Shopping Adventures

*Warning! The following story is long and rambling, but I thought it was funny so I wanted to type it out. You probably had to be there though. Oh well, here it is anyway.*

Lately, I have been looking for an outfit for Aubrey to wear home from the hospital. I kind of have an idea of what I want, but I haven't seen anything that I really like. It's the kind of thing where I'll know it when I see it. I want something pretty and dressy, but it has to be soft and feel like it'll be comfortable. I can't figure out what type of outfit it should be seasonally. It will still be very hot in September, but she is due after Labor Day. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't believe in super summery clothes after Labor Day. That's the way I was dressed as a child, and that's the way I will dress Aubrey. My mom says the "no white after Labor Day" rule doesn't apply to babies like it does to adults though. But anyway, I don't want her to look too summery in mid September.

Another thing I'm finding when looking at infant clothing is that all of the newborn stuff looks HUGE to me. Granted, I have no idea how big she is going to be when she's born, but I don't want her to be swimming in her going home from the hospital outfit. Yes, I admit, I am probably way over-complicating this whole thing. I should just go in a store, find a cute outfit, and buy it. But I just can't bring myself to buy something I don't love.

So Saturday I was shopping with my mom and my grandmother. This is pretty much our weekly ritual. If you're at Dogwood on any given Saturday, you'll probably see us there. We decided to be different yesterday though, so we went to Northpark. While we were there, we thought we would go in the Strasburg children store and look for a coming home from the hospital outfit.

Now in this store are a ton of little dresses that I would LOVE Aubrey to wear home from the hospital. As a matter of fact, I would pretty much take anything from there. I love their dresses. Unfortunately, they are all about $70.00. But I knew this going into the store, so being the good bargain shoppers that we are, we went immediately to the 50% off rack to the smallest little dresses we could find. My mom picked up this precious little pink dress right away. We looked at the price and were shocked to see it is marked down to $11.97. NO WAY! I thought, give me several of those!

However, we noticed that the little dress had a tie that tied into a bow in the back. I thought this was strange for a newborn's dress because they lay on their backs. That can't be comfortable, I thought. I also commented that the dress seemed so TINY. (This was weird because, as I've already mentioned, usually I'm saying they look huge.) I told my mom I didn't see how her little neck would fit into that hole. My mom blew me off and said I would be surprised how tiny she will be when she's first born. So after looking at several options, we finally found the PERFECT dress. It was so sweet and just what I had been looking for. Dressy without being stuffy. Weather appropriate without being summery. It didn't have the uncomfortable looking tie in the back. And it was only $15.00. Perfect.

My sweet grandmother offered to buy it for me, and proceeded to the checkout counter. My mom and I continued to browse while she paid. We came across a little plaid dress in the same size as the one we were buying and were talking about how cute it was. The more I looked though, the more I thought it odd that it seemed so dang tiny. I commented to my mom that it almost looked like a doll dress. She kind of laughed. A second later, she nudged me and said "Carrie, look!" I look over and there is a DOLL dressed in one of these tiny dresses. My mom said, "I think Nana is buying a doll dress!" We rushed back over to the rack where we found the little dress, and there in fine print on the tag were the words, "Doll Dress." We hadn't even noticed that before and just assumed (stupidly, I guess) that it was a newborn dress.

At this point, I started laughing hysterically. I'm talking tears streaming down my face, scene causing laughter. I literally just walked out of the store and left my mom (who was also beginning to laugh hysterically) to break the news to my grandmother. My grandmother walked over to my mom with her purchase, and my mom said, "I think you just bought a doll dress." Sure enough, the tag confirmed it. Well, my grandmother had just signed something stating that she understood that all sale items were final. She went over to the sales clerk and said, "Is this a DOLL DRESS?!" The clerk said, "Yes, you didn't know?" After explaining that we didn't realize we were looking at doll clothes, the clerk said she would give my grandmother her money back since she hadn't even left the store yet. All of this happened while I'm sitting in the department store next door still laughing hysterically.

My mom said that sales clerk probably thought we were country come to town! She was probably thinking something like, "Those dumb women can't tell doll clothes from children's clothes!" I don't know what she thought, but I thought the whole thing was darn funny. The sad thing though, is now I want a dress just like that for Aubrey to wear home from the hospital. It was SO cute! They may have had one for an actual baby, but we were too embarrassed to look. And it sure wouldn't have been $15.00. The moral of the story is, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is!