It's That Time Again!

Yesterday I was finally forced into it. I had been avoiding it for weeks but yesterday it was coming down to the crunch. And because I'd left it as late as I could, I was being pressured from having to be somewhere else within the hour to boot. I finally had to bite the bullet and take my 12 year old shopping for a bathing suit.

If you don't have a 12 year old girl you might not fully realize the stress that this induces. My girl is tall so the children's sizes in swim suits no longer fit her properly. And most of them looked cute, as in pre-school cute. And when you're at the tail end of grade 7, pre-school cute just doesn't cut it anymore.

So off to the ladies department we go. The second ladies department we checked. This is where it gets stressful. There is nothing for young girls. We sat there staring at choices that were basically in two catagories. Wearing what amounted to a push-up b*ra and bikini p*anties in swimsuit material or the more modest styles which only come in material prints that were more for the, uhmm, how should I put it, the middle aged set. Not prints that suit a 12 year old.

So after more than an hour, and I can't tell you how many suits later, wherein the mother (that would be me) actually stripped two display models to get the right size, because of course, the size smalls are on the displays, and of course, there is no one to help you, we actually did walk away with a cute tankini with a good coverage bottom and a cute little wrap skirt to go over that. I still have to sew the straps a little shorter, which is a whole other stress and a whole other post, but at least we got something for today's lessons.

And instead of paying the children's department price of $20 or less, I got the privelage of shelling out $45.00 to decently cover my child at the pool and keep her fashion tastes intact. And bonus: unlike last year, I did not lose my head and actually try some on myself.