Buying boy clothes

Ram's mom blesses us with most of the clothes for the Lambs. We do buy shoes and a few items for them to finish out their wardrobe. Lamb 1 is always getting holes in the knees of his pants-especially his jeans, but also his dress pants. My mom has patched some of his pants. I realized how many she has done when I got out the size 3T for Lamb 2! But it is a lot of work and I don't have time for that. If I'm going to sew I want to sew something fun, not patch Lamb 1's pants!

Sears has a program that if kid clothes wear out they will replace them. They do this with all of their brand (Toughskins) and if you have a receipt they will do it with other kid clothes. Last spring I bought Lamb 1 some jeans at Sears. They are good jeans with double knees. A few weeks ago Lamb 1 got a hole in those jeans. I couldn't believe it because he only wore them a few weeks last spring and then he wore shorts all summer and then after a few weeks this fall, they had a hole. Ram took them back and they replaced them for free. They happened to be out of blue jeans in his size (slim) so Ram got black jeans for him. We had to talk him into black jeans, but he finally accepted them. I would highly recommend buying pants for boys at Sears now. I don't think it is necessary to buy other items there, but Lamb 1 will get his money's worth out of pants bought there. We live 3 hours away from Sears, but we go to a town with a Sears often enough to replace or buy pants there if we need to.

On Friday, we took the Lambs to a shoe store and got their feet measured. I tried several Payless stores to get dress shoes with shoestrings for Lamb 2. I think velcro on dress shoes looks stupid. Lamb 2 wears size 9 1/2. By the 3rd shoe store and the second town, a clerk told me that they don't make dress shoes with ties until size 10 1/2. So then we tried Stride Rite. I was willing to pay the money for a nice pair of dress shoes for Lamb 2 to wear to church. They didn't have any either. Lamb 3 has dress shoes with ties. My theory is that they make them with ties and cute for the babies and then parents don't want to mess with tying the toddlers. Then perhaps they start making them in Lamb 1's size because children learn how to tie their own shoes then and maybe also because they need them for First Communion? Anyway, a project on my to do list is to now look online and see if I can find them. Hopefully I can find them at a place that has free shipping both ways. I couldn't believe that we went shopping in the "big city" with no luck with dress shoes for Lamb 2. After all the shoe store shopping with nothing, we bought Lamb 1 and 2 new tennis shoes from Walmart. Lamb 1 was complaining that he had to get measured and neither one of them got new shoes. It wasn't dress shoes like I wanted, but it made them happy. Do you have any ideas where I can get dress shoes for Lamb 2? Also, Lamb 3 got new shoes yesterday-hand me downs from the older Lambs, but new to him. He pointed at his shoes and smiled all day. He was so happy to get new shoes!