My hippie-dippy high school had an "art barn" and my friend Catherine (now a well-regarded painter, come to think of it) and I used to hide out in there taking our artworks more seriously than they warranted. Late one winter afternoon, trying to capture the opaque yet faintly luminous jade green of a bunch of grapes, I mixed up a color so alluring that Catherine, agreeing that she probably shouldn't eat it, dabbled a finger on my palette and touched it to her belt-loop. "I just want to keep it," she said.

So did I, although I stopped short of painting my pants with it. Some years later, though, I stumbled upon that green again in a Brooklyn junk shop. It was a Jadite plate from the 40s or 50s, a piece of cheap mass-produced mid-century glassware (often miscategorized as "depression glass") that would have been given away at a movie theater or with a box of some detergent your grandmother used to use. I just wanted to keep it, and for a good 10 years or so I hunted for pieces at flea markets and on the random glassware shelves of dusty Goodwill stores in the seedier parts of town(s). I wasn't alone in this, of course-- lots of people liked Jadite-- but t was still cheap and still showing up at flea markets and junk stores. And then one day it all  disappeared, to reappear in antique-shop windows and (once it existed) on eBay, with shocking price tags. What happened to humble Jadite to elevate its worth so suddenly and so steeply? Martha Stewart happened, and while there were no masses of women and gay men following my every aesthetic move, there certainly were for Martha. Jadite green became Martha green and my crappy yet lovely dinnerware became "collectible."

Oh well. I can live without the hunt for cheap glass plates, although it was fun. But I'm not sure I can live with the relentless collectible-ization of, not only everything I like, but pretty much everything, period. And if I can live with the toys of my own childhood becoming rare vintage collector's items commanding comically high prices at antique toy fairs, I am not sure I can handle toys from the 90s and early aughts doing the same. 

Some weeks before Chanukah this year, I sat down with Lilah and googled her suggestion, "princess doll" (with my refinement, "- disney - barbie") and scrolled through the surprisingly paltry  results. Too ugly, too sexy. too expensive, too, um, princessy... untill we landed on this:

Too cute, right? By which I mean, just cute enough. We liked her, and I liked her even better when I realized she wasn't even a proper princess,j ust Madeline, you know, of "twelve little girls in two straight lines" fame, dressed up as a princess. She was also used, but in EUC and what the hell, 20 bucks, and we were done.

Except no-one can be a princess ALL the time, so she'd need her school uniform, with its cunning little yellow hat, to change into. It was here that I discovered that these litttel dolls and their hundreds of tiny accessories aren't made anymore, and are, inevitably, "collectibles" now. I managed to kit her out with the uniform ad a little bed and a couple of other things but did you know that clothes for the 8" Eden brand Madeline doll, NIB, go for upwards of 95 bucks a set on eBay? 95 bucks! Who is buying this stuff?

Not little girls who want to play with them, obviously. And not their parents, either, I'm willing to bet. A $95.00, 3" high "recital" dress, still in the box, is going on some fussy older lady's high shelf, to be gloated over and dusted and, probably sold, eventually, at a  substantial mark-up, to some other fussy lady to complete her collection. And all of those fussy ladies are pissing me off. 

I get the appeal, I really do. I was pulled into searching and watching and poaching and pouncing to get my set too, and in the process I learned all kinds of arcane signifiers (Madeline dolls come with "flat hands" or not, "original faces" and new). The hunt is addictive, the good find triumphant. But it's still just a cute piece of vinyl junk. 

Why, as Marya put it, why oh why must everything be either disposable or collectible?

Phew.

I thought it would never come.

Of course, what's peculiar about the way we've divided up our year is that on this, the day the winter gloom, both physical and emotional, ceases its advance, we celebrate, not spring but... winter. Dude, we've seen you. Go away now. 

How much do I hate winter? Enough so that the first sight of bright spring colors at Gymboree or Baby Gap is enough to cheer me, even if all it really means is that we've spent ourselves out on fleece and hat'n'scarf sets by now and must be tempted with novelty to keep us buying. I don't care! It's green and pink and yellow, it's bright, nothing looks itchy or has intarsia snowflakes or fairisle or rows of little reindeer. 

 
 Happy solstice!
 

