Jackpot!

Regarding my previous comments on the prevalence of pink in girl clothing...

I realized a few days later that it isn't pink I object to (although the particular shade of bubblegum that makes up the vast majority of baby girl stuff is still obnoxious to me), but the styles of clothing available.

I'm not sure why I expected differently; it isn't as though the girl section in any store isn't prominently on display, showing off its wares in a way that felt stingingly in-your-face back when I had no girl to dress. I guess I just never imagined trying to dress my own daughter, to spare myself that sense of loss, so I never realized that when the day came when I was free to do so, what I imagined and what was actually available would be many worlds apart.

My overall impression is that baby clothes fall into two categories. The practical: lots of knit - the modern baby basics of onesies and sleepers. In style they are gender neutral, thus the overwhelming pinkness to differentiate the girl items from the boys. Then there's the fashionable, which seems to be miniature versions of what teenage girls are wearing - flared-leg jeans, spaghetti-strapped tops, embellished T's, all in various vivid colors, with hot pink predominating.

I want my little girl to LOOK like a little girl. Not like a miniature thirteen-year-old. And herein lay my dilemma; apparently my version of what looks "little girly" is a few decades behind the times.

I'm not sure on what to blame that, but I'm not apologizing for it.

We were in Georgia for the holidays. My sister-in-law lives just outside a very tiny town in the middle of nowheresville, very picturesque and full of antique malls, several of which we visited. I stocked up on a few baby items that were more to my taste, but remained subconsciously frustrated over the lack of what I REALLY wanted.

Until our last day. When we visited a wee shop squeezed claustrophobically into an ancient row of buildings on the main drag through the village, whose sign - Dolls and Stuff - had caught my eye a few times in the previous days. We had tried going the day after Christmas; it was closed. In hindsight, this was terribly unfortunate, because if I had seen it before visiting all the other places, I would never have needed to go anywhere else.

I was in love the second we stepped in the shop, just over the dolls. I adore dolls. Never have collected, simply because I know it's a hobby I can't afford, but I could drool over them all day long. This tiny place was stacked, wall to wall, with collector-quality vinyl dolls of every size and type imaginable; I'd estimate there were at least five hundred. Many of them were life-sized, from newborns up to those about the size of six-year-olds. Limited editions, masterpieces. Dolls that made the American Girl brand look like cheap knock-offs. It took me half an hour just to leave the front room, figuring there couldn't really be that much more than what I'd already seen.

But it was one of these very old buildings that keep going and going, rounding corners and surprising you with little nooks and corners until you wonder where it ends. The second room had racks of clothing; ostensibly for the dolls, but the clothes were real clothes and O JOY CHRISTMAS CAME A SECOND TIME. Row upon row of crisp cotton batiste, smocked yokes, eyelet lace, sprigged florals floated before my eyes. I danced around the store as MRB laughed at me and kept the boys from wreaking havoc. I swept armfuls of pink and blue and yellow into piles and sorted through them, reluctantly putting back the higher-priced items and relentlessly weeding out until I narrowed myself down to five, because I was afraid, after all I'd gotten the previous week, of overdoing it.

 Each of the final cut was less than $10.

I have been gloating over them like Gollum over the Ring for the last week, but realized upon getting home that I didn't actually buy as much as I thought I had, and regretted putting back the last two or three that didn't make the finalists. We're going back in July for a family reunion, and I will be stocking up on a few more then - particularly in larger sizes, as these seem to be all in the 6-9 month range or so. (Hard to tell; most of them are not marked.)

Finally, I feel excited about dressing my little girl. And if she turns out to be a tomboy and refuses to wear such things as she gets older, I'll at least have enjoyed her first year.