Shillin' Like a Villain

Heaven help me, I signed up to be an Amazon Associate.  With my shall-we-say-modest readership, I don't expect to start sleeping on piles of cash anytime soon, but what the heck?  I pepper my posts with Amazon links anyway, so I might as well have a shot at getting paid for it.

So.  Here are some of Ben's and Andy's and my favorite picture books:

Anansi the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti
adapted and illustrated by Gerald McDermott
Caldecott Honor, 1973

The illustrations in this book will cause you physical discomfort if you have astigmatism.  Seriously.  But that shouldn't stop you, bcause it is a goofy, goofy tale told in a voice that's inordinate fun to read aloud.  Ben liked it immediately, and it's remained among his top most-requested.  It took Andy and me a longer time to warm up to it, but it's earned a firm place in the household canon. 

All the World
by Liz Garton Scanlon, illustrated by Marla Frazee
Caldecott Honor, 2010

I'd be lying if I said the latte-liberal fantasy element of this book didn't make me a little queasy, though I'm about as latte liberal as it gets.  The farmers' market!  The happy plump lesbians on their tandem bike!  The baby in an Ergo!  All the World indeed -- if all the world were only such a quiet and carbon-neutral resort town!  Also, there's something facile about the lists of things with no active verbs -- they make for nice rhymes, but they don't go anywhere or do anything.  Still.  I can't actually read more than three pages without choking up, and the illustrations are so beautiful and intricate, the little town with its geography and genealogy fully imagined, each page referring to all the others.  My head thinks this book is very, very silly, but my heart loves it very, very much.  Ben likes all the dogs and trucks.

Ox-Cart Man
by Donald Hall, illustrated by Barbara Cooney
Caldecott Winner, 1980

If I had to pick a single favorite book, I think it might be this one.  The illustrations are reminiscent of Grandma-Moses-y folk art, and they suit the story perfectly.  The story follows one of my favorite themes for children's books: the work and produce of the seasons.  It also speaks to my Yankee roots with its New Hampshire setting (rolling hills, little hamlets with tidy white churches) and message of hard work and thrift.  Andy likes the woodworking, and I like the fiber craft.  In fact, I don't think there's anything about this book I don't like.  Ben likes pointing out the cheese in the shop and the lights in the window of the farm when the Ox-Cart Man returns home.

Let's Make Rabbits
by Leo Lionni

I love a little postmodern meta: so sue me.  This is a sweet little tale about rabbits.  It's also a bit of a meditation on the construction of reality.  The hardcover version we have (a gift from C. -- thanks, C.!), which I hope is the same one I've linked you to, is a tactile pleasure in itself, a small volume perfect for little hands and a novelty for adult ones.  It's also very pretty.  I'm not sure what Ben likes about this one, but he demands it regularly.


At the Top of My Voice
by Felice Holman, illustrated by Edward Gorey

This one's out of print, I'm afraid, but it's not hard to get a decent used copy from, oh, let's say Amazon.  I grew up with this book, and it's in my blood the way lines of liturgy run in the veins of someone raised to church.  On tiptoe I'm taller, and taller I'm older.  And I'm not Nan, I'm a dancer.  And City asleep, city asleep, a carnival on the garbage heap.  The poems are great, and the illustrations are great, and little kids should grow up with good poetry so they learn to love it before they can learn to fear it.  Ben likes the squirrel, the birds, and the lion.

Clothes that Don't Suck

Boys are harder to name and harder to clothe, and it's for the same reason: smaller groups from which to choose and less variation within the group. But I like a challenge.

Here's what I don't like:

1. Appliqués. I'm sure, in theory, there are cute ones. But I have yet to see one. Mostly they're just horrible, and scratchy on the inside to boot.

2. Sports themes, with two exceptions (Chicago Bears and Philadelphia Eagles licensed merch). Trucks and construction themes are moderately less irritating. I object on general principles to the neurotic desire to mark infants with gender identifiers, and I object more specifically to assigning sports, transportation, and tinkering to boys (long before they could possibly develop these interests), but really I mostly object because these garments are wicked ugs.

3. Mottoes that reference mommy, daddy, bodily functions, or irritating behavior for which an infant can't be held responsible. Especially icky are the ones that proclaim a parent's beauty or prowess.

4. Mottoes or themes that suggest strongly that parents are far too cool to be parents. It's the middle-aged hipster version of "I got my looks from Mommy," and it reads just as sad.

5. Over-embellishment. Look at the adult clothing departments of any store, and at least a third of what you see will be solid color basics. Now try to find anything solid-colored in the baby department. Try to find just stripes, or just a print. Good luck.

So it's clear what I do like: plain, simple, comfortable, well-constructed clothes in good colors that don't have anything to prove. Cotton knits with plenty of room to move. Bonus if they're made with turn-back cuffs that give you some extra grow room. Bonus if they don't cost an arm and a leg.

Here's where I've found them:

1. Old Navy. Guilty of ugliness and dumb mottoes, but they're also pretty good at providing some solid-color basics. And for cheap (especially on sale, and there's always a sale) stuff, it holds up pretty well, too.

2. Hanna Andersson. Arm and a leg, fo reals. But their sales are worth waiting for. I'm a huge fan of the wiggle pant, and the Swedish moccasins are one of two things I can put on Ben's feet that stay on. And, good grief, is anything in the world cuter than their jackets?

3. H&M. (They don't have online shopping, the freaks.) The more I try other brands, the more impressed I am by the quality of cheap-as-dirt stuff from H&M. It's the only place I know I can reliably find solid-color onesies and wicked cute stripey t-shirts in excellent colors. That wear like iron.

4. Lands End. (I refuse to play ball with their weirdly-placed apostrophe. Just how many lands are they at the end of, exactly?) Ben has a cabled sweater and a lightweight fleece "sweater" that he's almost always wearing, and they've worn well through dozens of washes and show every sign of making it all the way from fall to spring with a fast-growing kid.

5. Target. Their house brand, Circo, is decent, good-looking stuff at rock-bottom prices. I adored their cotton-knit footie pyjamas, ($5.99! and snaps, not a zipper!) which only go up to 9 mo size, more's the pity.

6. Zutano. (Which I used to get at Bugs & Blossoms, but they've sadly gone out of business.) They're not cheap, and they can be a bit hit-or-miss, and the sizing is kind of random: Ben is currently wearing 6-12 mo in tops and jackets, 12-18 mo in pants, and 18-24 mo in overalls. But for cute all-over prints and fabulous baby fleece, you can't beat 'em.

7. Kate Quinn Organics. I've already blogged my love, and my love is true and unfading.

Toys in Babeland

"Playing" with toys at Ben's age (six months) is still largely a matter of his acquiring a target and working to bring said target to his mouth and gum it, with maybe a little passing the object from hand to hand and examining it a little. But some objects are clearly preferable to others -- these are the ones he will retrieve from the box most often.

1. Ikea nesting/stacking cups. He doesn't stack or nest them, but the cups themselves are of great interest. At $2.49, without question the best value of any toy so far.

2. Ikea stacking rings. Again, he doesn't stack them, but the discs themselves are favorites for handling and gumming.

3. Measuring cups and spoons. I took them off the rings they came on (which looked like they might pinch little fingers or lips) and put them onto those ubiquitous plastic links, so he can work at separating a spoon from its cousins.

4. Baby cups. The dented sterling baby cup that was mine and a plastic one with two handles. Good for gumming, bashing, and throwing, especially the silver one, which makes a much better noise.

5. This thing (Haba Pipapo) and another precious European wooden toy from Oompa that I can't find now -- it's a rattle shaped more or less like a lean mushroom, with a natural stem and a red cap, and four different colored beads on top and bells inside. It's such a hit that we keep it on the changing table to occupy him.

6. Classic for a reason: baby keys.

Honorable Mention: Dad's favorite toy is the Skwish by Manhattan Baby.

Extra credit: How many of these toys have been replaced because Hugo has eaten them?

Whisper Connect, We Hardly Knew Ye

I can't remember why I picked this particular baby monitor for the shower registry. Probably my friend S. had recommended it in her long, annotated baby gear list (inherited from a friend of hers). It wouldn't have occurred to me then, or even until this week, that there was much difference between baby monitors, or which features would matter to me.

Until I dropped the receiver until last week, and it stopped working.

It was an Evenflo WhisperConnect Two-Way 900MHz. Not Sensa. Not Pro. And they don't make it anymore. And nothing else has all the features I came to require. Oh, why didn't I cherish this monitor? Why didn't I protect it and keep it safe in all its specialness? I was wrong, so wrong.

It had great sound quality. Sure, it got staticky sometimes, but don't we all? But you could hear everything in Ben's room with perfect clarity: the softest little pre-waking whimper, the mylar crinkling in one of his crib toys, the ping of the steam heat in the pipes. Several other monitor models boast that they filter all non-voice noise. Why would you want that? I want to hear if he's rolling around or playing with toys.

It had a rechargeable battery. And, ok, the sound was crappier when the receiver was plugged in, but leaving it on for hours on end was just an inconvenience and didn't require three new triple-As every time.

It had a dozen or so lights, not the five that seem to be standard, which, combined with its senitivity, meant that with the volume turned way down (when we're watching tv, for instance), the slightest peep registered a light or two, and grabbed out attention. The replacement monitor's first light only hits with a pretty solid cry.

It only had two channels, but that was plenty. More channels just means more confusion if you accidentally hit the channel button while the kid is sleeping. It had a walkie-talkie function, which we almost never used, but I bet Ben would have enjoyed playing with it in a couple of years.

I can't begin to understand why Evenflo would have changed the design of this monitor, given its Amazon ratings, which were head and shoulders above all others at a comparable price. They added some stupid pet motion detector ("Sensa"), and the ratings for the new model are significantly lower.

I've been shopping (online) for a better replacement for a couple of days now, and my success has been such that I'm now considering finding an electronics repair shop -- if they exist anymore, that is -- and paying someone the cost of a replacement to fix it.

And then I'll take ever such good care of it! I'll never drop it again! I promise!

Edited to Add: "Two-Way." Key descriptive title phrase I left out. And the difference is apparently more than just whether or not it has the walkie-talkie function. The two-way monitor got significantly better reviews than the same model without two-way -- which probably means it wasn't the same model at all.

Essential Bookshelf: Kid

These are some of the books I really enjoy reading to the youngster.

Caps for Sale
I like to do the salesman's lines in a broad Italian accent, and I also make all the gestures and shout when the salesman gets furious at the monkeys, which makes Ben twist himself around to look at me as if I've taken leave of my senses.

Hondo and Fabian
This is a gentle little story about a dog who goes to the beach and a cat who stays home. I can't quite put my finger on what I like so much about it, but I absolutely adore it.

Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too?
Ah, the Eric Carle hegemony. I love books with lots of animals, and this one is a jackpot. Not only does it have lots of animal moms and babies, the last page gives the names for adult breeding pairs, offspring, and collective nouns for all the animals -- so cool. This is my favorite Eric Carle book.

Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes
Generally I resist explicitly messagey children's books (as well as explicitly educational ones -- my infant doesn't need to learn to count or have the virtues of tooth-brushing extolled to him, thanks), but this one is so sweet that I don't care that it's about tolerance. Nine times out of ten, I'm a little choked up by the time I get to the end.

The Story of Ferdinand
Only some kind of humorless jackass could resist Ferdinand.

Kate Quinn vs. Carter's

I got two Kate Quinn baby bodysuits at my shower, and they were absolutely my favorite of the first batch of clothes Ben wore. I ordered him a couple of outfits recently, and of all the clothes in his still-too-big drawer (most of which, at this point, I picked out myself), they're the ones I'm most eager for him to grow into. The colors are lovely, the cotton soft and sturdy, and best of all, there's nothing cutesy or over-embellished: just solid colors, some with contrast piping.

Why doesn't a company like Carter's follow this lead? I've been very pleased with the quality (softness, sturdiness) of Carter's footie pyjamas, for instance, but it's a matter picking the least objectionable cartoon creature appliqué with the least objectionable caption ("Daddy's Lil So-and-So," etc.), and while I'm sure Carter's has done the market research necessary to determine that a significant majority of their customer base wuvs da widdle dinosaws, could they please, please consider throwing a bone to the rest of us? Surely even fans of the appliqués might also like just a nice, plain -- or go crazy: stripy! -- footie pyjama, too.

Because, hell, while I'm a huge fan of Kate Quinn and absolutely support the use of organic fibers, at $19 a pop, I just can't talk myself into many long-sleeved kimono bodysuits, no matter how much I adore them. I sent the link to Kate Quinn to my mother and mother-in-law, hoping to direct some of their considerable generosity in this happy direction, but I'm not holding out a lot of hope. After all, it feels more satisfying to get five items for your fifty bucks than to get two, whether gift or not.

Edit: Target's Circo brand does actually have very nice unembellished footie pyjamas in various stripes and prints. Sadly, their biggest size is 9 mo., which Ben is already outgrowing.

Further edit: I had no idea Carter's was heading into what looks like a major consumer product safety brouhaha over its tagless tags, which are apparently giving a small number of babies reactions ranging from contact dermatitis to severe chemical burns. Thanks, Kathy, for alerting me to the news.