Clothes and My Crystal Ball

After listening to Panda sigh, moan, follow my every step throughout the house for the last two days and generally act like another one of my appendages, I gave in and took her to the mall.
Instantly her crankies went away.
Whatever.
It was pouring when we left and hurricaning by the time we got to the mall.
Yeah.
Apparently this mall trip was destined to be, as I was able to find a spot close enough to the entrance and we were able to haul ass from the car into the mall and remain relatively dry.
Hmmm...guess my good karma button was pressed in and working, eh?
Since our last mall visit, it seems my daughter has decided that toys are no longer as cool to look at as clothes.
While we were in the Disney Store she was gushing, yes, gushing, about the Little Mermaid and Tinkerbell clothes they had on sale. "I just love this top", she exclaimed to me as she droned on and on about how cute everything was.
I had to keep from snorting.
Three months ago, she would not even have given those clothes a second look. If I had asked her opinion on any of those tops, she would have rolled her eyes and told me they were fine. Now, they were "so cute."
Yeah. I think I see rough waters ahead.
Bye-bye Disney toys, hello tween girl with a clothes fetish!
Her fascination with shoes is still going to be my biggest money sucker. Panda has loved shoes since she was like two years old. Remember my post about her shoes issue?
Well, my friends, it is definitely spiraling into a true passion.
Every store we visited had to include the shoe area.
In the Disney Store, she was totally fascinated by the flip flops that were all sparkly and girly looking. She really liked them until she realized they have that toe divider like all flip flops do and put them back. She does not do the toe divider thing because she says it hurts when it rubs against her toes. OK. I get that. I'm not all that into flip flops with toe dividers either. But I definitely could see her weakening under the sparkles and cute shoe designs.
We actually escaped the Disney Store without buying anything.
Total miracle both for her and me.
Panda was bouncing when I told her I had to go into Payless to look for some shoes for me and the Monkeyboy. She was like "Can we look at the girls shoes?"
She was so cute that I gave in.
While in Payless, Panda fixated on a pair of Hanna Montana shoes she just had to have. They were too big and luckily, nothing else caught her eye. But trust me when I say, she looked at every pair of shoes in her size.
My eyes were rolling back in my head as she examined each and every pair. Ugh! Clothes shopping does nothing for me.
Just so you know.
I was finally able to get her out of that store by convincing her to go to GameStop to look for the PS2 Rockband 2 game for our family video game night. We were looking for a used copy, but neither of the GameStop stores in the mall had a used version of the game.
We were almost home free when some cute tween rock star shirt caught her eye as we passed the store Justice. After checking out the rock star shirt, she detoured to the back of the store where the shoes were displayed. Immediately, she found a pair of cute, black high tops with rainbow colored peace symbols and turned on the puppy dog eyes.
She was all trying to convince me that she HAD to have them because her little second grade friends from school had them and she NEEDED them for when school started.
Yep, she NEEDED them.
I NEED a lot of things too. Rainbow, peace sign high tops were not high on my list.
I was like I do not think so. You will need to talk to Daddy about that.
Just so you know.
Those same shoes?
$30.
Yeah. I mentioned her needing a job soon.
OK, back to Justice.
Never heard of it before our mall excursion.
It is clearly a tween girl's paradise.
And can you say 80's flashback?
Bright 80's colored clothes are back in style meaning neon clothes, layering and well, lots of interesting clothes. And Panda was going nuts over all the really cute clothes.
This was one of those times that I was glad she wore a uniform to school.
I also had a brief look into future clothes buying adventures with my daughter and I shuddered.
Have I mentioned that I am so not the clothes freak?
To add to my misery, Panda was entranced by the Jonas Brothers video and a video from the iCarly chick playing in the back of the store.
Sigh.
Please shoot me. I am so not ready for this tween stuff yet. At seven, I was thinking about Barbies and playing outside with my friends. Not clothes, shoes or the boy bands of my time. Well, at least not until I was 13.
So feeling a little freaked out about the clothes and shoe fetish, I yanked her out of there quickly, before any cash left my pocket and we ran to Build-A-Bear where she could spend her gift card and I could be happy.
Before we got to the bear store, we ended up in FYE to see if they had Rockband 2. They didn't, but I did get suckered into forking out $5 for a mini Bull dog Webkinz because well, it was easier to spend $5 for the Webkinz than $30 for those peace lovin' high tops.
I gotta pick my battles.
By the time I dragged her out of FYE and into Build-A-Bear I was really ready to go home.
Our quick trip to Build-A-Bear had turned into a shopping expedition that I was totally not prepared for.
At Build-A-Bear, Panda found the High School Musical bear that she had been jonesing for.
Truth be told, the sparkly pink unicorn was absolutely adorable, but Panda had her heart set on that HSM bear.
Personally, I was all over that sparkly pink unicorn, but hey, that's just me.
Panda loves the color red and the HSM bear was brown with red feet and came with a High School Musical dog tag necklace. Apparently the sparkly pink unicorn did not have the appropriate coolness factor for my daughter.
I was so bummed. It was way cuter than the HSM bear.
Anyway.
After finding the perfect bear, it was time to visit the fluffer machine.The guy who was running the fluffer machine tried to convince Panda to get the music or heartbeat thing to add to her bear. She was like, "No, I don't think so. I don't do noise."
Yeah.
I had to fake a cough to stifle my laughter at her little attitude.
The guy running the machine was like okkayyy and quickly stuffed her bear so we would leave.
Yep, the crazy dude stuffing teddy bears was trying to be all nice to Panda and she was a little weirded out by it all. Can't say I blame her. He was very strange and to be fair, he didn't do anything. He just gave off a really hinky vibe and Panda and I both were a little leery.
Ignoring the fluffer man, she picked out some matching High School Musical clothes, beach sandals, hair accessories and some white sparkly shades for her bear, which she named Panda by the way, and we finally were able to actually go home.
And the best part? It didn't cost me a dime.
I love gift cards.