MOM GETS THE LAST LAUGH
First or Thirty-First?
ILLUSTRATION BY BR
M
om, can we go back-to-school shopping?” This is the battle cry of my youngest daughter beginning the week after the Fourth of July.
My answer is always the same, “Nope.” Week after week, she’ll ask to go back-to-school shopping, and week after week, my answer doesn’t change: “No way.” I mean, c’mon now, I’m not that momma who sends her child to school empty-handed on the first day of school and hopes for the best. Our school is not completely paper-less yet. I do send the appropriate school supplies. But, my children go to school wearing clothes they have in their closet.
14 METROFAMILYMAGAZINE.COM / SEPTEMBER 2017
W.V ITTANY VIKLUND, WW
IKLUNDMADE.COM
As their mantra is “Let’s go shopping!” my mantra is “No new clothes for you!” I wasn’t always the clothes Nazi. I used to buy them new clothes for the new school year and they looked completely adorable. But then … after years of heartbreak and contemplation, I didn’t. Let me explain: Until my children stop growing and someone (anyone!) develops an honest-to-goodness stain resistant material, I’m not sending my kids to school in new clothes on the first day … or the first week … or ever, at least until the weather changes. The first year I sent my precious firstborn to school, she had on the most precious looking short set. Her socks and shoe laces even matched. She had a headband that coordinated with her super cute outfit and she couldn’t have looked better if Gymboree designers had dressed her themselves.