Life with Liz: A BFF shopping day

My number one rule when it comes to parenting is, “I’m not your friend, I’m your mom.” I’m also the chef, chauffeur, referee, boss, teacher or whatever other hat I need to wear at the moment, but a “friend” hat isn’t among the choices.

I learned early on that it is possible to be loved a lot, but not necessarily liked, and I’ve made my peace with things being that way, especially as the kids get older and try to challenge the rules more.

But, as with most rules, there’s always an exception. Recently, E and I had the occasion to spend a little bit of time away together. She had a two-day swim meet in Philadelphia, and I decided to turn it into a girls’ weekend.

I knew that spending a few hours each day in the stressful atmosphere of a championship swim meet with me as her coach would have both of us more than a little sick of each other, and if we were going to get up the next day and do it all over again, we’d have to do something to remind us why we liked each other in the first place in between.

So, once we left the pool and headed back to the hotel, I turned the rest of the evening over to E and let her decide what we did. First up, long, hot baths at the hotel. Because apparently, my little mermaid didn’t get enough time in the water all day long? But, she was the boss, so I went with it. After we relaxed for a while, she asked if we could go shopping. Conveniently, there was a Target right next door.

One of the tricks I’ve learned is not to take kids shopping unless absolutely necessary. Or if I have to take them, I need to have a very specific goal in mind, know exactly where in the store it was located, and go in on a mission and come out before anyone has any wandering eyes. So, E has only ever been in Target three or four times, and each time it was to get one specific item, and I didn’t allow for browsing. This time, I just let her loose.

I don’t really think she realized that everything in the store is for sale. She approached it much more like it was a museum: full of wonderful things that were out of her reach. As she worked her way through the seasonal and dollar bins, she was both in awe of the things she didn’t even know she needed and overwhelmed by the sheer quantity and selection of stuff. After rifling through the bins for about 20 minutes, she came up with a small pack of colorful binder clips. She preciously asked if she could purchase them, to use as bookmarks. At 99 cents, I knew I was getting a steal.

However, as we headed into the clothing department, I got nervous when the first item she darted to was a full-on, iridescently sequined, mermaid-style skirt. They weren’t the tiny sequins either. These were jumbo sequins that made a swishy noise when she walked. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when she looked at herself in the mirror and said, “I think this is a little much.”

We had fun, though, trying on some other outlandish outfits. Although I did have room in the budget for some summer clothes purchases, nothing really struck her fancy. We moved on to the home goods.

We’re going to be redoing her bedroom soon, as it’s time to retire the fluffy sheep that have graced the nursery since A was born. She’s been spending some time browsing online catalogs and getting ideas for her new room. While I’m the type of person that goes for the “bed in the bag” ensemble with matching drapes, she’s much more of a mix and match type and she was busy running back and forth between the curtains and the lamps and the duvets. I have a feeling that her answer to “I can’t decide between the leopard print and the purple fuzzy” is going to be “let’s do both.”

Ultimately, though, the one thing she did ask to buy was a new mat for our front door. It was an afterthought as we headed to the electronics department, but for some reason, it caught the corner of her eye, and she said, “Mom, we should really get that mat for the front of our house.” And, when I looked at what she had picked out, I had to say, I agreed.

I also liked the fact that she was thinking about the boys back home and taking a gift home to them from our little day out.

We had intended to wrap up the trip in the toy department. I figured that by that time, she’d have spent the allowance I had given her in my head and that would allow me to say no to anything else, but she once again surprised me by spotting the aisle of books. Within minutes, she had found three favorites from various series that she’s reading and announced that she was ready to go eat now.

We headed across the street to her favorite restaurant, Panera, and while I was ordering her a bowl of macaroni and cheese, she burrowed into one of her new books. I had also gotten a book for myself, and I pulled it out and we both ended up reading all the way through dinner.

When we got back to the hotel, we snuggled in and did a little more reading before calling it a day. Before she drifted off, E thanked me for having so much fun and for being her BFF. It’s not something I encourage, but in that moment, it felt like exactly the right way to be.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News.