Shopping in the Ladies Department

Photo Source

It’s the first page in a new chapter.

While I was shopping in the dress department of a store last week, my twelve-year-old spotted a dress she thought was cute.  She held it up to see if I liked it (for me) and I suggested that she find the smallest size they had and try it on herself.  (No, that smallest size wasn’t for me. 🙂  She’s grown so tall that I suspected it would fit her.

After a moment’s pause, she did; in fact, she entered her own dressing room with several dresses and a skirt.  This was amazing, as a mere two weeks ago, she refused to look at anything in the Misses department, declaring it all too “old lady-ish.”

It was a little strange, each of us in our own dressing room with my ten-year-old sitting in a chair outside, willingly providing her opinion on each piece of clothing.

After a couple of “fails,” my oldest emerged in a darling dress.  We all exclaimed over it…a minor miracle that all three of us actually liked it!  We bought it and she wore it to church on Sunday.

Yes, her wearing a dress from the ladies department is the first page in a new chapter of her life.  She’ll become a teenager later this year.  Don’t get me wrong; she’s still designing dresses for paper dolls and styling the hair on her American Girl dolls, so she hasn’t left childhood behind altogether.

But she’s taken another small step towards becoming a young lady.  It’s exciting and frightening at the same time…yes, for both of us!!