Back-to-School Shopping With A Girly Girl

Love this dress! It reminds me of Tea Collection...for about one-sixth of the price. Dress, Okie Dokie; leggings, Okie Dokie; sneakers, Disney

Shockingly, my skirt-obsessed girl is all over this skinny-jean-and-graphic-tee combo. T-shirt, Arizona; jeggings, Arizona; sneakers, Disney

Dress + leggings x pink = our go-to kind of outfit. Dress, Carter's; leggings, Okie Dokie; sneakers, Disney.

If you want to be a hero to a four-year-old girl, this is what you buy: Frozen sneakers

Dress, Arizona; leggings, Okie Dokie; sneakers, Converse

T-shirt, Okie Dokie; jeggings, Arizona; sneakers, Converse (Note: That rag she's holding is not available at JCPenney. That' would be Bunny, her lovie. Bunny has seen better days.)

Behind-the-scenes of our shopping trip. I drew the line at the Sofia the First costume as a back-to-school option.

Shopping for a little girl can be amazing. Shopping for a picky little girl can be tough. And when it comes to clothes (and, ok, dinner), my daughter is picky. The older she gets, the more say she wants to have in what she wears. And that generally means skirts or dresses all. the. time. 

I do nearly all of her shopping online, and when the boxes come, we'll go through them together and she'll basically sit there like a little King Joffrey ruthlessly deciding whether something lives or dies. If it's pink, purple, or emblazoned with princesses, cats, or sparkles, it will usually go on to see another day. Typically anything blue ("it's too boy"), kind-of plain ("it's not fashionable"), or the p-word ("I hate pants!!) is sentenced back to the returns center. What can I say? My little girl is absolutely a girly-girl through and through. She loves making a statement with what she wears, and she loves expressing herself through clothes.

Gee, where did she get that from?

So when JCPenney invited us to come by and do a little back-to-school shopping, I was excited, but also a little nervous. I was already imagining the battles we were going to have in the store--and the pink fest we were surely going to walk away with. Don't get me wrong: I like the girly stuff, too. But it would be nice if S would deign to try on a different color sometimes. Or pants. Like when it's, oh, 20 degrees out?

But she actually surprised me that afternoon in the store! Yes, she made a beeline to the princess stuff  (we left with Frozen sneakers that we might as well have gotten surgically attached to her feet since she pretty much refuses to take them off), and yes we bought several (adorable) dresses. But she also agreed to a little blue, lots of leggings, and even jeans. SKINNY JEANS! (There was the sparkly jeweled button on the fly that won her over. My sincere thanks to the JCP design wizard who thought of that trick.) The Great Pants Experiment of 2014 may not seem earth-shattering to you, but my daughter hasn't worn pants in years, so this basically felt like my own personal Everest.

Here's a few photos of S modeling some of her new back-to-school looks. There's a little pink, a little denim, a little girly-girl--and it's all totally my girl.

P.S.- Um, check out those poses! Could you die?)



When it fits, you feel it.

Disclosure: Compensation was provided by JCPenney via Mode Media. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions or positions of JCPenney.