46 Comments Add your own

• 1. Kristina  |  June 1st, 2009 at 4:42 pm

  I still remember looking around in shock about 6 months ago (my son is 2 yrs. 4 months) when I went to a restuarant with nothing but a sippy cup and one extra diaper in my PURSE. A real purse, not even a diaper bag. The colossal amount of stuff dwindles with time, I promise. Of course, now we’re trying for #2 and it’ll all start again. It’s a vicious cycle.

• 2. Allison  |  June 1st, 2009 at 4:46 pm

  I, for one, enjoy the girly clothes BUT couldn’t you just buy some boy clothes? She won’t know the difference.

• 3. She Likes Purple  |  June 1st, 2009 at 4:50 pm

  My god, this week is the busiest I’ve been in years. I seriously think I’ve been smoking crack WITHOUT REALIZING it because why (WHY) do I continue to add to our to-do list?

• 4. Shelly  |  June 1st, 2009 at 4:57 pm

  I HATE DAVE EGGERS. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was neither heartbreaking NOR staggering. And WAAAAY short of genius IF YOU ASK ME. I mean, who names their novel A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius?! Arrogant much?

  *Ahem* Yes, as someone above said, the stuff lessen as the child ages. My 6 year old requires absolutely nothing for simple trips (grocery store, etc. I don’t want people thinking I take her on vacation without even a change of clothes.)

• 5. Lawyerish  |  June 1st, 2009 at 5:01 pm

  I was going to say the same thing as Allison — aren’t there some boys’ clothes that would be sufficiently plain and cupcake-less? I think Mini Boden has a lot of basic quasi-gender-neutral baby clothes. Tea Collection is also great and less frilly than some.

• 6. Amy K  |  June 1st, 2009 at 5:59 pm

  Did you fly or drive? My husband and I are considering a weeklong vacation sometime in the next few months, but I am (irrationally?) terrified of flying with a baby. My parents keep trying to convince us to hop on a plane right now for a cross-country visit, that flying with an infant is simple! Easy! All I can imagine are pressurized baby ears, non-stop sobbing, vomiting and diaper blowouts of epic proportions happening during the flight. Oh, and she’d also be getting coughed upon by the great unwashed before she’s had many vaccinations. And we’d have to pack and carry several tons of baby supplies. It can’t really be so bad, right? I’m such a pessimist.

• 7. csred  |  June 1st, 2009 at 6:00 pm

  What about H&M? i have found some super cute girl clothes there that are really cheap. You can still tell they are girl clothes, but not totally over the top, pink frilly grossness.

• 8. Fiona Picklebottom  |  June 1st, 2009 at 7:15 pm

  I have four girls and you can get non-frilly things at places like Old Navy and The Gap. Also The Children’s Place and H&M.

• 9. clickmom  |  June 1st, 2009 at 7:37 pm

  If you are anything like me, it’s gonna be a long loooong time before anything is easy for you again. And as hard and exhausting as that is, I would never have for a single second gone back to the easier childless days.

• 10. metalia  |  June 1st, 2009 at 8:02 pm

  You know what I’m doing right now? ACTIVELY NOT PACKING for what will soon be Babies’ First Plane Trip. My dining room table is a mess of shorts and onesies and tiny Crocs and OH MY HELL PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME GO BACK IN THERE.

  All this to say that I feel your pain on the STUFF that traveling with small kids necessitates. Help.

• 11. -R-  |  June 1st, 2009 at 8:17 pm

  We traveled to celebrate Christmas with my in-laws and then with my family. B was 8 or 9 weeks old. We had all that baby stuff plus tons of Christmas presents, and it was ridiculous. But B slept most of the way in the car, and when we got to my mom’s, I could leave B with her and take naps, so it really wasn’t too bad.

  I would second the Old Navy recommendation for non-frilly clothes.

• 12. Erica  |  June 1st, 2009 at 8:40 pm

  let’s hear it for girls not dressed in pink all the damn time.

• 13. Kate  |  June 1st, 2009 at 9:15 pm

  I would LOVE to dress my daughter is non-Pepto pink clothing but now she screams and cries if she can’t find her pink dress, if it’s in the wash or if the alternative isn’t “pretty” enough. Argh. She’s 3.5 and a girly girl already, which is making me crazy.

• 14. Amanda  |  June 1st, 2009 at 10:37 pm

  Dude I HATE vacationing with my kids. I know I’m supposed to love and be all “oh family time! yay!” but it melts my will to live faster than anything else. It’s like my regular work schedule only TWICE AS HARD because I’m not at home where I can find everything and do my own laundry. My family keeps bugging me – when are you coming to visit?!?! We miss you and the kids!! and I’m like, I dunno, when the kids are in college? That sounds ideal. Otherwise they have feet/cars/money to buy plane tickets and they can get their asses here much easier than I can get to them.