Barbie loves Spongebob, did you know? That's what the thing Marya saw at Toys R Us is actually called. It looks like this:

Called upon to investigate, I discovered some sort of ongoing Spongebob/Barbie meme, check it out, and any number of these on YouTube:

Oh, I know, they appear to be about Spongebob and Patrick, but don't be fooled. These videos are but thinly veiled references to a forbidden love.  How long have these two been at it, and what inspired Mattel to legitimize a love that otherwise would never have dared speak its name in a special commemorative edition? *

When I think of Barbie sharing a universe with Spongebob I see her bestriding Bikini Bottom as in  "Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman," grinding the resident sealife to jelly beneath her collosal stiletto heel. But, crush fantasies aside, perhaps what we have here is really fodder for the freakiest fanfic ever written: Barbie/Spongebob. He is absorbent, yellow and porous, a hardworking member of the family Cladorhizidae. She is improbably pneumatic yet vaguely humanoid, America's own vinyl sweetheart. Neither has genitals. The possibilities are endless. 

*I actually have no idea which came first, the meme or the doll, but I like my version and I'm sticking with it.

First we had this:

And Suri is a darling little girl who could, at first glance, totally pass for my own darling daughter, who is similarly sylphlike and similarly flowingly-tressed and similarly lots of things except for similarly shod. Because, I'm sorry, but those are totally real heels on a 3-year-old. 

When those pictures first made the rounds last fall I took a cursory peek and shrugged and said, "Well, they could be p'incess dress-up shoes a stubborn little girl refused to change out of, not that I would know anything about that." I actually didn't think so, they are not plasticy-looking or bedazzled enough to be little-kid dress-up shoes, but I guess it is possible that the rich, being different and all, have access to toddler toys we mere mortals are not only not able to afford, but are literally not allowed to know about. Hey, it could happen.

And then after enough sniping on the gossp sites and in the pages of the Huffington Post, Suri's mother bothered to make a public statement on Access Hollywood:

"She, like every little girl - she loves my high heels" and wanted her own," said Holmes.

She said despite the uproar, they are safe for her young feet

"They are actually ballroom dancing shoes for kids," Katie said. "I found them for her and she loves them."

Uh-huh. That would explain one pair of speshul shoes. It doesn't reall yexplain the first (obviously not ballroom dancing)  ones,above,  nor does it  answer for these:

Or any of this:

I do know exactly what a priss I am about this kind of thing, but that is not a child, it is a well-turned-out, somehwat flirtatious midget, or rather, Little Person. Or possibly a large and disconcertingly lifelike doll, and we know they make those. Even ignoring the rest of the outfit, we've now seen the poor mite out and about in heels often enough to feel safe in assuming that she wears them a great deal. Perhaps a pediatric podiatrist of some sort might be able to convince me with scientfic evidence that habitually balancing a preschooler on two-inch heels causes no harm to her feet, ankles, or lower back (although I doubt it). Nothing is going to convince me that it isn't harmful to her sense of herself as a child. Run free, Suri! Climb a tree! Ride a scooter! Don't just stand there waving to your admirers! You can get admirers later, preferably when you're old enough to actually do something that might earn you some. And you'll have plenty of time later to stand around looking self-conscious with one foot slightly turned out, wondering if you've got the position right.

No sir, I don't like it.

I take it back! I had posted my refusal to commit to a single label company-- Mabel's is unimpeachable, but Oliver's has  more options, and some other people who sent me a press release make alarming but potentially useful "Peanut (or whatever) allergy" labels that I suppose you could stick directly on your preverbal kid if labeling his stuff wasn't good enough. Mabel's won me back, though. by sending me a thoughtful gift. Just like your mother always told you to do. 

Have you read about that weird new regulation which would obligate bloggers to disclose any freebies or payments they'd received for mentioning a particular producr? I've examined the issue thoroughly, myself, and come to the conclusion that I don't give a rat's rectum if bloggers disclose that stuff or not, but I will happily disclose the fact that the Mabel's people, possibly Mabel herself, if there is one, stumbled upon me rattling on here about bizarro double-blind virtual lost-and-found systems and how all you really need is a phone number and a lack of crippling paranoia and you can dispense with the middle man, and they sent me... stickers with my cell phone number on them! I love them! Mabel's, I mean. The stickers are nice too.

