Go Get Your Jacket

The Book of Lost Things

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:

  

   

Too cool for preschool

To the left there is an item listed (accurately) as a "toddler leisure suit" on a generally pretty cute site called Babywit. It pisses me off. There is such a thing as just too goddamned  air-quotey and cool and statement-making, especially at the expense of an innocent preschooler. Nobody wants to wear that, and it's not fair if you're too little to get the joke.

There's a couple in my neighborhood I have developed an irrational love for, solely based on their not forcing their helpless baby girl to meet their own obviously very high mutual standard of outsidery cool.  He is big and has those huge stupid distended ear-hole things and a goofy hat and tats up and down and sideways; she has white-girl dreads and affects the bag lady-by-choice look with the long johns under multiple skirts and the combat boots. Their well-scrubbed, cherub-faced toddler, meanwhile, wears normal little dresses or jeans, without a message-y or self-consciously hip item in sight. Yesterday at the farmer's market she wore a fuzzy brown jacket with bear's ears. I bet they named her something only passably hipstery, Rosie or Maeve or something. I'm afraid to ask, though, in case it's Diablo or Jinx or Rocky and I have to start hating them too.  

T is for trend

A year ago yesterday, about a week into GGYJ's infancy, I posted this monkey dress, which, improbably enough, still (sort of) fits my daughter (she is not what you'd call an ambitious grower). I loved that dress and was pleased to see that H&M has a new version out this spring, and will be all heartbroken next year when she finally sizes out of their cutest stuff. But if I really want monkeys for next summer, all I have to do is go in anywhere-- Baby Gap, Gymboree, fancy online boutiques, The Children's Place-- honestly, anywhere, and there will be monkey things galore in next year's sizes. I can outfit them in monkeywear enough to see them into middle school, although they would hate me for it. 

So, monkeys, monkeys everywhere. Can it be a coincidence? Of course not. If there is a not-so-secret color cabal that decided over a year ago that there would be altogether too much yellow on the market this summer, and there is, what makes you think that all these monkeys were not entirely premeditated? 

There are trend houses galore out there, all eager to sell you a very expensive report detailing exactly what will be replacing those monkeys on next year's racks, but why buy into the dominant paradigm, especially at those prices? Let's do it ourselves! I'll start. Let's see... this year there were butterflies, surfers, Earth-loving naturals, zebra stripes, rockers, monkeys, and a pop-y late 60s vibe, so next year? More organics, lions and tigers, reptiles but not dinosaurs, and a step back a decade or so from this year's Carnaby Street, to gingham and embroidered daisies and Li'l Davy Crocket, but minus the BB gun. 

What say you? And don't forget to come back in a year to see how we did.

Gone, not forgotton

This is not Avi's errant Croc. His was yellow, and is well and truly lost, I can't help hoping, though, that someone else has snapped its picture with a camera phone, and placed it on her blog, and appreciated its pathos. 

Mystery creature sighted

I'm still taking iPhone pictures of lost kiddie stuff, but most of them look alike. The recent gummy bears strongly resemble the previous gummy bears; a Croc is a Croc, and all the backgrounds are pavementy. This thing turned up right outside my door recently, though, and fascinated me. I don't understand what it's supposed to be (I have the pictures saved as "strapbear 1-4")  or what it was for, but I think it makes a beautiful shape. It was gone the next day.

 

 

Say...Santa Claus!

I got all bah-humbuggy last year when I strolled casually by the Photo-with-Santa booth at my local mall and discovered how freakin' expensive the pictures were.

I mean, my child is cute, and a professional portrait of him in all his chubby red-cheeked glory with another big roly-poly guy with red cheeks would have been nice, but  I wasn't ready to drop $40 or $50 for a package of pictures that might not have even turned out. We all know how notoriously fickle toddlers can be when faced with someone wielding a hot camera.

So I bailed, and grumbled for months about overpriced holiday memories and parental guilt and pushy parents and unnecessarily traumatizing small children with a big bearded strange man in a loud fuzzy suit and the poor chances of getting your kid to smile at said bearded strange man at the very instant that the probably-tired-of-small-kids-already photographer snaps the shutter and who this visit-with-Santa is really supposed to be for anyway. I mean, you can hardly be surprised when even the normally smiley kids are a little reticent.

Or worse. No wonder nearly every surviving newspaper in America has a Scared of Santa photo gallery.

This year, I was all set to march out here and complain all over again about this yuletide racket…and then I visited another nearby mall and saw the price list. Hey, I can get one nice 5x7 photo of William yukking it up with Santa for only $15. Or two for $20. That's not so bad. It's just a small trauma after all...

Sporty Beardog

Since we've had a couple of posts about Knuffle Bunny recently, and because I went to art school and can't really manage to resist this sort of thing, here's number II in the series of cell phone shots of sad lost kid stuff, "found in the street" division:

Gummy bears

There's something almost too poignant about lost or discarded familiar attributes of childhood, even if one resists getting all mawkish about lost innocence or the bittersweet evanescence of childish pleasures. I've been meaning to start photographing them, the single Crocs, the binkies that slipped from sleep-slackened lips, the trod-upon hats with ears. I'll resist metaphors.

Here's the first one, gummy bears in front of the ATM this morning:

OK!

We went on vacation. We went to the mall. They had these mall strollers: