Sugar and Spice And Everything Nice

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To thank the men and women who have given and continue to give their lives for our freedom, my daughter and I went to the mall to shop. It is a basic human right and one which should not be taken for granted. Unfortunately, I hate to shop for clothes and the only thing I hate more is shopping for clothes with my teenage daughter.

Those few precious years of dressing up your compliant and beautiful baby are barely payment for the years of fighting over every scrap of clothes they want to put on their bodies. Parenthood is not to be taken lightly and I think my #1 fear is screwing her up somehow. I constantly question myself and my decisions, "Is the right thing to do? Will she hate me and be on The Bad Girls Club someday?"
What if that 8th birthday party that I cancelled is the thing she talks about when she is on Intervention?MTV is full of girls whose parents screwed them up. I don't want my daughter to be one of them.

Anyway, we headed out to the big city and the big mall, with the cool stores, to get a few things for my growing-taller-every-day teen. My girl has been bewitched by Seventeen magazine and all those ridiculous teen shows about how she should look and what kind of clothes she should wear. Never mind that she is six feet tall and curvy, not an Abercrombie zombie at all. She only wants those outfits she sees in the media and none of the ones that fit her body type and make her look stunning. And so the fighting begins....

What was supposed to be a nice day together turns into a crying in public kind of day. It is so frustrating to me that she can't see what other people see and that she is so disappointed in her inability to look like that picture in a magazine. I start to doubt myself, what do I do? What is the best way to open her eyes and show her? Surely, it is not getting so upset that I walk away from her in a busy mall and leave her sitting on a bench hiding her tears.

I miss my mom so much now that she is older and I need more advice than when she was a easy baby. This is the time when I need reassurance, someone who will tell me what to do so I can just do it, without worry and doubt. 

I wonder when iPad will come out with an App for that?