Seriously, the more I think about it the more irritated I get at the assumption that people who find a single lost froggy rainboot and bother to try to reunite it with its owner are likely to be pedophiles or psychokillers who habitually haunt the parks and playgrounds hoping to find just such an opportunity to HUNT YOU DOWN AND TAKE YOUR CHILD. If the promoters of such systems don't believe this themselves (and I bet they don't), they certainly hope you will believe it. And I don't.

I have read The Gift Of Fear and I recommend it, but nowhere have I seen Gavin de Becker or any other safety- or self-defense expert insist that everyone is, even potentially, out to get you. Rather, they tell you that your own instincts are better than you give them credit for, and to follow them, even if it feels unfriendly or downright rude. They tell you that there are almost always warning signs, and your major contributon to your own safety is to note them and respond to them. They do NOT tell you that everyone sucks. And I tell you that most people who find your kid's lost froggy boot and try to return it are going to be among the non-sucky majority. And (and this is where I start sounding a little cornball, especially to myself) those little moments, the one where you see someone drop her glove and you run after her to give it back, the one where someone dashes forward to hit the "door open" button for you so the train door won't cut your foot off, even the times when you return to the park in search of that lost rain-boot and find that someone has placed it, with care, atop a railing to be sure you can see it... these are the moments that make city living feel village-like and cozy, not only bearable but actively lovely. They turn the faceless jostling crowd from a mass of potentially hostile hassles and impositions to... people. People who might be on your side.These moments cannot be replaced by a sticker and an online code. So there, Found-it Tracking System ^TM. I'm going with the phone number, the assumption of decency, and Mabel's.

Labels by ACME Label Maker

Mouthman hoodies. Awesome.

Awesome.

AweSOME!

Surely you need to get one for your little carnivore. (I'm imagining a line of prey shirts and I guess they'd look normal and then when the child crossed his arms the springbok or whatever would go all wide-eyed with panic, but I dunno, it's just not as cool.) I want the raptor.

 We've talked about the apparently booming market for cheerfully crass slogan onesies ("iPood,"  "Boob Man," et cetera),  and the "celebrate the brat" cultural current that produces sparkly pink "It's All About Me"  tees. There's obviously an audience for baby products that celebrate a sort of pseudo-unsentimental air-quotey approach to early parenthood, albeit an audience that does not include me or anybody I know on purpose. I can understand crudely jokey kid stuff, though, even if I don't care for it. I cannot, however, quite manage to wrap my head around another current trend, crude cutesiness. But I am fascinated by it. 

Crude cutesiness does show up on the clothes themselves sometimes, but is best exemplified by the names of product lines and companies. The names of cloth-diapering accessories are always cutesy-crude, for instance: "FuzzyBunz," "Happy Heinies" (and  while we're on the subject, who could forgive the truly nauseating, purely cutesy-cutesy "Kissaluvs?"). Who would name a (fairly expensive) children's clothing line "Pukies?" And why? Is every expulsion of effluent from our children so darling that it must be celebrated in the marketplace?

I really thought that we had, with "Pukies" reached the logical furthest extent of the nauseatingly cute references to body fluids trend, but I was, of course, wrong. Meet "Pitty Shants."

Pitty Shants. For pity's sake.

 I may shudder at the over-the-top sugariness of product lines like "Angel Dear" and "Twinkle Toes." But I'd rather be angel-dear'd to death than pat ushon by Pitty Shants. 

Baby Gap, Baby Gap, what are you thinking?

(I feel like I should rhyme this with "I've seen your new stuff and I think that it's stinking" but I should resist.)

 But honestly, what is this thing?

The Fug Grls and other commentatatators are forever tossing out Muppetcide jokes-- "Looks like she killed Cookie Monster" or "What did Big Bird ever do to her?-- whenever celebrities are spotted abusing  feathers or fur, and  maybe it's getting tiresome, but how does this garment, whatever it is, not resemble a Jim Henson interpretation of the greater brown sea slug:

with buttons?

I don't much care for this Shabayeva-eque roadkill vest, either:

 I don't  much like that look on grown-ups. Sticking it on your toddler, who isn't equipped to stride about in tall boots  projecting the sort of "just stepped in off the Steppes" attitude necessary to carry off the "I'll just toss on this uncured hide" look, just reads as pretentious assiness. Pretty much exactly how I feel about that Stella MaCartney band jacket, come to think of it. Which brings us right  back to " "i've seen your new stuff and I think that it's stinking."

