THE little red dress

If you've spoken to me in the last, oh, 3 years or so, you've probably heard about THE little red dress from Hanna Andersson. I've been obsessing about this dress almost as much as I did the crab-butt pants and monkey-butt tights you heard about a while ago. I swear I think if I had given birth to a boy, I STILL would have dressed him up in this dress and pretended he was a girl, it's that cute.

So of course, Liza had to have one for this year, but I wasn't about to pay retail prices for the set. Enter eBay, where I managed to find the dress and tights (gently used) for about $40. In August. I wasn't sure whether her size would come up again closer to the actual holiday season, so I went ahead and bought it. Since I wasn't sure how much Liza would grow between then and now, I erred on the size of caution and bought two sets - a size 80 and a size 90, just in case she turned into an Amazon before Christmas. I'm sure you can imagine how I justified this to myself - including, but not limited to, next year I can resell the one that doesn't fit; now I'll have a dress ready for next year, too; maybe one of our friends will want the extra one; what if she outgrows the 80 in September?

Of course, we had two Christmas parties to attend, both of which were going to include the same people. I couldn't have my daughter looking all ghetto and wear the same dress to both parties, so we needed a second dress for the second party. And shoes to go with both. It's a sickness, really, it is.

Anyway, Liza looked adorable in THE dress, and I managed to take some photos despite the raging stomach flu I had the day she and Jason went to the first party. Check out the precious pumpkin:

"Hi, I'm going on two. You won't see a picture of me for the next year that doesn't involve either a snotty nose or a sippy cup stuck to my face."

I love the hairdo, which one of the other preschool moms calls "The Cindy Lu Hoo Do," as in the cute little girl from the Grinch movie. Personally, I just call it adorable, and since we're trying to grow out her hair, you're going to be seeing this a lot over the coming months. Must ... not ... buy ... more than ... 10 ... cute ... hairbows ...

No photos yet of the second dress, although I'll probably have to shove her in it one more time so we can take at least one picture. Then it's getting wrapped in plastic and stored in the back of the closet until it's time to sell it on eBay next year (so I can buy her another cute dress, like the Twilight Taffeta dress, maybe?).

Oh, and one more photo, this time of Liza posing in front of her Christmas tree wearing her favorite hat (the sock monkey hat our friend Sybil made for her this summer, which she now has to wear at least once a day, every day, preferably putting it on and taking it off a dozen times or more):

I am especially fond of her signature "one fleecy slipper, one bare foot" look, which I think is going to take off like the bustier did when Madonna wore one in her concerts a few years ago.