I have a baby due in May and my wife and I have been out doing the registry thing. We've been to Babies R Us and Baby Depot looking at furniture and stuff and trying to cut through the bull the stores keep telling us about how we need everything on their shelves. There's the Eddie Bauer stroller that's just like the one next to it plus a hundred dollars, the $150 diaper bag (bags in which you will keep actual poop) and other such travesties of merchandising. All of that is okay by me because I don't have to buy them. But there's one thing that really gets on my nerves and turns me into one real sarcastic bastard.

I hate baby clothes.

There's only one option when it comes to baby clothes and it's the cutsie, stupid, my-child-is-a-toy-that-I-get-to-play-dress-up-with type of clothing. It's not because they're sickeningly cute, which they are, or flagrantly stupid, which they can be, but because they're so damn deterministic. Daddy's #1 Slugger, Mommy's Little Princess, I'm a Firefighter.

No, they're not. They're babies. They can't sit up straight, they drool, and they couldn't hold a baseball bat if they wanted to. They can be anything they want and what the parents want them to be doesn't matter.

Why do parents think they have such ultimate control over their child's destiny? You don't want anyone limiting your children in life, so why do you do it with the outfit you bring them home from the hospital in? And it's not that the actual outfit is somehow going to limit what they do with their lives, but it's the mindset that bought the outfit in the first place that's the problem. You buy the #1 Slugger t-shirt (which is always blue and says on the label that it's for boys because lord knows we're still in the dark ages and girls can't play baseball or, apparently, wear blue) because you have this grand vision that your boy will grow up to play baseball, more than likely because you failed at it. Then you steer them in that direction, buying them baseballs and mitts when they're five. You will undoubtedly get disappointed later on when they tell you that they don't like baseball. They want to go into drama. But of course Daddy didn't raise no boy to be a drama fairy. And then you wonder why your kids hate you when they're teens.

They are human beings, even as babies. You don't own them and you can't control them. You can't make them do what you want them to do in life and still expect them to be happy and respect you. They have thoughts and feeling of their own and that's how you should be treating them, even from the beginning. If you don't, you're just setting yourself up for disappointment, and it wont be their fault. They are a wholly separate person from you and not an extension meant to carry on all of your failed ambitions.

Now, I'm not saying everyone does this, but I've seen some that have and it's the very suggestion in every store I go to that this is normal that gets to me. Everything has a stupid, my-baby-will-be-great-and-love-me saying on it and it's hard to find something that doesn't.

Now usually I would just rant and then leave it at that, but I've got a baby coming and I can't dress it in this slop, so I've decided to do something about it. Even if it is a real cheap way of doing something about it.

I decided to start a little clothes line called "Snarky Baby". I'm going to use CafePress because they have the biggest selection of baby/toddler clothes that I know of and costs me nothing in upfront charges, even though that means the selection will be super anemic due to stupid CafePress Limitations®. That probably means that I won't make much money off of it, but that's okay, I didn't quit my day job to do it either. I actually plan on selling stuff to me, and that's about it, but I'll give it a shot and see what happens. It's either this or dress the kid in all white for the first four year of it's life.

I'm also looking into doing my own screen printing, which sounds like fun even though I don't have too high of hopes for the outcome. I've got a lot of links to guide me already, and if I get anything of saleable quality, I'll put it up somewhere and see where it goes from there.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006 at 6:12 pm by Joe and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.