Spent some weekend time shopping for holiday gifts, and yet again, I have been struck by the spectacular awfulness of most baby clothes. Who decided that the gender-specific appliqué is the only appropriate way to decorate a tiny outfit? Walk through the boys’ racks, and all you see are little footballs, hockey sticks, puppies, and DADDY LOVES ME embroideries; in the girls’ department, amid the sea of pink, it’s all sparkles and princesses and butterflies. Well, I am about as much a fan of the football/cheerleader dichotomy as I am of the head traumas that go with it.  I vote no.

To find better-looking infant clothes, you have to seek out some designer baby line, like the Brooklyn company Egg. Their clothes are great-looking and well-made; their prices mean that we just don’t own much of it. The middle ground, so far, has been astonishingly sparse. If it weren’t for the plain and sturdy and all-American stuff from Lands’ End, we’d be stuck permanently in DADDY LOVES ME land.

Then again, things could be worse.