A “Coming Home” Outfit

15 July 2010

I had a bad night last night. Not that anything terrible happened, or even that I was worried about anything – I just couldn’t get to sleep. After trying to fall asleep for about 2 hours, I think I dozed off for about 30 minutes, only to be woken up by the sound of my wife coming to bed. Then, long after she fell asleep, I drifted off again, but within the hour I woke up having to go to the bathroom. In fact, I got out of bed 4 times to go to the bathroom which, in itself, is odd, because it’s not like a chugged a gallon of water before lying down.

I kept staring at my alarm clock, mentally deducting the time I had remaining to sleep. Around 4:45, I just cut my losses, got up, got ready for today, and drove to work. I didn’t even feel like eating breakfast, so I just had a banana.

I kept wondering what my problem was. I had had one cup of tea during the day – but that was over twelve hours before going to bed (~8:00 in the morning), so any caffeine should’ve worked it’s way out long before I went to sleep.

But then I remembered that we went out to eat last night. I didn’t order anything spicy. I ordered a pizza. In fact, it was a very tasty pizza. There were mushrooms on it, big pieces of tomatoes, peppers, onion and some cheese. All good stuff. I don’t think I overate, either. I didn’t get a side salad to go with it and I declined the dessert.

The only thing I could figure is that my son ordered the spaghetti for his meal and it came with a single meatball. That’s it. One single meatball. Owen didn’t even want any sauce on it. My wife cut it into about twenty pieces for him to eat. I think he ate one of those pieces, then decided he didn’t like it. But I ate two pieces of it, mostly just to show Owen what to do with it, in an attempt to get him to finish his meal.

The only upside to having slept so poorly last night is that I know I’ll sleep well tonight – no matter what. I’m so insanely tired that I know I’ll fall asleep quickly and deeply.

16 July 2010

So, we’ve been trying to buy a coming-home outfit for child #2 for sometime now. We always – always – have difficulty finding things we want at stores.

I think I’ve mentioned this before but the problem is that stores want consumers to come in and browse and buy the things they see. Jennifer and I do it differently – we think up something we need, then we go buy it. Okay, for things like food and toiletries this isn’t usually a problem. And when it comes to media – music, books, and movies – we usually have no problem either (probably because we hear of something we think we’ll like and then, knowing it does exist, we go buy it). But everything else, we have great difficultly.

Jennifer had a very classy coming home outfit for Owen. It was simple, white, and comfortable. In fact, just click here to see him modeling it. Unfortunately, it appears that no other outfit like this exists in the known universe.

We’ve tried several stores: Peapods, Gymboree, Baby Gap, Babies-R-Us, Carter’s, Baby Grand, and Janie and Jack (a place I’d never heard of until actually walking into it at the Mall of Hysteria). But all those stores, which have an ridiculous amount of overlap all have a combination of one or more of the same problems:

-Hardly anything for newborns. Yeah, it’s true: some of these stores seem to think humans come into the word weighing 12 pounds. Which, I know, happens sometimes, but I just don’t think that’s going to be our case.

-Too cutesy. I have no problem with outfits that sport multiple da-glo colors, or outfits with pictures of bears or giraffes or other animals on them. But can’t we just get a simple gown with no decals on it?

-Gender-specific. Why are we assigning these infants gender roles? All the pink gowns are frilly as anything – and I won’t be raising a girl that wears frilly crap like that. And so many boy outfits have huge (as in “life size”) baseballs pictured on them.

Anyway, today I ventured, along with a co-worker to Edelweiss Baby. Doesn’t that just sound expensive? Not sure why…maybe it’s the ‘foreign’ sound of it’s name. Regardless, the name is appropriate because, damn, that place was expensive. My co-worker used her iPhone and took pictures of some of the outfits so that we could email them to Jennifer and they ranged in price from $28 to $90. I’m sorry, but I just can’t justify spending $90 on a piece of clothing. I’m pretty sure the only piece of clothing I own that cost me more than $90 is a suit. Which, first of all, is actually two pieces of clothing and, second of all, has lasted me 12 years already. I’m not sure child #2 will be able to get 12 years out of his/her coming home outfit.

17 July 2010

This morning, Owen and I tried to go to the Farmer’s Market. There’s a farmer’s market near our home, but, unfortunately, they’re only open Friday afternoons, so it’s tough to get there after work. Also, it’s a small market. A few times, I’ve inquired about certain kinds of produce, and the vendors tell me such items are only available at the mega-market in downtown St. Paul.

But here’s the one area where St. Paul sucks just as bad as Minnecrapolis: there’s no place to park. In the entire city. I didn’t think the parking would be a problem, since there would be a lot less business workers there. But it turns out, everyone in St. Paul and the seven-county metro area visits this market. There was no place to park within five blocks. Actually, I did find one spot, but guess what? You have to feed the meter. On a Saturday! I had no change on me. “James,” you might say, “how can you be so stupid as to not keep any change in your car?” That’s a great question, though I don’t appreciate being made fun. Here’s the answer: it’s a new car. Had I brought my Cavalier, I would’ve had enough change to feed five meters.

Anyway, I would’ve parked six or seven blocks away, but it was about 110 degrees outside with a relative humidity of 300% and I had Owen with me and I didn’t want to make him walk through that sauna just to go walk around a crowded outdoor market. So we went back home.

This afternoon, we went to Oh Baby! a store with a less highfaluting name than Edelweiss Baby but, since it’s located in the Galleria in Edina, more than makes up for that. They had this one outfit made out of bamboo that looked and felt so stinking comfortable that, for a fleeting moment, I wished I was only 20 inches tall. Alas, it wasn’t exactly what Jennifer wanted for a coming home outfit and, at 50 bucks, we weren’t about to settle. Still, I liked the outfit, so feel free to but it for us. On second thought, just go to Goodwill and get us 10 outfits with that same $50.

Then we drove north for a couple of miles and stopped at Goodnight Moon, a store named after that bizarre children’s book that, like Ummagumma, I’m told is a lot better if experienced when high. To make a long story short, they had what we wanted. The employee tried talking us into buying both a light pink and a light blue hat to go with the gown but after I expressed my dissatisfaction with that idea, she said: “Well, I can check out back stock,” which was her way of saying “I can open this drawer right here.” I’m glad she was able to go through all that effort for us, because that drawer harbored a simple white cap that matched the gown very well. We spent $42. Yikes – that’s still a lot, but somehow not as bad as $90.

I’ll show you what the gown looks like in a few weeks, once we’ve photographed it being modeled by child #2.