Sunday, March 20, 2011

Dressing Room Debacle

Take a moment, if you will, and consider the single-most hated activity on the planet for (most) women: bathing suit shopping.  (And if you're that Cool Mom who enjoys squishing your baby-holding hips into spandex?  We are probably not friends.  The only spandex that holds a place in my heart is the kind stitched into my Spanx.)
What does this have to do with parenting, you ask?  Both are an excruciating test of patience, yet also hold moments of pure glory.  (What?  Am I really the only mom who equates the joy of my child's first steps with the awesomeness of finding a bathing suit that camouflages muffin top and cellulite?  Sidenote: A sarong and an umbrella drink will help facilitate this miracle.)
But please, do NOT take your child bathing suit shopping with you.  Sharing a dressing room with your little one is never a good idea.  You'd think I would have gotten then picture way back in the early stages of motherhood, when Target forbid me to bring my shopping cart-- and the baby inside it-- into the dressing room.  I threw a fit that only a swollen, sleep-deprived New Mom is capable of, which may or may not have involved asking for a manager and waving a Bumbo seat in the air. 
What's the big dressing room deal, you ask?  Well, the second my shirt comes off, the kid makes a beeline for my belly.  And while a belly-zerbert can be funny and adorable under the proper circumstances, the sound of (fake) flatulence in such a contained area is horrifying.  After I pry him off of me ("But it's so squishy, Mommy! Why is it SO SQUISHY?!"), I bend down to explain proper dressing room etiquette.  Gravity (any mom's nemesis) causes a gap in my bra, which leads my child to yell, "WOAH, WOULD YOU LOOK AT THOSE!"
Can you blame me for sending him out to the "husband bench" with a soft pretzel and a video game?  (Sidenote: There was, in fact, another child in that dressing room.  I heard a pint-sized voice say, "Wow, Mommy!  Those are big numbers on that tag!"  I never saw the kid, but that mom may have dug a tunnel out of her dressing room rather than face anyone in the vicinity.)
Luckily, I opened my mailbox yesterday to find the new Spanx Catalog (this sacred event is comparable to the husband receiving the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.)  I locked myself in the bedroom for 39 minutes (each page requiring one full minute of admiration), and discovered the Spanx Swimsuit.  I know.  I don't have to leave the house to try it on, AND it compresses my Squishies?  If this company starts making jeans?  Cool Moms will surely take over the world.

2 comments:

  1. So true. Am I too old for Spanx? I def gotta check it out :)

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  2. I tried to do the same thing at Target with a two year old strapped to the back of those super long carts that have seating. She kept jumping out.

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