Shopping and Kids

Yesterday I went shopping with my wife and two daughters.  The girls are being inducted into the National Junior Honor Society and needed some new clothes.  Seems like everything they do nowadays, they need new clothes for the occasion.  As I trailed them through the store, I really tried to be interested.  But it is kinda hard when their taste in clothes is so drastically different than mine.  I am a boots and jeans guy and dressing up means I starched the shirt and jeans.  Felicia and the girls were talking about slacks (I thought that was what you pitched when you roped a calf!?!?!) and looking at flouncy shirts.  They asked me about some of them, but stopped asking when I started telling them how low cut I thought the shirts were….to be honest, my wife is pretty conservative too, and our girls don’t wear anything that is too low.  But, I am the overprotective Daddy and I want everything buttoned up high and tight!

All of this got me to thinking about what my life is has been to this point.  I live in a sea of estrogen. 


When Felicia and I were first married, I would go shopping with her at the mall.  You get there and look around at all of the kids…have to listen to all that whining. 

“My feet hurt!”

“My back hurts!”

“Do we have to go in there?”

“I don’t want to go in there!”

At that point Felicia would tell me to be quiet or go home!  I don’t care for it now and didn’t care for it then.  What I cared about was who I was going shopping with!  About the only place I liked to go were the ones that had a shopping cart.  It gave me something to do with my hands!  Of course Felicia would fuss at me because I would ride around on it with one foot on the back bottom rail and the other pushing me like I was on a skate board.  There were a few crashes and angry looks….the people I crashed into would give me angry looks too.

When the girls were babies, I still went shopping, but now I had something to do!  There was feeding, entertaining and diaper changing (had a buddy get out of the diaper changing by puking on his kid, never thought of that!) to occupy my time.  There were also a whole mess of people to talk to, because everybody wanted to look at the two most beautiful twins in the world!  Of course the downfall was that everybody felt the needed to say, “My cousin had twins and then she turned around and had triplets!”….but that’s another story, for another time.

As the girls have gotten older, they are buying things that I really don’t want to know anything about.  Things with wings and strings…I finally figured out they are not talking about kites!  I usually just end up following them around carrying stuff.  (We had a lady ask us if we needed help and I told her, “I don’t know, I’m just here to carry stuff!”)  All this said, I will go anywhere they want to go.  Because it won’t be long until I’m not cool enough to hang with them….this may have already occurred, but I choose to deny it at this time.  At some point it will be just Felicia and I shopping together again….with the whining!

At this time I would like to put a disclaimer in.  I have enjoyed almost every moment shopping with my wife and kids, although I think sometimes Felicia just gets tired of all of the heaving and sighing that goes on.  But, if we were shopping in a tack store or at a trade show….buddy, I am all over that!