Dress for success

Today's blog theme must be clothes, as here I go again. Franny, independent as she is, still hasn't made the shift to walking. But because she is so independent, as well as extremely efficient in her crawling, she can't wear dresses, for the reason that she gets all tangled up. As a result, it has been impractical for her to wear the adorable sun dresses hanging up in her closet.

This week, however, we came up with a temporary solution. Franny can wear her sun dresses on days we go grocery shopping, since she has to suspend her on-the-go lifestyle for an extended period of sitting. Her shopping attire has also seemed to end the confusion that she is a girl--with few exceptions, regardless of what store we're at, there has been an elderly gentleman who pauses to ask "how old is he?" or "what's his name?" Dressing in pink from head to toe didn't do the trick, but the dress did. And Franny gets a kick out of it, since dresses are still a novelty for her. She spent much of her trip yesterday patting herself and pointing at the multiple ladybugs adorning her dress. She would take just brief moments to look up at me, smile, and say "mmmm!" before resuming her inspection.

And for us, I suppose it's appropriate to dress for the occasion, as grocery day is always quite the event. We spend the morning matching up our recipe pool with our current coupons/sale items, make a list--we never deviate from the list!--and head out to be the super savvy shoppers that we are. The entire process takes us most of the morning. But it's worth it--to date, our coupon clipping has saved us $305. Our goal for the year is $1000. We'll see if we make it!