For some reason I'd expected to develop some sort of brand loyalty to Mabel's Labels, I don't know why; I've only bought them once, and they are as great as some, you know, small stcky things can be great. I could have asked Mabel for what I realized, too late,  I should have ordered in the first place: element-proof outdoor labels with our phone number on them, not just the cute but useless-to-strangers "Avi and Lilah." What if someone finds that sand-shovel (don't laugh, a sand-shovel in November is a rare and irreplaceable thingt) and wants to return it but has no way to reach me? I do Sharpie phone numbers on things but Sharpie is sadly ephemeral, except on your couch or cashmere sweater or anywhere else you wish it would ephemerate itself.

 But through no fault of Mabel's I decided to try a different brand and a search turned up Oliver's l labels, at similar prices and making similar claims for stickiness and indestructability. Plus they have, somewhat insanely, label-blanks "inspired by" Pucci, Burberry, and, of all people, Betsey Johnson. Here, look:

They are hideous, but they are very funny. If they made Prada ones (black on black, with interesting texture) or Lacroix or McQueen (Alexander, not Lightning), I might have to buy some.

 But back on thehome page, they have another thing, less plaidy or rosy, that caught my eye. It's the "Found-It" system, an online lost-and-found where you pick up a lost sippy-cup and call in a special code and lo, the owner or owner' representative canalso go online and enter a code and claim it. How neat! How nuts!

I know this works for lost cameras and such, on occasion, and I know that my husband and I and many of our friends would totally pick up that sippy-cup and  go find the site and enter the code  but how many people would? It's actually kind of a pain:

What happens if I lose something?

And one wonders how, exactly, the lost item is supposed to "prompt" the finder-- does the Oliver's label contain a small electric-shock delivery device? Does it implant a post-hypnotic suggestion? Does it subtly alter your DNA" Because if all it's doing is telling you to go to this web site and enter ths code and blah blah, all you really need on that label is a phone number. Which is what I ended up ordering. I'm looking forward to some day finding that coded sippy-cup though, and getting "prompted."

I'm not sure I'd even be running the Maclaren recall story at this point if I didn't happen to have this picture of JennL's William post-tragic amputation, but I do. Surely, though, everyone who needs to know that the famously well-designed, attractive, and sturdy British umbrella  strollers can AMPUTATE THE FINGERTIPS OF SMALL CHIILDREN probably does know already. Not that we would have minded knowing this before ours actually did attempt to AMPUTATE OUR SON'S FINGERTIP that time last summer. We assumed user error, not international children's lifestyle brand conspiracy of silence.

So far they are reporting all of eleven incidents, which I suppose might be twelve incidents if it had occured to us to report ours. We didn't, and actually it's a bit hard to figure out if ours would count-- the articles implicate a "folding mechanism" and seem to imply that the children stuck their fingers into the hinge while a parent folded the famously foldable stroller. Ours occured while Kenton was snapping it open for Avi, who was in a bad mood (which did not improve after his AMPUTATION) and didn't feel like walking. This actually seems like a likelier accident (Avi was eager to get into the stroller and reached out for it while it was still being readied for him) but nobody seems to be talking about any deadly unfolding mechanism slicing children to ribbons. We will get the hinge-cover kit, of course, now that we know. 

In the meantime, if you are foolhardy enough to continue to use your Maclaren without the patch kit you may want to grab one of those hooks out of the post-Halloween mark-down bins. Just in case. Arrrrrr. 

Four years ago this winter, both pregnant with our now-preschoolers, Marya and I sat at a friend's wedding admiring the bride (she was fairytale beautiful), the surroundings, the food, and a teensy exquisite Russian table-mate, all bird-bones and eyelashes, in a midnight-blue dress. We liked our neighbors fine but I couldn't wait for them to get up to dance so I could wave my arm in the air and go "Ooh, ooh, I know this one! I know this one!" about the dress. It was Stella McCartney for H&M, a fragile scrap of lapis silk with platinum ribbons, that made the wearer look like a slightly louche ballerina dining late (in Paris) with the Crown Prince. And who wouldn't want to look like that, at least once in a while?

