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?

Ave Sol Invictus!

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!
 

 
 
 
 

Who knew?

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.

Poor little rich girl

 

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.

Stuck on you

 

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

Naming consultants make the big bucks, right?

What are the new Zutano prints this winter? I'd love to get her a couple of those soft, comfy, long-wearing dresses. We used to have some and they were great. What have we got?

I was hoping for rocketships (she had those when she was a baby) but these kitty-cats are fairly cute. What is the name of that pattern?

Oh. Oh dear. Furry Love? Really?

Furry love?

I love Zutano but maybe they ought to start consulting me before they name their new lines next time. 

Too cool for art school

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?

The unbearable lightness of being two

What can I say, I just liked this one. 

-Andrea

July 22, 2008

The unbearable lightness of being two

by Andrea Nemerson in Observing

I don't know how my children could get so close to turning two without ever once owning a balloon, but they very nearly made it. They had admired any number of balloons from afar, sometimes very far indeed, could recognize them in picture books, and had had an impressive balloon encounter just a few weekends ago while eating ketchup with french fries at a famous hamburger joint with a great view of central San Francisco. We had semi-accidentally attended an Israel Day celebration at the park there, which prominently featured massive banks of blue and white balloons but had none, apparently, available for the children. Then as we sat above the celebration, having lunch with a friend, the sky suddenly filled with hundreds of… well, they were green, red, and black balloons.

"Ba'oon!" shouted Avi.
"Boon!" agreed Lilah.
"Palestinian balloons," observed their father.
"OK, weird," I said.
"Boon! Boon! Ba'oon!" crowed the children.

"Get them a damned balloon" I noted to myself.

So yesterday, in the park, it seemed only right and timely when two teenaged shills advertising an overpriced indoor playspace/mom-spa offered us a couple of balloons. Avi was asleep in the stroller, leaving his to bob unattended on its string, while Lilah commenced messing with hers. And messing with it. And messing with it. "Quit messing with it," I kept telling her. "Nothing good can possibly come of it." Frankly, I was anxious. I was imagining some sort of twinsy chain reaction-- pop!/howl/wake up/howl/pop!-- and I wasn't looking forward to it.

She wouldn't quit, though. She kept pointing to the sky (where we'd recently seen the massive balloon flock soaring on the thermals, winging it inland), then back to the balloon, then back to the sky. "Up, up?" she'd ask, hopefully. "Yes, it will go up," I told her, "But baby, it won't come down. Bye-bye balloon."

Still, it was her balloon and I wasn't going to keep hectoring her about it, and I wasn't going to take it away. And she messed with it. And it slipped its knot and it hesitated, trembling, between her hands, and it was gone. Over the power lines, over the trees, over the hills and far away, while she watched… happily? I'd braced myself for the howl of outrage but she was surprisingly serene. We stood there on the path and watched the balloon dwindle and disappear. She looked completely satisfied, and might even have stayed that way except, of course, there was still her brother's balloon, still tethered there, waiting. "Up?" she asked, pointing. "Up?"

Oh what the hell. He'd never even know he'd had one, right? I loosed it and tied it to her armrest, where she commenced to mess with it and mess with it. And to look completely blissed-out when that one too made a break for it: free, and gone, forever.

It's (the end of) hammertime

My kids, now three, are by now so firmly rooted in realtime and realspace that it's hard for me to
 remember that a scant six months ago they were just figuring out that things come from some place in particular. and you have to do something to get them.

 By now they understand that paticularly desirable things come from catalogs. Once they figure out 

credit cards, I really am in trouble. Here's today's vacation re-run.

-Andrea

.

It's (the end of) hammertime

by Andrea Nemerson in Observing

It's called "hammerspace," and it's where the carrot comes from, or the stick of TNT, or, indeed, the hammer: 

(Properly a mallet, don't you think?)

All babies live in a universe where cartoon physics rule, or might as well.  Everything from the nipple to the mobile to mommy herself, and later every toy, every Cheerio and every iteration of "The Wheels On The Bus" appears on request from unspecified space-- hammerspace-- and then handily returns there when no longer wanted. Why else the inconsolable frustration of the thwarted baby: "What do you mean there isn't there any more applesauce? Why don't you just reach out and get more?"

And then it's gone, hammerspace, replaced by Newtonian physics and the sad recognition that indeed you can't always get what you want. I expected kind of a slow cross-fade though, not the brisk, not to say brusque, trade-in my children seem to have effected over the last few weeks. 

One day this weekend they played at grandma's while K and I did a little shopping, and when we returned Lilah had shed her tights and looked a little chilly, so I offered her the new leggings I'd picked up while we were out. Instead of just reaching out and taking them as her due, though (doesn't mommy always have new pants for her?) she gave me a steely look and asked, suspiciously, "New pants were in the car?"

Which would have been enough to clue me in that the days of hammerspace had gone for good (Already! They're only 2 1/2!), but the boy did his part the following day. Pushing the stroller along the park road in the glorious false-spring sunshine, I pointed to a passing dad taking his toddler for a ride and asked, "Would you like daddy to pull you in a bike trailer like that, Avi?"

"He have to buy one first," observed my practical son. 

How am I ever going to convince my gimlet-eyed realists that there is a world in the back of the closet, populated by fauns and fairy queens?  And I expect to find a neatly printed invoice on my pillow every time they lose a tooth-- no way am I sneaking any "Tooth Fairy" nonsense past these guys.

A Snowflake's Dossier

So it's finally my turn to fill out one of those obnoxious know-your-child forms for the younger child's daycare. I suppose it's nice that they want to know what she is like, but these forms always seem to be begging for responses announcing one's child's special snowflake nature. They bring out a very immature side of me, in much the same way as personal ads, where the goal is similarly to explain what is special about your rather ordinary requirements for love and care.

Has your child had ever experienced death in any way?

Mirabel has been reincarnated 17 times, beginning with her life as a water-boy to Queen Hatshepsut in 1440 B.C.

How many hours of television is your child allowed each week?

Mirabel watches two hours daily, but she is only allowed Masterpiece Theater and The Biggest Loser.

What are your child’s favorite home activities?

Sitting politely with her hands folded and singing hymns.

What are your child’s favorite toys at home?

Her voodoo doll collection and the garage remote.

What type of physical, social and imaginative play do you share with your child?

Because we are philosophically opposed to non-productive play between children and adults, Mirabel's  greatest joy is to turn the mangle while we do washing. We also allow her to practice her sums by balancing our checkbook together.

What is your parenting philosophy?

Our nurturing philosophy blends the key principles of Maria Montessori, Emile Rousseau, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Honestly, the answers are "no," "half an hour of Dora per night," "run around like a maniac and eat snacks," "anything she can get her hands on, especially if it belongs to her sister," "all of the above" and, um, well, I don't know that I've thought that out. I don't suppose "Be nice to my kid and let her run free with appropriate limits" is a philosophy? But I suppose I will behave myself and write something demonstrating that I pay attention to my child and expect the school to care who she is.