How you know you are stuck between a teenager and a toddler

This is for anyone parenting a teenager and a toddler.
Or if one day you might be a parent of a teenager and a toddler.

Right now Tatumn's (toddler) favorite movie is Finding Nemo. She loves it and laughs out loud at the funny parts. She can even do some of the lines form the movie. Although we try not to watch the beginning when Nemo's mommy becomes lunch. That part is a little traumatizing. It has to be for Tatumn , too.

Taylor (firstborn and teenager) just celebrated his 15th birthday. Deep sigh. He is now loaded up with gift cards that are burning terrible holes in his pockets. They must be spent. Firstborn teenager's favorite store is Hollister. (Please don't make ugly comments about this. We are working on it.) Because Taylor is learning (because his mean parents are making him) to be good stewards of his gift cards, we headed to the back of the store on a recent excursion to Hollister. The back of the store is where they have CLEARANCE items.

We found a couple of things marked down and I smiled to myself at my firstborns attempts to stretch his (gift card) dollar.

GET THIS, the shirt was marked down from $17.50 to $16.90. Now, I am not a mathematician and it took me a couple of seconds to check the numbers. Again. And I did a quick little figure in my head and realized it was marked down .60 cents.

Are.you.kidding.me?

Okay, so Taylor decides on a couple of things and we approach the checkout counter and thankfully the MANAGER is also the checkout dude. And because I can, I say "The markdowns in the back are rather insulting. 60 cents is considered a SALE?" He mumbled something that I couldn't make out because the music is seriously deafening.

And then I crossed the line between teenager straight to toddler.

And I said this " I know markdowns (buddy) I work at the Gap. And those are no markdowns."
And in my head I heard Marlin (Nemo's daddy) say "I know funny mister, I am a clown fish."

So, we paid and left. I felt smug and proud and I am sure my teenager felt embarrassed. But maybe not too much because you know what....

I let him buy a shirt for FULL PRICE.

Because I am that kind of mom.