• 15. hannah  |  June 1st, 2009 at 11:57 pm

  Hey, please don’t hate on Dave Eggers. I don’t know much about his writing, but he’s started a super cool nonprofit (called 826) that offers free after-school tutoring to schoolchildren, and they also do lots of other neat things with the kids. Lots of these kids would be failing without him.

  also oh hai, i like your blog
  kthxbai

• 16. giselle  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 5:16 am

  Oh the packing! And the change in routine…how you crave the return of the routine…the very same routine that makes your ears bleed because you’re so bored of it at home. And the not sleeping…although it sounds like you still have that at home as well. Vacationing with littles is NOT relaxing or fun. We took our first cross country 5 times the first year…because we were in CA and our family lived in OH. I think we may have been crazy. Oh! And we MOVED 600 miles for a job transfer when my 2nd was 3 weeks old. Now I look at 3 week old infants and think about how I was nursing at truck stops every 2 hours and lugging all that accessory crap (not to mention a 3 year old) across 2 states…I think my husband should have presented me with some jewels for enduring that. No, a whole CASTE of jewels.

  But I survived. As did you. Which is why motherhood is so amazing. You don’t know how you will do it…it will just be done. Somehow. Good job!

  And just to make a long comment longer…I hear you on the PINK PINK PINK! I made it very clear that I wanted NO PINK. And we got by with lavendar and turquoise. And NO RUFFLES. It’s out there…you just have to look a bit harder.

• 17. jonniker  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 6:03 am

  Hannah: That’s lovely of him, really, and I WANT to like him for it, I really do, but I still … I still think he’s an arrogant irritant, and his writing makes me want to shoot myself in the face. I mean, Dov Charney has done amazing things for factory workers, but … well, God, I don’t know WHAT has been up my ass that I keep referencing Dov lately, but there you go.

• 18. Marie Green  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 8:20 am

  I have three daughters, and I too am drawn to the more basic, uni-sexish type clothing. We get lots of hand-me-downs from the girls’ cousin, and her parents have the same aesthic- they shop at Lands’ End, LL Bean, and Hannah Andersson. I also love the zutano clothing. I don’t buy anything at full retail prices though, because… OUCH. I have purchased a few things on ebay, or at thrift shops/garage sales. Anyway, good luck with the no pink quest. Grah.

• 19. nicolle  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 8:56 am

  i totally feel your clothing pain and all i can say is unisex-ish boys clothes paired with a pink binky or a bow.
  oh and all hail the magical thrift/consignment stores for cheap clothes that are only going to fit her for the 5 minutes in which you can’t find it anyways.
  wish we could handmedown you, in my fam. there are 5 granddaughters and now we just pass the bins without really having to buy anything.

• 20. Kristin  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 9:08 am

  Vacation with young children is not a vacation. It is generally horrible. I don’t mean to freak you out, but I have a 2.5 year old and I have not found it to get much better. We have flown with him 4 times to visit my inlaws and it was never easy or fun. If you can avoid flying between ages 1 and 2, by all means do so. That age was by far the worst to be confined on a plane.

  Last summer when he was about 18 months old we spent a week with my parents and sister and brother-in-law at a cottage on a lake. My normally great sleeper did not take ONE nap during the week, and woke up an average of 7 times a night. This does not make for fun family memories. Mostly because I was too tired to remember anything.

  I think you summed it up perfectly–most things about parenting were better than I expected–but vacationing is the sad exception. I remember sitting on the beach last summer and thinking that I will never be able to read a book, lying in the sun, drinking a beer EVER AGAIN. Which is kind of the point of vacation to me, so that sucks.

• 21. Steph  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 9:19 am

  Southern Belles: Louisville! It’s on SoapNet and is fabulous. Like Real Housewives but single women.

• 22. Jess  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 9:31 am

  I’m not sure you understand how devastated I am right now. I look to you to promise me that having a baby won’t be as bad as everyone says, and now here you are saying that the travel aspect IS as bad? No, no, no. I have now decided that for the first year of our child’s life, we will stay in our house and let everybody come to us.

  Also, we were at Sears the other day and I noticed a plethora of adorable non-gendered baby clothes. And they were cheap. And I almost bought one of them. It was white and it had blue, orange, and brown dogs all over it. I would put a boy or a girl in that. And it was on sale. But Torsten wouldn’t let me. Something about needing to have a baby or at least be pregnant or at least be trying to get pregnant before buying a baby wardrobe? I don’t know either.

• 23. anne nahm  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 9:43 am

  Life after baby is never boring, except when it is. Which is every day.

  I think I love you.

