Go Get Your Jacket

NIB

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?

Awesome

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.

Boys Toys

 

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:

1. Medium series 405, also known as the UGN ("Geräteträger" or equipment carrier), is available in the U300-U500 model.
2. heavy series 437, also known as the UHN ("Hochgeländegängig" or highly mobile cross country), is available as the U3000-U5000 model.
3. U20 is the smallest Unimog. It is based on a shortened U300 frame and has a cab over engine compartment from the Brazilian Accelo light truck (Caminhões Leves) series.

Hochgeländegängig!

**Yes, yes, girls too. But I don't happen to be married to one. 

Baa baa black sheep

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. 

Outsmarted by Zappos

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. 

So let the games begin

I recently posted on Facebook that my kids had taken to singing (loudly, in public) the "Bad Horse" song from Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, (oh, just buy it). An old (we're all old now) friend from college commented that we all knew the words to "The Lumberjack Song" when we were kids and that was just as inappropriate and it never did us any harm, but, um?

(Dr. Horrible has applied for membership in the Evil League of Evil, headed by Bad Horse, who is a horse. The adenoidal guy is  Dr. H's roommate, Moist. His supervillain-sidekick power is dampening things.)

Dear old friend, I laugh at your feeble Lumberjack song! You have not seen inappropriate until you have heard two adorable three-year-olds cheerfully bellowing "So make the Bad Horse gleeful, or he'll make you his mare!" as you push them down the sunny sidewalk in their slick Eurostroller. No way can a little harmless cross-dressing beat "A heinous crime, a show of force, a murder would be nice of course!", let alone a tuneful threat of non-consensual jailhouse-style buggery. 

It's also entirely possible that I have never in my life seen anything funnier than my kids' Bad Horse chorus. I'd maybe like to scold my husband for teaching it to them but I'm too busy laughing. 

Ooh-la-la! Oh well!

It's Baby Gap's new "Deauville" (honh honh honh)  collection:

Would I wear it? I surely would. I more or less already do, although I don't have that heavy cotton knit biker jacket and I need it  delivered to my door before the next chilly day, which could be tomorrow. Note that this is Baby Gap, though, the toddler section, specifically. Would your toddler wear it?

Toddler girl, I mean. The one in the princess dress over pink-and-lilac striped leggings, with the mismatched socks and the tiara.

I didn't think so. 

Looking for Mr. Goodbyn

When I tell people what I blog about I usually find myself instantly assuring them, over-eagerly and probably unnecessarily (they don't care!) that GGYJ isn't one of those kid-stuff shopping blogs, you know the ones. It's, um, a different kind. We talk about how we feel about children's products, what needs particular products seem to set out to fulfill, how things used to be and where they are going... you know. It's not just about buying things. And it's often, specifically, about not buying things.

Until my kids started school, apparently.  Kenton and I do like some good gear. We like a tool that works, and one that looks good while it's at it is even better. I know this about us, and I did sort of see it coming, but I'm still a little ashamed to admit just how much gorgeous, unnecessary, and obviously aimed at design-conscious, eco-conscious, gear-conscious Bobos ( like we aren't but could easily be mistaken for)) stuff I want to kit them out with now that there is at least a passable excuse for doing so. There were the expensive (but really nifty and the object of envy at the preschool) labels. There were the backpacks. There were the heretofore unblogged darling oilcloth lunchbags from Mimi The Sardine:

 

And now there is this, the Goodbyn all-in-one lunchbox:

We'd bought a bunch of teensy sub-bento boxes, little Japanese containers meant to hold pickled radish or eggs shaped like rabbits or whatever, and after only one day I was wondering how long I'd be willing (we'll give up on "eager") to wash them all every night and keep track of all the lids and make sure they all went back in the right bin to be found again to refill , and so on. And then an online aquaintance with two school-age kids plus triplets posted the same problem, and I was going to go look for a solution (I was going to start with the bento lady) but another invisible friend beat me to it. Let's look at it again:

I think I want to marry it. 

Thirty bucks. Adorable, sturdy. Customizable. Easier to wash. Purports to keep the sandwich unbesmirched by apple sauce and the crunchy snack crunchy. Sold out everywhere, but on re-order. Talk me down.

Yes capes!

Now ,imagine you're me. Or not. You have the skills, the experience, most of the tools, some of the materials, and, if you don't let yourself get too distracted by passing shiny things, the time to make something like this. But will you? Will I? If not, "Oh, I could make those myself!" isn't really as sensible a protest as it initially sounds, is it?  I mean, it doesn't actually result in anyone getting a cape. 

I could make these. I might. So might you. Since we probably won't, though, we could do worse than to support a small,adorable, local (to me) business. They are from Baby Leo Designs, who also make almost ridiculously exquisite baby blankets, and are really beautifully made. They are, at fifty bucks,  neither cheap nor really prohibititive, provided you're solvent and your kid really wants a cape.

And provided that you yourself do not object to capes, of course. 

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Back to school

Like Andrea with the art supplies, I was a kid who lived for new school supplies. 

 

A brand-new box of 64 Crayola crayons, pristine and perfectly sharpened, was nirvana to my eight-year-old self. Add to that a brand new pencil box, crisp new folders, a supply of  new No. 2 pencils with not-yet-worn-down pink erasers, and—joy of joys---a new Trapper Keeper (the one with the hot air balloons, of course) with plenty of clean wide-ruled paper, and I was a deeply happy little girl. 

They were all just so perfect when they were new, you know? The messy little boy who sat next to you hadn’t yet snapped your favorite green-blue crayon in half. Your perfect yellow pencils weren’t worn down to three-inch nubs after a semester of multiplication table drills. I remember pressing down lightly with my crayons so as to preserve them a little longer and feeling somehow let down when I had to break down and actually sharpen one (Anyway, the built in sharpener just sort of mangled the crayon into only a vaguely sharpened shape. And  it tore the neat little paper wrapper. Sniff.). 

My son William is entering preschool in a few weeks. He's three. About the only thing his teachers ask us to send to school are some Handi-wipes and an extra set of underpants.

But I still haven’t gotten over the seductive lure of new school supplies, even though it’s been, oh, about mumblemumble years since I actually needed to purchase any for myself. So I couldn’t resist a slow stroll through the Back To School aisle at Target last week. It was a little intoxicating, all the packages of ball-point pens, the glue sticks, the markers, the crayons. Even the safety scissors were appealing, as useless as they are. I nearly gathered up a basketful of things just for the sheer high of buying them and having them. I could practically feel them in my hands. 

And none of it was that fancy new-fangled stuff. Except for the lack of Trapper Keepers, these were all the classics. The good stuff. Then I had a little talk with myself. The school supplies will always be there. And if I buy them now, I won’t have a good excuse to buy some later, when I might really need them. (Really, I can justify anything to myself, can’t you tell?) I didn’t really need a fix, not then. And I couldn’t even say that William needs them. He only rarely uses the billion crayons and markers that I’ve already bought for him (read: me). 

            I’m proud to say I walked out of there without a single extraneous school supply. But I can’t make any promises about next time.