Boxing Day this year found me lying on my sister's basement floor (quite comfortably - on layers of blankety goodness and a heater toasting my feet all night) until 7:45am.  Major daylight-burning for me, waking up that late, but sleeping in like that (as opposed to the weekday 5:30 routine) was like a drug and I wanted more, more, more!  Alas, the phone rang and it was one of the boys calling from Best Buy asking my sister for advice on a purchase and I couldn't go back to sleep after that.  The guys woke up at 6am to go hunting.  For electronics.  And boy did some of them score quite the trophies...

By mid-afternoon it was the ladies' turn for some retail therapy.  Happily, we were a hop and two skips away from our favourite store and since it's in such a posh mall, it wasn't be busy.  We invited the two big girls (11 - my Big Girl - and 12 years old) to join us, thinking it might be a nice warm up to our customary pre-baby Girly Day in the coming months (which usually is exclusively the Sisters but will now include these two tweens).

As we all walked away from the parking garage, I instinctively reached for my Big Girl's hand.  Hey, we were crossing the street, and when I go to the mall with my kids, I hold their hands.

The other hand is hesitant.

"Or is it sort of uncool to hold hands?"

"Ya."

For most of the excursion she gravitated towards her cousin as I tried my darnedest to focus on walking forward and not constantly turning my head back to check where she was.  I found myself almost begging for her at the bookstore, coaxing her over to books or items I thought she and I would both be interested in.  At one point she called me over to the finger puppets and I was squealing in excitement inside at discovering that she was still thinking of me.  Finally at Anthropologie we walked around together (her cousin got hungry so stepped out with her mom to get a bite to eat), and she discovered the world of pretty-expensive things.  And I bought her a hat which was a) a lesson to her in finding great deals: $38 to $10, or b) me buying my daughter's attention back.  You decide.

I will be the first to admit that I am not ready to let my baby grow up.