Saturday, June 14, 2008

What would Stacy and Clinton do?

So we're bringing the kid to a wedding soonish. Yes, he was invited. No, we're not insane. Apart from the inevitable babbling during the ceremony -- with any luck, he'll throw in a few raspberries while he's at it -- and the likelihood that he'll snarf entirely too much of my filet, it should be fine. The hard part, apparently, is getting him wedding gear. 
Because toddler-boy dress-up clothing either doesn't exist, or is, I assume, some sort of special-order craziness on the level of christeningwear. (Which would be great if I wanted him to look like Tom Hanks in "Big.") Store after store after store, and nothing but little T-shirts, little polo shirts, little cargo pants and little jeans. I'm not hunting down a tiny tux with vest and cummerbund here, just a nice button-down shirt and some non-jeans pants. Which don't exist, except when they have big cartoon logos all over them.
Meanwhile, over in the girls' aisle, there are rows and stacks of adorable little ruffly dresses, pretty in pink with sparkles. Any one of these dresses would be fine for a wedding or a fancy-dress party or, I don't know, playing princess?
I used to wonder why girls were always so much quicker to dress up than boys; why you'll see a couple out for dinner and she's got a dress on, full makeup and teetering in heels, and he's slouching along in yes, a polo shirt, and very likely cargo pants. Clearly this little dichotomy is beaten into our heads from birth. 
The same, incidentally, extends to shoes. For every fifteen cute little pairs of mary janes I found, there were two pairs of sneakers and one sad-looking pair of pseudo-oxfords (in the wrong size). And that was in the stores that actually carried age-appropriate shoes. Instead of, say, a shoe store, where I had the following exchange:
"Hi, do you have toddler shoes?"
"Is that a brand?"
"No, toddler size shoes." (Blank look.) "Like for a 1-year-old?"
"Oh. What size would that be?"
"Like a 4 or a 5?"
(Wandering helplessly through the racks for a minute.) "No."
So I hope no one minds if the kid wears his red Crocs with the only non-jeans, non-cargo pants I was able to find after seven stores' worth of looking.
Man. I'm not even sweating my own outfit this much.    

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