• 24. Julie Momster  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 10:09 am

  I fully concur with you on the young baby travel!! We just came back from a 2 week long vacation, DRIVING from Omaha to Orlando (22 hours in the car – with a 4 month old baby who HATESHATESHATES her carseat). I swear, if we did not have a minivan, I have no idea where I would have put all her crap! The stroller, the carrier the pack ‘n’ play, the bottle warmer, the case of diapers, the cooler for milk, the bottle, THE CLOTHES, Oh holy christ, I think I just started a panic attack thinking about it *shudders*. The benefits were about the same – first vacation as a FULL family, and all the family there to take her, and hold her, and play with her, and watch her while I took a whole 2 hours to ride coasters at Disney World. I have never loved my in-laws so much as when they would say that they wanted her for a few hours. LOVE THEM.

  Sorry, I rant. But I feel your pain/joy/wonderfullness. It’s quite the experience!

• 25. ali  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 10:21 am

  traveling with my children is my worst nightmare. for serious. HATE HATE HATE it. i went to barbados with the husband (on business) when josh was 2 weeks old and emily was 20 months. it was either shlep the 2 kids and go with him or stay home with a newborn and toddler alone. i went with him. it was HELL.

• 26. Cobwebs  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 12:56 pm

  Try shops that specialize in “alternative” clothing for non-cupcake goodness, or take a look around Etsy. There are a few links here, which might be useful (I especially love the Lou and Lee onesies).

  I am 100% with you where baby travel is concerned. It is never relaxing. Ever.

• 27. Leah  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 1:02 pm

  Yes, the STUFF. And although I don’t think I’d want to travel to a fabulous vacation destination with a baby, I do think that traveling to family makes up for the hassle because when you get there you don’t have to hold your own kid for, like, days, which is kind of a relief. Also, all that boring stuff they do day after day after day suddenly becomes magic to everyone else, which is quite refreshing, I find.

• 28. Kristin H  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 1:12 pm

  I was reading through the comments and agreeing with what people have already said, thinking I didn’t have anything new to add to this conversation. But then, wait! I do! I have a little story about camping with our baby daughter when she was about 7 months old.

  We hauled along the pack-n-play, the diapers, the seat to strap to a picnic table, the…oh, all that crap. And we were sleeping soundly that night when BAM! She woke us all up out a deep sleep with an ear-splitting scream. And she screamed. And screeeeeeeeeamed. She went on and on while we frantically tried to shush her: I tried nursing her, we put her in bed with us, but she Would. Not. Shut. It. By the time by husband stormed off and took her into the car, the entire campground must have been awake and cursing us all to hell.

  I realized months later that she must have been cold. But I realized that very night that camping with a baby, in a place populated with strangers, was not the brightest idea we’ve ever had.

• 29. Swistle  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 2:31 pm

  Do you know—and this came as a total revelation to me—that you can shop for girl clothes IN THE BOY DEPARTMENT? It is true! And awesome!

• 30. Casey  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 7:51 pm

  My neighbor once said this to me regarding raising kids, when I was bleary-eyed and overwhelmed and probably a little blue (you know): When you have kids, the years go by fast but the days drag on forever.

  Yes, indeed.

• 31. Laura  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 8:02 pm

  I also cringe at the UberGirly clothes in most stores. I am tired of the minimacho clothes for boys, too- one more football, pirate or dinosaur and I could snap. Try http://www.threebean.com, they have some great basics. And no commercial/character junk.

• 32. Ami  |  June 2nd, 2009 at 8:52 pm

  So with you on the Dave Eggers issue. Which, based on past experience, means that if I ever met him in person, he would instantly be one of my favorite people ever. Leaving me to feel crushingly guilty (over all the terrible things I’ve said and thought about him over the years) for the rest of my life. Or at least until Vendela arrived on the scene with her pitchfork, at which point I’d be only too happy to have her to put me out of my misery.

• 33. Swistle  |  June 3rd, 2009 at 5:32 am

  Oh, I thought of a store! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before! Old Navy, which has online ordering in case your Targetless wasteland also has no Old Navy—and in fact, even though we have an Old Navy not too far away, I tend to shop online anyway. I get a lot of pink stuff for Elizabeth (she and I both like pink), but I also get her dark teal and mustard and blue and grey and turquoise and orange and yellow—and I get most of that at Old Navy. I like the way they have CHOICES: I can get a shirt in light pink, dark pink….or it also comes in blue, green, yellow, and orange.

• 34. kdiddy  |  June 3rd, 2009 at 7:17 am

  “c) made by Dov Charney, who probably jerked off into the bolt of fabric used for the infant kimono pants before sending it to production.”

  bwah! amen, mama.