 I wanted that dress. It had no room in it for bosoms, let alone extra people, so that was not going to happen, but I did rush down to H&M on my return hoping to see the rest of the collection, which had been entirely consumed except for a tarnished-silver chain-mail evening bag I am still kicking myself for not buying.

There's no question that Stella McCartney can make beautiful clothes, although she has outfitted too many starlets in shiny studded jumpsuits to get a 100% Andrea approval rating. It's entirely possible that she could have gotten this famous without the name, unlike, say, her mother, the world's most adequate keyboard player. None of this entirely explains, though, why she should have her name on a line of fairly drab, fairly expensive kid's clothes at The Gap. I'm trying to figure out if these will sell, and admitting that I really have no idea. Would you buy:

$38.00 "bloomer shorts," presumably meant to be worn over thick tights with boots or clunky mary janes, the way Chloë Sevigny or the girl who made your latte would?

(Answer: no.)

 How about this half-a-trench, half-a-pea-coat?

(Answer: If I needed it, very possibly. It's way stylish.)

This $24.00 tee-shirt?

(Answer, sure, off the 1/2 price rack next month.)

These jeans?

(Answer: Perhaps, but only for, say, a willowy and very fashion-conscious 9-year-old. They would look ridiculous on a tot. They look meant more for Stella's usual young-Hollywood or young-Hollywood-wannabe clientele, and not for anyone who will be trying to climb a jungle-gym in them.)

And finally, this, the signature piece which appears in every ad and on every splash-page but, oddly, does not seem to be availible for purchase on the Gap site:

(Answer: not on your life. It is both too on-trend (I think Padma was wearing this jacket last week on Top Chef) and too specifically Stella McCartney for Gap. I would definitely get it, though, if I wanted my kid to look half fashion victim, half organ grinder's monkey.

And if that last look is your heart's desire, you can always just get one of these from any costume shop for $14.99. And now if you see Chloë Sevigny out dressed as an organ grinder's monkey, you'll know where she got the hat. 

I haven't posted any of these in a while, bu I never stop snapping them, because babies never stop losing stuff. So, the summer/fall 09 lost stuff:

I hope to pull together a Halloween round-up but in the meantime, a question:

What the hell is this?

It's called "Horse Rita" which is helpful, since I'm not sure I'd ever have guessed. I thought it was a Bactrian camel. Anyway, it looks abashed and a bit abject. It hopes you won't beat it. 

The company, which is called Esthex (i'd expect to see this name attached to something like a blackhead extractor, but what do I know, maybe it's the founder's actually name: Oleg Esthex, of the Central Transdanubian Esthexes) makes many products  seemingly born for a life of exile on The Island of Misfit toys, iincluding the puzzlingly named "Cat Door":

That's what it says: "Cat Door." If that thing above is Rita the horse, then this is, I suppose, Door the cat, but why? Is their dog called "Leash?" Why is Rita there not called Stall, or Shit,  or some other random noun occasionally associated with the word "horse?" There's just something about calling a cat "Door"  that seems directly translated from the Toddler (2-year-olds are forever naming their loveys things like "Sponge" or "Balloon" or "Velcro") or possibly, via Babel Fish, from the Betelguesian. That thing just does not have any of the markers that constitute "cute" on this planet. Nor does it have any but the most rudimentary vestigial ears or tail, so its chances of reading as "cat" are pretty slim. I think it vaguely resembles a four-legged arachnid, or possibly one of the probably miss-reconstructed beasts from the Burgess Shale. 

Perhaps the indie-born trend toward "quirky" stuffed animals, which began at places like Etsy (which means the worst examples should be showing up at Regretsy) before taking off for the big time in the jolie-laide persons of the Ugly Dolls, should be running its course by now. Critters meant for kids have gone from quirky to just plain ugly to frankly alarming. I'm all for nontraditional standards of beauty, but that thing isn't nontraditional, it's just wrong.

If I hadn't hated the online children's boutique Chasing Fireflies for its unbearably twee name alone, the fact that it is the source of the infamous two-hundred-buck sterling silver bubble wand would certainly have done it. They spell "fairy" as "faerie," too, which, while "correct"  just comes off as unnecessarily fawncy. And anyway, the denizens of the "real" Faerie are not one bit nice, what with all the baby-stealing, mean tricks, and creepy eternal dance parties. You want to stay away from those folks. Call your sparkly-tutu-and-gossamer-wings ensemble a "fairy" costume. 

