Bye Bye Retail Therapy

It came to my attention today that my mall trips are a thing of the past. Instead of both arms being loaded down with bags of shoes, both arms are loaded down with babies. I used to think about how cute my outfit was and now I'm just happy to be showered and dressed. Designer jeans used to fill my shopping bags and now I drop the serious cash at Gymboree where they have that little TV in the back that really annoyed me when shopping for my niece but I am now grateful for. I bought lingerie, trying to be extra sexy, now I buy lingerie to cover my saggy boobs and stretch marks. It also seems that my favorite stores seem to be my children's least favorite stores, almost like they can sense my joy and decide to ruin it. I remember walking through a store and smelling something terrible, realizing it was someone's baby and thinking that they should have taken care of that immediately. But I know that once I haul my stinky baby all the way to the bathroom with the changing table there is no way I will have the energy to get all the way back to the store. And they always wait till I have a huge stack of stuff to try on. So I now change them in the dressing room, something I would have been disgusted by before. I would sigh in pleasure when I saw the tag proclaiming my favorite brand of jeans as I pulled them on and I now rush home to cut it out so I am not constantly reminded what size they are. But I figure as long as I'm not replacing them with a smaller size tag from an old pair I haven't completely lost it. (I keep trying to convince myself I'm still sane). And I used to spend hours at the mall, going in every store, but now I get about an hour (maybe 2 if I'm lucky) before someone wants out/ wants down/ wants to eat. And I realized why I've been so stressed, there hasn't been any retail therapy. On a good note, I can hang bags on the stroller and the basket underneath holds quite a bit! Of course with 3 cars seat and a double stroller I would have to hold it all in my lap while I drove home.