• 35. Amy  |  June 3rd, 2009 at 7:52 am

  Many of these can be pretty pricey but I check in regularly for sales and discounts ( I got a great collection of the best pants from Wild Dill for $11 each). Sometimes I just splurge on one really fabulous basic like a great pair of red pants:
  https://www.wilddill.com/
  http://www.katequinnorganics.com/
  http://www.speesees.com/prod/shop/home.php (kind of expensive. I know you asked for reasonable but who can resist a Giraf?)
  http://www.nubiusorganics.com/Clothing-Accessories-C31.aspx?gclid=CLHemISzxJoCFR4hnAodDVy0sw

  And finally, Threadless has some out of this world $9 onsiesies.

  http://s.threadless.com/bounce.php?uuid=17a217ee662e42cc1106bc92919804a4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.threadlesskids.com%2Fcatalog%2Fbabies%3F%3D

  I swear, she’ll be the hippest kid in VT (we’ve got NH covered)!

• 36. TwoBusy  |  June 3rd, 2009 at 8:10 am

  a) I have no idea who Dov Charney is, but you’ve now seriously creeped me the fuck out about him. (afraid to google)

  b) I loved A Heartbreaking Work. There… I said it, and I stick by it. (However, I hated You Shall Know Us blahblahblah. So it’s not unqualified Eggers-love.)

• 37. Sarah @ BecomingSarah.com  |  June 3rd, 2009 at 11:26 am

  I think mothers like you are just horribly overshadowed by the mothers who want pink bows on everything…

  Or not. Maybe it’s like the whole maternity thing where maternity clothes were so ridiculously awful for so long and now they’re not so bad. It just takes a little pushing the fashion industry.

  Welcome back =)

• 38. Carolyn J.  |  June 3rd, 2009 at 11:45 pm

  I like you because we agree about Dave Eggers and Dov Charney. I have to work with American Apparel’s corporate catalogue for my job and it is just…gross. I am not embarrassed by anything but I blush when I have to show it to someone.

• 39. Kristabella  |  June 4th, 2009 at 1:18 pm

  My friend traveled with her baby, on planes, when he was like 3 weeks old. Because her husband was a minor league baseball player and she was TIRED of being a single parent when there was a father around, albeit at the Southern part of the state. To this day, I am still amazed because I can’t even take my niece and nephew to the park without forgetting something or someone having to go potty, or falling and scraping their knees in the one block walk, etc.

• 40. Amanda  |  June 4th, 2009 at 8:42 pm

  Staggering, really. The equipment and relentlessness of it. Can’t wait to read the little bits that make us forget the rest.

• 41. Briana  |  June 4th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

  American Apparel has great unisex things. Non sweatshop, American made, quality stuff. We’ve also just discovered http://www.newjammies.com, for adorable organic cotton jammies. These are a little pricey, but it’s a great thing to ask Grandma/Pa to buy instead of giant pink ponies!

• 42. flutterby  |  June 9th, 2009 at 10:55 am

  I can vividly recall the first time we took our daughter camping. She was 9 months old. I can also vividly recall the drive back down the mountain to go home after packing up at THREE FREAKING A.M. because she would NOT go back to sleep and wanted to do nothing but scream. And unlike a lot of other people we run across while camping, did NOT want to disturb the entire campground.

  She is 16 now. And we go still camping quite often. And she doesn’t scream anymore. But the stuff you take along on trips never gets any less… it just changes, lol.

• 43. foradifferentkindofgirl (fadkog)  |  June 11th, 2009 at 9:24 pm

  OK, first I came over here to thank you for coming over and visiting my blog and the prom post and leaving such a love comment, AND THEN doing the same on TwoBusy’s blog about it, and then I hung out for awhile and I’m going to confess it right now, even though we barely know each other, but there has been wine ingested in my system and my husband has been gone for a very long time…I can see myself falling madly in love with you! That you bring a cute baby into the relationship only adds to the depths of my feelings. I’m going to have words with TwoBusy as to why he has not physically brought us together sooner.

  So, please, expect to see more of me. Do not fear me. I am kind, lovable, housebroken, and, if you enjoy a glass of wine that averages about 50 cents for a healthy pour, I’m your girl!

• 44. kakaty  |  June 29th, 2009 at 8:26 am

  I’m late to the game here but I know where you are coming from with the girly-girl clothes. I ended up buying a few sizes of things when I found something I liked. One famous purchase was a terrific romper from KMart of all places – it had a big superman logo on it and said “Superbaby” but had kind-of puffy sleeves that made it obviously girl. I got it in green, red & blue and in 4 sizes. I loved those things. I’ve had some luck at Old Navy and Speecees has some beautiful non-girly things (they are pricey though), I also like Hanna Anderson (clearance section) for girl clothes that aren’t screaming princess. But I do have to say that now that she’s nearly 3 I have succumbed to the pink because, well… it’s just easier.

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