The Question of Clothes

My friend is having a 40th birthday party on Saturday. I don't have a whole lot of fancy duds to wear for a fall/winter gathering.

I also don't have a whole lot of nice fall/winter stuff that would mask a pooching belly.

So in the past few days I've purchased over $1000 of clothes. I don't expect to keep a whole lot of them. Most was online shopping. When I see anything in stock in XSP or 00P, and it's a reasonable color, I order it. I can hardly shop in stores anymore since their smallest sizes have gone online-only (or have just increased in size to make larger folks feel better). I did manage to score a few things at Ann Taylor Loft and Loehmanns, which I'll have to model for the one who pays most of the bills these days.

But how the hell do I know what to invest in? This extra flab could be gone tomorrow. Or it could keep getting bigger. I remember the first time around, I bought some nice, breezy tank blouses I hoped would cover my belly so I would not have to announce to a brand-new crop of students that September that I was pregnant until I'd at least heard a heartbeat. School started when I was 11 weeks, and it was already a challenge to keep things under wraps, I showed so early.

But one of those tanks I've never worn. Another has been on about twice. The following year, they were too tight and too nice to wear as a nursing mom. That was probably the same the following year, since I was still a frumpy mom who was nursing a one-year-old all the time. Ditto 2008 with a two-year-old.

I might have worn them this past summer, but they just were so obviously not in style. It's one thing to wear t-shirts that are half decade old, but nice shirts that screamed 2005 were just not something I reached for in 2009.

So really, buying a pair of size 0P jeans because they are on sale and give a little room that 00Ps don't? Is that really wise?

Maybe not, but only if I'm going to keep getting bigger. If I don't, well, I could really use new jeans.

Last time I was almost my full size by Christmas, at the end of my second trimester. This time (insert requisite "if" here), I'll be just ... pause for counting ... eight and a half weeks. I should still be able to make it down the chimney, laughing like a bowl full of jelly at the pants I filled out four years earlier. I'll need something in between and up-to-date!

If I was an easy size or if I had any serious sense of fashion, this clothes issue might be a different question, but it just ain't my thing. And yet, I'm not so clueless that I don't know how bad I look when I've got the 90s goin' on.

(Well, most of the time. Sometimes my husband has to point it out).

I will have to make some purchase decisions and actually remove a few tags for Saturday's party. And if it gets super cold, I'll probably say I'm worth a new discounted-to-$25 sweater.

For the rest, I should probably wait and see if I'm going to be dropping a chunk of change back at Gap Maternity.