Flashback Friday – the Fashionista

At 18 months, Pea was already showing signs of being a fashionista.

When this bag (a Not Rational cargo bag) arrived in the mail, she petted it. For hours.  (Not that I blame her. It did smell lovely and was smooshy soft.)

Yes, she IS drooling on my handbag.

I should have known that this was a portent of things to come.

That, at 2-1/2, she’d be prancing out of the shoe store with the red patent leather shoes that I did NOT want to spend $45 on – but she looked so bloody pleased with herself, trying on the shiny red shoes (that I did not ask for, but the shoe salesman brought out because she was so enraptured with them).

Again, not that I blame her, because I do so love a pair of red shoes….

I should have guessed that at 3, she’d already have a clear idea of what she liked and what she didn’t, clothes wise. I should not have been surprised when, at Gymboree one day, she searched through a stack of cherry printed purses to find the “puwrfect” one that matched the cherry printed dress she was wearing, then march it over to the sales counter and stretch to hand it to the salesgirl, stating “can you please cut the tags off of this? My mommy is going to buy it for me, I know she will – it goes puwrfect with my dwess”.

I should have realized that at 4 she would decide that striped dressed required striped tights because, as she put it, stripes match stripes. Or that when picking out a top, she would ask which bottoms I bought with it, because they must go together. Or that I would have to start fibbing if I bought a new shirt or dress and pick out a pair of leggings from her drawer to give to her so that she would have a complete outfit – simply because it avoided the interrogation of “what bottoms CAME with these, Mommy?”

I should have understood that, at 5, she has a somehow amassed a larger purse (“puhwse”) collection that I do.

Or that I would be hearing “Mom, when we go to get me a new raincoat tomorrow, you need to get me some new clothes. Some weekend and after-school clothes” as authoritatively as she did.

Recently her obsession has turned from purses to headbands. A bit less expensive (and I don’t have to put bunches of clips in her hair to keep them off her face.)

I can’t even imagine what the next might be.