My mother-in-law and I took the kids shopping for Easter outfits this evening. It was a very successful outing, with both kids coming home with very nice, age-appropriate outfits (purchased by my extremely generous – and awesome – mother-in-law).
For My Daughter:
For My Son:
I admit I felt a bit of sadness as we shopped in the department store for my 6-year-old daughter, who is quickly approaching the “big-girl” sizes. Up to a 6x, it is still possible to find very cute, age-appropriate outfits for girls. Once you hit the big 7, though, things go from cute and comfy to questionable and just plain ugly. My daughter is extremely opinionated about her fashion choices and, to my horror, she bee-lined right to a larger sized dress that looked like a bad 80s prom nightmare. 
This is not the actual dress she ran to (this actually would be a cute beach dress), but I couldn’t find a picture of that one. The one she ran to was shaped like this one, but was made of some kind of weird rainbow lame’ that looked remarkably like one of those swirly Fruit Roll-Ups. Hideous. Not only was this dress terrible, but it was floating in a sea of really terrible, swirly/sparkly awful dresses that were attempting to take over the whole dress section of the store.
Sure, maybe this is the dress for some girls, but not mine. She’s still young enough that I can say “absolutely not” and she doesn’t give me a hard time. Plus, she still fits in sizes with options that both of us agree on.
The future of our shopping relationship doesn’t look too bright, however. I’ll have to ask my mother if clothing was that ugly when I was a pre-teen, and if I gave her a hard time. If I did, I guess I can count on karma visiting me in a few years.