My Two-Year-Old a Victim of the Economy

I decided that instead of getting a brand new Halloween costume for Elle this year, she will be wearing her pumpkin costume from when she was 4 months old, but as a dress. She's totally psyched--she's been all excited about Halloween "punkins" for a month now, and obviously doesn't remember wearing it at four months.

On the other hand, we spent probably around $50+ getting all the pieces together for a spiffy cowgirl costume for Skyler (9 years old) to wear to her class skating party and for trick or treating. Sure, I justified a lot of it--the toy horse can be a toy for the kids, the leggings and long sleeve shirt can be worn as regular clothes this winter--but still. For a nine-year-old, wearing last year's costume is DRAMA, for a two-year-old, it is completely insignificant.

So in general, Elle does get the short end of the stick when it comes to extra spending in our family a lot of the time, because she's too young to care. And quite honestly, as I write this I'm thinking that we should be following her lead!

While I try to make sure my nine-year-old is keeping up with the other nine-year-old Joneses (though we by no means are extravagant with her), my answer quite often when it comes to Elle is that she is so young, certain things don't matter to her.

Here are some other recent examples:

* No extravagant two-year-old birthday party. Oh, we had a small celebration with a cake, a couple of close family friends, and gift opening at the house, but it seems like in this town, "formal" parties are the norm. Not for Elle.

* Toys. Elle's sister is nine, and we have a lot of her old toys, which Elle is totally into. So while I personally yearn to buy the new Pottery Barn Kids play kitchen, or any number of shiny new toys that she takes a liking to, I just don't. She's perfectly happy with the recycled toys from sis that I pull out from time to time, and new toy purchases are saved for birthday and Christmas.

* Clothes. Elle has some adorable clothes and shoes, but I do try to hold back on impulse buys. I tell myself that she has perfectly good clothes in the closet, and that when she's a teenager, that won't be enough, but for now, it is.

So I guess you could say that my two-year-old is the biggest victim of the economy in our household, in terms of "going without." Because if times weren't a bit tighter for my family (and I'm sure yours), she'd have that new Halloween costume, and I'd probably make those impulse buys now and then.