If you’ve ever seen the show “What Not To Wear” on TLC you know exactly what I mean. Yeyda and I are big fans of the show. Every day it comes on right at lunch time so we sit down and eat our lunch while we watch. I thought for sure she’d protest, but she is very happy watching the transformations that occur.
“The Rules” that she is learning on the show seem to be impacting this 3 year old’s fashion sense. This is, at least, as regards the fashion faux pas of the adults around her. Yesterday we went to Burlington Coat Factory to look for a coat for my mom. She has been searching for a full length all weather dress coat and hasn’t been able to find one yet. She tried on quite a few from hip length to full length with no success in finding one in the style and length she wanted. Part way through our visit Yeyda needed to go to the restroom. So I left mom to her search and took my little one to the bathroom.
On the way back we could see mom standing in front of the mirror with a red knee length swing rain coat with big tortoise shell buttons and a polo inspired color. She had it buttoned all the way up. From where I was standing it looked like an oversized painter’s jacket. It simply swallowed my mother’s tiny frame alive. I didn’t even have to ask for a reaction from Yeyda. From 30 feet away she said, “Ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly.” My mom was flabbergasted. She asked, “Why? What’s wrong with it?”
Yeyda approached the jacket. Walked all the way around my mom and said, “The back is cute. The front is just ugly. I don’t like it.” From the mouth’s of babes bubbles forth truth! I couldn’t help but agree. Finally, mom asked the lady in charge of that department what she thought and she too concurred that it was just too much coat for such a little lady. It made her look like she was wearing a sheet and her shoulders just disappeared.
Mom tried on another one in the same length that was a beige color with a little bit of a shimmer. It was boring in color and cut and a little matronly, but head and shoulders better than the one before. There was a defined seam at the shoulders and didn’t blouse out as much as the other one. There was a zipper that went from the bottom all the way up to close the high neck. Covering the zipper was a placket of snaps that terminated a few inches from the base of the neck allowing the top sections to be free forming a simple lapel. We asked Yeyda her opinion this time and she said that this one was much better. We were left totally frustrated though because Mom liked the style, but still insisted on the long coat.
I did though find a nice spring/fall jacket from London Fog in navy blue (my favorite color) that hits me right at the hip with a cinched waist at the back. The front is flat and straight and falls away from the body just enough to camouflage the soggy stuff underneath. My chestiness is still a mild problem in the jacket but not so noticeable externally that it was an absolute no. The jacket had a zip front with snapped breast pockets and slit side pockets and a hood which makes it great for rain or snow. Not that I would enjoy wearing a thin jacket like that out in the snow. It makes me happy to have found something that will work for milder weather, heck I’ll wear it in the winter if I have to. Now I won’t have to wear my blazer everywhere I go or have to worry about my chest and hair getting wet when it rains and I have to go out! Mom was nice enough to use the remainder of her merchandise return credit card (because they take your money if you don’t use it in a certain amount of time, which I think is BS, but that’s a story for another post) to help me buy the jacket so I only had to pay $20. That was my allowance for the week, but, hey, I needed the jacket. Thankfully, I had a $20 gift card in the diaper bag so that I could get the milk and other items I needed from Wal-Mart.
Firstly, I’m a mom and wife. Professionally, IT consulting is my job and blogging is the outlet for my passions. I write about things that affect the everyday life of a stay-at-home parent or any parent for that matter such as parenting, relationships, discipline, the media, product reviews, giveaways, social media, food, cooking, gardening and anything else that might come my way.
