I mentioned that we went to Jiminy Peak the other weekend, and we had to do some last-minute swimsuit shopping. The girls do their own packing for trips, and the last time we traveled, for J’s gymnastics meet, I was appalled when poor little J changed to go swimming at the hotel pool. She was splashing around with her little friends in their cuter-than-cute suits, and her suit was faded and sagging almost to her knees. Shot to hell, so bad that it was not just unworthy of being passed down to friends, it couldn’t even go into the anonymous random donation box. Straight to the garbage.
We checked out the swimsuit supply. As often happens, we had tons of swimsuits in one size and not a single suit in another.
So before Jiminy, we headed to Target. Luckily, swimsuit season at Target runs February to May, so they were well stocked.
M, with plenty of suits, came along to act as fashion adviser. They were pretty adorable together. At first I tried to throw in my opinion, but since a favorable comment from me is a strike against a suit, I gave up and lurked at a discreet distance. They came up with some choices and headed to the fitting rooms, where J strutted and posed, fashion model style. Lately she’s eschewed bikinis, but this time she found the two pieces tempting, in part because she’s starting to get ridiculous washboard abs from all her gymnastics. If I had that stomach, I’d be all-bikini, all the time. Which of course I don’t say because I work pretty hard at acting like I’m completely satisfied with my body, even when J grabs a roll of my middle and commences to “knead the dough,” as she likes to call it.
We pretty much always aim to have two swimsuits, so when they were stumped between three fabulous choices, I ended up letting her get a third that was the next size up. They were all so cute, and often when we go to a store everything’s rejected, so I nabbed them while I could. But I was regretting it pretty quickly: we’d gotten one one-piece and two bikinis this time, and on our trip I noticed that she kept trotting out the one-piece again and again. “You know, I could have just gotten you two of the same suit,” I groused. I should have known that the bikini love was more theoretical than practical.
But we did have one big triumph: after the first swim, the girls remembered to hand up their suits in the shower without me even asking once. Such conscientious children! Their mother must be awesome.
