The Show will go On!

We narrowly escaped a milestone yesterday.

Leila and Rob are going to the Daddy Daughter Dinner Dance on Friday night, and Leila didn't have a thing to wear. She really didn't. Every time she needs to dress up for something, she looks like she blindfolded herself and went through her closet with tongs and put on whatever she found. Its not good. Especially since I bought her those brightly colored argyle socks. Not good at all.

So we went to Nordstrom, not my first choice but for a town with two malls, its one of the only places you can buy kids clothes. A crime if you ask me. Luckily, it was Easter about a minute ago, so they had lots of dresses. For the first time ever, she had very specific ideas about what she wanted. By her description, I thought she would go to this dance looking like an Italian widow. She found a dress she completely fell in love with: Navy blue, shapeless, tank sleeves and... size 16. She's a size 12. We tried it on anyway, and of course it was too big, unless she wanted to look like a flapper with the waist around her hips, and flash a lot of side boob. It was going to take too long to have her size sent from another store, so she had to grapple with the reality that the dress was not to be.

Her lip quivered, and she looked at me like she'd just lost her best friend, but I stopped her with a curt "Don't start crying over a dress. We'll find something." She held it together pretty well, and we avoided a total breakdown. The sales lady started feeling bad so she dug through the racks with us. "Will it make you feel any better if I tell you that every single girl in America has the experience you just had? She finds the perfect dress, but it doesn't fit, or its too expensive or her mom wont buy it for her? We've all been there!" I said, but Leila didn't care.

Finally, I heard a sharp intake of breath: the universal sound of "I just found the perfect dress." Its the right color, the right size, it fits perfectly, and IT WAS ON SALE. CRISIS AVERTED.

Then we tried on shoes, and had no luck. Her feet are getting too big for kids shoe departments, and I refuse to pay adult shoe prices. So, we still have that hurdle, but at least now, she will feel very fancy when she goes to the dance with her dad.