’t need a jacket but in the interest of keeping the peace (and getting the heck out of that store), I said fine.

At this point I have bags that are cutting off the circulation in my fingers, my feet hurt and the kids are (all at the same time) tired.hungry.thirsty and just want to play on the (way too small) playground.

Sarah rejoined us after laying down gobs of cash at Sephora (apparently you can never have too many facial cleansers)  so we grabbed froyo for a quick pick me up and then tackled…..SHOES….OMG…who knew that the shoe shopping would take 17 hours! (give or take 15). Josh tried on so many pairs of shoes that I thought the sales lady was going to have a stroke when he asked for “just one more pair”. and after all that? He didn’t like any of them. sigh. Sofia did better and found a pair of gym shoes but then we had to find Sarah…she had disappeared….again. A few texts later, we found her at another shoe store a few shops down. She had narrowed her selection down to…wait for it….7 pairs. So we discussed the merits of each.and.every.pair, while the kids terrorized the store, running around like they were on speed #blameitonthefroyo. Finally she picked one, which wasn’t in stock, of course. We ordered the shoes and got the heck out of the mall!! (please note that there are no pictures of the shoe shopping…I had lost the will to live at that point and didn’t think to capture that moment on film. 😉 haha!)

Once home, the kids tried on all the stuff and guess what????????? Some of the stuff didn’t fit and/or they decided they didn’t like what we’d bought!!! gah! Now I have several bags of stuff to return. (insert huge eyeroll here!)

Here’s my thought’s on all of this…

1. Never Again!
2. Why are there no carts at malls? Carrying those bags is a pain…literally!
3. Why aren’t there dressing rooms in kids clothing stores?
4. #shouldastuckwithtarget
5. My kids are easily distracted…aka those flippy sequin shirts should be banned!
6. Apparently you can never have too many jackets…I’m looking at you Joshua!
7. If I ever take on this type of trip again, I will require copious amounts of alcohol or xanex or both
8. Did I mention Never Again?
9. I hate making returns!! Such a time suck!

That was our back to school shopping experience…here’s hoping yours went way better than ours! LOL!