Food, Clothing, Shelter: Clothing

I care. I really care. Perhaps I care too much. Perhaps I only care sometimes. But I care about clothes.

I like clothes.

I like different clothes. I like old clothes and new clothes. I grew up in thrift stores. I can honestly say my first pair of new jeans was when I was 23 years old and pregnant with my first child. I couldn't find any maternity jeans at the thrift stores. So I broke down and bought my first pair of jeans that cost over $4.99. I will remember that day for all my life. And I remember wearing them for the first time to a baby shower at Ginger's house. Ginger, who's shower was that? At your house. Early spring 2001? Any ideas? I think there were only 13 of us pregnant at the time.

Anyway, I like clothes. I really like clothes that are made really well, and will last really long, but are really, really cheap. When Claire was tiny, the babyGap in Dallas used to markdown their sale clothes to $1.99. Some friends and I made a schedule so someone would be there every day the week they were to do markdowns. And then we'd start a phone tree when it actually happened.

I realize this borders on pathetic and super-materialistic. So I'm going to show in the following pictures how far I've come from brand spanken new maternity jeans and a babyGap wardrobe for my kids.

Exhibit A.
This is what I, personally, have always referred to as the "White Trash Baby" Look. I know, it's an ugly term. But what else do you call it?! You just can't say anything nice about the saggy-dirt-stained-diaper-as-pants Look.

But this is all my daughter wore for about a day. The day after the Thunderstorm That Awoke the Dead but Not Mark, I kept putting pants on her, but they kept getting muddy, so I'd take them off and go search for another pair. Until we ran out of dry pants. So I hung them on the line to dry and then get this! Then, I put them back on her--dirty. Dry, but mud-caked.

Speaking of mud-caked. I'd like to introduce you to my son, Luke.
We did enforce that our children showered every night before bed. But this photo was taken right before we all got in the truck to come home. So it didn't even take a full day for him to get dirty.


Another thing we wore a lot were life jackets.


They didn't bother most of us. In fact, it became like second skin. With all the paddleboating and canoeing we did the kids became quite attached to them.

Except one child.

No, I'm kidding. She didn't mind the life jacket, but she didn't realize I was staying on the bank for this little excursion. And when she figured out I wasn't hopping on board, the floodgates opened.
This is her on the brink of the realization. Can you sense it? The trepidatious gaze? The "What are you doing, Mommy- Why aren't you putting your life jacket on?" wondering.
About breaks a Mommy's heart.

On to happier subjects.

Crocs.

Can't say that I've ever joined the craze, but my kids love them. And for camping trips, really there's nothing better to be wearing.
But what do you do when your Croc malfunctions during a seriously adventurous stunt with your Mom's zoom lens watching from 100 ft away.

What do you do?!!

You just finish your stunt. Pretending that the strap never broke. In fact, you enter complete denial that you have a broken shoe and you continue to wear it for over a month. Your mother asks on NUMEROUS occasions if we can cut the broken strap off of your shoe. But you insist, "No. I like it this way."

Only my son. He understands that sometimes you just care about shoes. And it's okay if nobody else does.