My motto for Easter is shop early and shop often. When Layla came home, I realized that I couldn't take three children and my mother to clothing stores to shop for Easter clothes. So I started the process of buying all the dresses I thought my mother might like, take them home, and the Irish twins put on a fashion show. I'd take back all the dresses that didn't make the cut, then I'd move on to the next store. This was the pattern until I hit all the stores, Children's Place, Macy's, JC Penney's, Target, Ross, Marshall's, TJ Maxx, and Sears. We'd make a final selection, then all the other dresses would go back, then it would be time to find Jory a matching outfit.
CP used to be our go to place. They were fabulous at having coordinating outfits for the boys. Then they got a new buyer and sadly the store turned into a hot mess.
Last year, my aunt told us about a store that sold suits in all colors and sizes. With the girls' dresses in hand, we went to the store, hidden in this mini-mall. We were received a friendly greeting as soon as we walked through the door and serviced shortly thereafter. The forty-something-year-old man looked at the girls dresses, walked away for two minutes and showed us a brown striped suit. My mom and I looked at each other and the doubt was strong in both of us. But the salesman assured us it would look good. He looked at the two teal dress shirts I had to choose from, grabbed one and put it under the suit. He assured us Jory would look sharp and match his sisters nicely. He seemed sure, I'm not a man, or a clothing expert, and so I said, okay. And just like that in ten minutes, we had been helped and I had spent $100 on Jory's very first suit. Before we left the man put his hands on Jory and said, he would be a monument for God.
This year, I knew we would go back to this store. I liked it. I liked this men's clothing store, where the employees know their business, can size up a customer in a few seconds. You don't get that kind of service at a Sears or even a Nordstrom's, unless you go to the personal shopper section. But before Jory could get his new suit, I had to choose the girls' outfit.
I looked at this site and looked at the colors we wore previous years and decided this year we could wear blue, green or lilac. That made shopping so much easier, even the girls could help. We went into a store and I reminded them what colors we were looking for and everyone brought back their favorite dresses. Sometimes that meant glittery dresses that I knew were never going to make it to Easter Sunday, but they were participating for the first time so some iffy dresses I let pass.
Ultimately we found our dresses at Burlington's, a place I never would have thought to look, but we were there to buy Jory some dress shirts and I decided to look at their dresses and the all white dresses were the winners. This was even after I did an Amazon clothing buy for the first time. Those dresses looked prettier in the picture.
For a coordinating color, I decided to go with lilac. I quickly discovered we live in a sad world where people don't sell lilac colored church socks for girls, not even on the internet, so that meant I had to create my own. Yeah, they don't sell lilac colored dye either. With white lace socks from Payless and dye from Michael's, I went about creating matching lilac socks for my Irish twins. If you had ever told me the price of motherhood would be watching the season finale of Scandal, while using a stick to stir socks in hot purple water without letting the water splash so the dye won't stain the beige colored kitchen sink (it stains according to the internet), I would have laughed in your face. But yet that's what I did for one solid hour, only to discover that since the lace and the socks were made of two different materials the lace became deep purple and the socks lilac. Whatcha gonna do?
With runs to various Claire's and a hair store, I found the bows that I felt would best match the socks and officially the girls were done. Then it was time to find my boys to coordinate. We went back to the suit shop for Jory, the same guy waited on us, he remembered and once again we were out of that store in ten minutes. I'm in awe of this man. I love a person who knows their job and knows it well. Great customer service. It's awe inspiring. Jory was taken care of, so now on to Teddy. I thought this task would be fairly simple. It would have been if lilac wasn't the coordinating color. There were tons of suits out there for little infant boys, but none with lilac shirts. Are you kidding me? I checked the internet, nothing. This shouldn't be this hard, then finally at Sears I found a lilac shirt, but of course the vest was grey. Jory's suit is black, black jacket, black vest, black pants. But they did have this suit in Teddy and Jory's sizes. Hmm.... I bought them each one and continued to hope that one day, somewhere I would find this same suit except with a black vest. And I found it, at JCP in a size 18 months. Teddy is a chunky monkey, but he's not that big. So I had to settle for him wearing a grey vest and Jory a black one.
There were new challenges to this year's pictures. One, there were now four children to get dressed. And two, we were at a new place, JCP instead of our beloved Sears. JCP was busy, but they had a video playing, Frozen, and the kids hadn't seen it. SCORE! They could be entertain in one space, I took over three chairs, put Teddy in Jory's lap as I began with the most difficult one - - Rowan. She's tenderheaded so I thought I would deal with her crying at getting her hair combed and brushed, first. She didn't cry too much, but based on her hairstyle, I realized there was no place to put her big lilac bow, oh well that could be saved for Easter. Thanks to PE with Mimi, I knew how to discreetly change my big girl and put her in her white dress, her lilac socks, and her black patten leather shoes. With the threat of "It being on" if she dared dirty the dress, it was on to the baby. Her hair decided not to cooperate, so I made my second adjustment of the day I gave her a hairstyle different than Rowan's. It hurts me just to write that, but sometimes you have to take one for the team and dreams of a perfect Easter picture die a slow, horrific death.
