Dresses

This weekend it was time for Christmas dress shopping.

Even Sierra, who is nowhere near the fashionista that her sister is, was excited to head out for our shopping trip. Usually she hates shopping. But after I bought her two outfits that she couldn’t even get over her shoulders, she realized she needed to make an effort.

Plus there is something about the Christmas dress. It’s where we get to go all out. Velvet. Lace. Fake fur. Sparkles. Dresses that flare out when you spin.

After making some preliminary selections we headed into the large dressing room. Mireya, who is seven and has inherited the glamour gene and raised it to the power of Prada, selected six stunning outfits. This was going to be a problem because for Mireya, picking just one is impossible and a guaranteed tear generator.

“But how can I choose?” she whined.

“Well, you just have to lay out your options and think of the what’s good about each one, then pick the one that has the most good parts.” Now who could argue with that logic?

Mireya.

“They are exactly the same! They have exactly the same good parts!”

Sierra, on the other hand, was having a completely different problem. Nothing fit. No wonder nothing I was buying her fit. She was no longer in the kid department at all.

When in the world did that happen? Sure, she’s wearing my shoes, but I thought I had another couple of years before she was going to be swiping things from my closet.

So, after easing Mireya’s misery of having to select only one dress with the promise of Christmas shoes, we were off to the other end of the store for Sierra.

Much like Sierra’s transition two years ago to the woman’s shoe sizes, moving over to the juniors section at age 11 doesn’t just mean bigger price tags, it also means a totally different kind of Christmas dress. A Vegas show girl kind of dress. And that’s putting it mildly.

Frankly I’m not prepared to have my little girl dress like she’s doing two shows nightly with a matinee on Sunday. Our new goal became finding something that was both festive and restrained.

Talk about a tough fashion combo.

Eventually we found a dress that worked. It looks beautiful, even though there are no sparkles, velvet, or fake fur.

Maybe they’ll make a comeback in the juniors department in 2010.