I will certainly grant that they carry some spectacular Halloween costumes. I'm particularly partial to this Good Queen Bess:

and Marie Antoinette's milkmaid dress is nicely done:

...if a little ill-fated. I wish they'd done Mary Queen of Scots while they were at it, and why not Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, and Lady Jane Gray? They could all go out together, and carry trick-or-treat buckets in the form of their own severed heads. How would that not rule? 

On the boys' side, they make a handsome knight:

And this amusing "monster boy":

Although like most of them he will run you some money, what with the not-included bootcovers ($16.00) and the headpiece ($20.00 ). Alas, the breakaway chain (dunno) is no longer available. Oh well! Guess you'll have to use the non-breakaway kind, and hope nobody reports you to CPS.

As attractive (and expensive) as the costumes are, though, I just cannot warm to Chasing Firelfies. I realize they are aimed at not-my-demographic, and that somebody must really want a sterling silver bubble wand, but I can't help feeling like Chasing Fireflies, if personified, would try to keep the likes of me out of its country club. And you know what they say about any club that won't have you as a member. 

These dispiritingly colorless toys are from an outfit called Nova Natural Toys and Crafts, whose smug little catalog arrived here over the weekend. I'd never seen them before. My initial response is to hate them, since in my experience children care little about sustainability and toxic run-off and really like color (not to mention noise). But these trucks are actually pretty groovyonce you really take a look at them. They look a bit sturdier than the similar ones from Plan Toys, and the real working parts look like they might just really work. At sixty bucks a truck, they had better.

So I suppose I would have been leaning toward "Expensive, but they look like fun, plus you could always paint them" before I even got to that last one, on the bottom right there. But do you know what that is? That is a Unimog. They make a Unimog!  

No, I'd never heard of them either until I started hanging around with my husband, who always has the right tool for the job, except, well, he doesn't have an expensive German heavy-duty high-clearance  off-road vehicle* to go desert-ratting in.  But I do believe he would like to. So if Nova Toys and Crafts, the kind of outfit I'd otherwise have suspected of valuing virtue over fun, understands that a (certain type of) boy** needs a Unimog, I'm putting them on the "cool toys if you can afford them" list. Just like the Unimog itself. 

*(from Wikipedia, and not my bad grammar): New Unimogs can be purchased in either of three series:

I've received a couple of announcements lately for Kids Ink clothes on sale and I just don't know, let's take a look.

The faux Chanel is kind of witty, if terrifyingly WASPy:

But most of it looks like this, with a (sixty dollar) high/low East Village graffiti/tattoo art thing sort of vibe:

Or this: or this: 

All of which I'm filing under "good design/trying too hard." How many toddlers of your aquaintance are big Basquiat fans, or really miss The Sex Pistols? These go way beyond putting your kid in a CBGB onesie so people know you know what CBGB was. These are downright pretentious. And why stop at Warhol? Wouldn't Jeff Koons make a good t-shirt? Why not Damien Hirst? Kids love sharks.

I do love this one:

but I just don't think I can send these guys my money. My kids are still too young to make me feel uncool by comparison. I'd like to keep it that way until they're at least, I dunno. four?

I've had the somewhat revolting term "mutton dressed as lamb" stuck in my head for days like a bad but catchy melody. "Afternoon Delight," say, or "Tie A Yellow Ribbon." Those earworms are often idiopathic, though, while I know exactly why I've been thinking ovine thoughts: I got bored with the edge--free, not to say matronly style I'd defaulted to after too many bodily changes, and started looking longingly at engineer boots and big black buckle-y coats and other items I wore regularly in my, if not entirely wayward, certainly way waywarder than I am now youth. As I've started to add back in the occasional "Hey I was too a punk rocker" item, I've wondered if you're allowed to wear them over forty (hell yes) and whether people might judge me for it (also hell yes) and also whether anyone might ever look at me in my combat boots and think "mutton dressed as lamb."  One does hope not. And screw them, obviously. And yet at the same time one still hopes not. 

