Clothing dilemnas

Note: Please ignore the photo rotation. I'm not sure why I'm having issues with this today, when they look completely fine on my computer.

First off, Tyler is starting to outgrow some of his 3T stuff, and since he's starting school in 2.5 weeks, I decided to go school shopping yesterday. I hit up a few stores, but got some great clearance deals at Children's Place. I bought mostly 4T, but there were some cute (cheap) shorts in a 4 so I bought them. I also bought a pair of 5T jeans to put away, simply because they were $2.49. I got them home and tried them on and the 4Ts are just a tad big (which I expected) but the 4s are absolutely HUGE (they are going back to the store). Oddly enough the 5Ts looked smaller than the regular 4s.

So, how the heck does sizing work? I THOUGHT that the 4"T" meant that it was cut a little wider for a "toddler" who may be in a diaper still. I was under the impression that the regular 4 would be narrower. But this was not the case at all. It was larger all over. Freak occurrence or am I missing something? I also pulled out my limited amount of hand-me-downs and garage sale purchases in 4/4T and it seems (for the most part) that the 4T pants are smaller than the 4 pants. I can't figure out the difference in the shirts though, but that doesn't bother me as much since boys can get away with shirts that don't "fit" perfectly, kwim? Baggy is fine with them.

Anyway, the war is on with the Oxi-Clean and Clorox Bleach Pen. See, here is an example of some previously perfect clothes of Tyler's, now only to be found destroyed in the Tupperware container. I will clearly have to post an update later of how my progress (or lack thereof) is coming along.
And then there is the battle of shoes. You might THINK these look like perfectly good school shoes that we picked out yesterday, but you'd be wrong. Wrong? Why? Well, because they aren't Crocs. Tyler is just devastated that his preschool won't allow him to wear Crocs.
By the way, shoe shopping with an opinionated 3-year-old is NOT fun. First off, we had him sized and they said he's more like a 9W but to go ahead and get a 9.5W. So, 30 minutes into the hunt for 9.5W shoes we discover that he's really a 10XW. So the hunt was back to square one. Tyler is learning at a very young age that it is not easy to find the most stylish shoes in an XW. It's a problem I've dealt with my whole life, although I've never been disappointed that I couldn't find light-up shoes in my size. Personally I'm a little happy that they didn't have them in wide sizes for him, LOL. I find them obnoxious. Then again, they may have made the transition from Crocs are little less unbearable.

And, for finally some good news, I realized that I can still do matching clothes for Tyler and the baby. Obviously I have no intention of doing this regularly (or even semi-regularly) but I was so happy when I found these little matching Hawaiian shirts and bathing suits on clearance at The Children's Place!