Crossing the aisle

In the past, I have been a world-class clearance shopper for Ainslie. So far, I have been on-the-money at guessing what size she will be in a year later, as I've cleaned up at several stores' end of season blowouts, including those at the Michigan Avenue flagship Gap store, when I was still working downtown (and last year when I wasn't!) It has been such a rush to leave the stores with TONS of cute clothes from higher-end stores for less than what I would have paid at Target of Kohls (not that I don't hit their sales too!)



Anyway, it may be the end of an era. Besides the fact that money and space are short right now, so are some of Ainslie's pants. The 3's I bought her for this spring fit now, with no length to spare. I've only been buying 4T's lately. This morning in Kohl's I was perusing some of the Christmassy dresses, thinking of next year, and I got a horrible sick feeling in my stomach. Ainslie probably won't even be in toddler sizes by fall/winter/Christmas.



How did this happen? Why is it so sad to think about moving across the aisle to 4-6x? How did my little dream baby get to be this amazing person who talks and thinks and climbs and negotiates?



I look at her sometimes and I think, ok, if this is it, if we don't get to have another child, I can learn to live with that. Look at her; she's spun-gold perfection. On the other hand, I really feel that our family is not yet complete.



I guess I'm getting ahead of myself. We aren't even earnestly TTC, the old fear just doesn't go away. Meanwhile, thank goodness Gymboree's lines stay basically the same from toddlers to girls'.