The threat of something worse than death if she got her Easter dress dirty lingered in the air as the baby went to sit down to watch Frozen, now it was Jory's turn. I love boys! They are so simple. I hand him his socks, then I look through the double stroller looking for his shoes. The shoes he polished the night before in the kitchen.
"Jory, where are your shoes?"
"I left them in the kitchen."
So when he saw me laying everything out..hairbows in one bag, brushes and combs in another, socks in one in case the color bled onto something else, the night before did he think I was doing that for my health?! Was he created to slowly drive me insane? I've watched shows on the ID network and think it's so evil when a spouse kills another spouse by using rat poison. It takes months and months for the other spouse to die and before their death they are in such pain and agony and the doctors can't figure out what's wrong. Sometimes I think the terrific trio are doing their own form of this, minus the poison.
Does he know how long and hard and how much I stirred those socks, which not can't be featured in our pictures because he has no shoes?!?! The pressure is on, I know they are going to be calling us soon, and now it's time for the spitter to get dressed. I saved Teddy for last because he spits up a lot, I think he has some form of reflux. I figured I'd work my way up so his shirt has a better chance to survive not looking so wrinkled in the pictures.He looked so cute in his church shoes with his black dress socks on. His black pants looked good, then I put on his shirt. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?! I bought this last month and it's too small. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!?! I just bought this suit last month. Does it start at four months? At four months, you join the band wagon to drive your mother insane? So it seems. Yep, this three - six month outfit is a goner so I get to spend the day before in the mall finding Teddy hopefully this same suit in the next size up. Then I hear it. Our name has been called, I ask the photographer to start with the terrific trio and to take birthday pictures with them. While they are busy with that, I pull those buttons together because Teddy is wearing this outfit in these pictures. I moved to the floor of the studio so I could watch the other ones take their pictures when I noticed Jory didn't have his suit jacket on.
Seriously it's amazing I'm not in a nut house. Did he think the jacket was just there in case it got cold? Not to wear with the matching pants and vest. I pray one day when its Easter picture taking day, my beautiful daughter gets sick, and it's up to my handsome son, Jory, to take their kids to the photo studio to take pictures, then he'll understand. He'll understand.
Slow, horrific deaths are hard to watch before your eyes, but then I look at my watch and realize this train needs to speed up so we don't miss that much of our Good Friday service. As I watch the photographer cajoling Rowan to calm down, I feel something wet on me. I look down, yep, Teddy had spit up. I take the diaper and wipe him off and quickly button his vest so the stain can't be seen.
The photographer is ready for Teddy before I have time to button his sleeves, but bygones. As I say, yes, he can sort of sit up by himself, I notice that the drooling boy has now drooled on his sleeves and the vest. He hates me. I let it go, but him on the sofa. Three quick shots, two of which Teddy is smiling and showing those dimples. The photographer throws in the other three, snap, snap, snap, and we're done.
I'm amazed. I don't remember a photo shoot going so quickly. Everyone quickly undresses and I put everything back in its correct bag. I hand out the church clothes, so we can walk into church dressed. After I put everything back in the stroller, the workers have restarted Frozen so the kids are occupied as I select pictures. I was surprised to see there were that many pictures, then it hits me. Crap! We didn't take two shots. We always take pictures of Rowan & Layla, Jory & Rowan, Layla & Jory, but the photographer was on to the next family so not this year. Maybe this is the price you pay when four people need pictures taken. Next year, I'll have a list of shots I need to hand to the photographer and a list of exactly how many photos I need.
With less pictures, it made the selecting go quite quickly and we were out of there. A sweep of the infant section to see if I could avoid going to Sears on the day before Easter, was fruitless and out of the store we went. The breakdown of the stroller and getting all the Easter stuff out went quickly and before I knew it we were on the road. I dropped the kids off at children's church and Teddy and I found a sit near the front. I was surprised we hadn't missed that much of the service, then I looked down at the program and realized I had the time wrong. Score! For all the misses at the photo shoot, it was less stressful than usual. We'll see how next year goes.
And now you know the rest of the story...
I got everything up, the night before. Jory shined his shoes and he left them in the kitchen to dry for the morning. While watching the Scandal finale, I dyed the girls socks
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