Look, here's one now, Style Spy proclaiming Doc Martens (how much do I want a pair of the cherry patent ones?) off-limits to anyone over-- get this-- 20.

I've managed a useful trick of mine-- fretting without actually caring-- about the whole issue until this last week, when I indulged a lifelong taste for funky legwear by buying a pair of loverly over-the-knee sockings, or stocks, Comme ça. They stretch way up, past the knees, and well into the zones not usually discussed here unless we are talking about diapering products. And they stay there, until they don't. I remembered some gartery clip-type things from the old days, and dug them out, and indeed they do work but they are old. Almost to the point of giving up old. And so I searched. 

Sock Dreams, the vaguely fetishy and altogether delightful sock fanciers shop I'd ordered from carries them but they are out of all colors except baby bllue, which, no. Men's shirt garters are hilarious (they attach your shirt to your socks) and available from haberdashers, but I don't need my shirt attached to my socks. I need my socks attached to my underwears. And so (and now you know why this post is here and not on socklover.com) I ordered mitten clips.  Little kids' mitten clips, for ataching their darling mittens to their snowsuits. The cutest, most innocent thing in the world, to hold up my sexxxxy soxxxx. I feel dirty. No, I really do. This is mutton dressed as lamb fetus. It's unseemly. And I dearly hope it will work. 

I knew she was fated to outstrip me, and soon, as a style-hound and shopper, the day I told her I'd ordered the wrong leggings and should really have bought the green ones, see, here in this picture, honey, the ones that go with your new dress? Out shot her arm, elbow bent, first two fingers incurled in that imperious Carmela Soprano "come hither" command. "Let me see the catalogue, mom." She was two. 

Of course we don't really shop that much. We get a ton of stuff as hand-me-downs and there's a ton of stuff nobody really needs, and at least another ton of stuff I hate, so that makes three tons of stuff we don't shop for. And most of the things I do buy them I get on sale or via late-night semi-insomniac eBay binges. I've been  particularly unwilling to buy good kids' shoes at full price (Target sneakers and the execrable but beloved Crocs don't count) because of the obvious instant-obsolescence issue.. The cutest kid shoes go for  close to what I'll spend for my own, and need I mention  my feet don't grow? Even carrying twins, they didn't grow. 

And then the in/famous Zappos business model, the one that appears so revolutionary and brilliant even though all they really did was decide to be nice to their customers,did me in. There was a good price and, of course, free shipping on these Umis, a brand I normally sigh over a bit and then move on to the less glamorous, less exorbitant domestic brands. So what if they didn't have them a sensible half-size up? Free shipping! Free returns! Why not order her current  size and see if they work, what the heck, free shipping/free returns.

Then I thought better of committing to boots, no matter how attractively Italian, which might so soon abandon my daughter in favor of a younger child with smaller feet, the cads. I ordered another style, a little larger  (what the heck, free shipping/free returns) and figured I'd send the smaller ones back if it seemed like they'd be too soon outgrown. But who was I kidding? (Not Zappos.) The new boots are sitting here. all suavely suede and patent, assuring me in a velvety voice (they sound like Fabio from Top Chef), that they will fit in a mere six months so why not let them stay? 

Zappos and Lilah are in cahoots/ making me buy her Italian boots. 

This is a pair of "Boyfriend" jeans from The Gap. They're cute, and the slouchy shape would certainly be more flattering than the page-adjacent "skinny" jeans (featuring gratuitous crotch-whiskering), especially on someone with a bit of a belly. Like, say, a two-year-old. These are toddler pants.

I'm wondering if the Gapfolk really thought this one through. As I understand it, the "boyfriend" garment is supposed to evoke a specific sort of scenario. The waif-like ingenue sleeps over at the boyfriend's bachelor pad, all very spontaneously, and in the morning she shrugs into his pants/blazer/sweater/over-sized white shirt with tails that flap charmingly about her slender thighs. They go to brunch. She looks all insouciant and gamine and all that French stuff. Adorable! But surely the "sleeping over" part is key? Why does a two-year-old need boyfriend pants? Does this not seemat least  borderline icky?

Next up: the "Walk of Shame" holiday line at Gymboree: sparkly, but wrinkled. The "last night's party dress" look, come to think of it, pairs perfectly with a boyfriend jacket. It's a classic.