I'm not having very much luck shopping for used baby clothes online. I think I might be too particular, but I don't really think I'm being unreasonable. These are my issues.

1. While I would like to buy a 20 or 30 piece auction from Ebay the people who list these seem to think that they can take one or maybe two pictures of the entire lot and that should be sufficient. And by sufficient I mean they think they don't even need to write out descriptions for the items. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to bid on that. I understand and am okay with getting an item or two that I might not like, but I'm not going to spend $30ish dollars to win an auction, and then another $15 for shipping and then end up with a bunch of clothes that I don't like because I didn't really know what I was buying.

2. I'm not going to buy from anyone who uses bad grammar and can't spell anything correctly. I can handle a typo here or there (I'm sure there will be one or two in this blog) because that happens, but really read over it before you post it. This really disturbs me.

3. In general, I don't like Gerber clothing and there is lots of it out there and unfortunately it's usually the cheapest stuff. I realized this when I was dressing Ben when he was little, but the Gerber onesies are seriously inferior to every other brand I've ever seen. They're not soft, they're thin, and they're not very sturdy. Carter's which is generally the nicest common brand has, I think, two other names that they sell under that are a little cheaper and are still WAY nicer than Gerber anything.

4. I don't like pastels. Who decided babies only wore muted blues, greens, and yellows? And the only bright color you can sometimes find is blue. Who decided boy babies only wore blue? Could I please have something in a nice vibrant red, yellow, orange, green...?

5. I don't like lame designs. And my husband is worse about this than I am. I can sometimes excuse something for being lame if it strikes me as cute enough, but usually it just makes me roll my eyes. I don't want six onesies that say "handsome baby". I do have the requisite onesies that says "I love mommy" and one that says, "Daddy's little helper" and those make me happy, but that's it. I don't want one that says "Future MVP" on it. A little sports theme on a onesie is okay, but let's not go overboard. An embroidered animal here or there is fine, but when you have an outfit crawling with ducks and then it says "I'm just ducky" across the chest that is overkill. Stripes are good, polka dots can be tastefully done on a baby, plain colors, contrasting trims or stitching, collars...these things are all good, but way too hard to come by. I understand that babies are little and cute, but do we have to humiliate them *every* time we dress them? Couldn't it just be an occasional humiliatingly cute outfit to make up for the stress they put us under?

6. I refuse to pay a lot of money for baby clothes. This is problematic simply because as I've just been saying I don't like most of the regular clothes out there. However, I've found that the pricey baby clothes are usually a little more tasteful. So I would buy expensive baby clothes except for the obvious stupidity involved in that. Okay, one or two more expensive pieces like a coming-home outfit or something can be justified, but I'm really not going to fill a baby's closet with brands of clothes that even I don't get to wear.

7. Here is a problem that some of the nicer baby clothes companies fall prey to: they think my baby is a billboard. GAP is particularly bad about this, Old Navy does it sometimes, Nike, and OshKosh also will do it. They make a perfectly nice shirt and then stamp their brandname across the chest. Thanks, but no thanks to being a walking billboard whether my kid is 8 weeks, 8 years, or 18 years old.

8. Absurd fabrics. These come at both ends of the spectrum. On the cheap end in the ebay lots you'll find people who are including baby pieces from back in the day that are made out of terry cloth fabrics. This is not good and should not be supported. In the middle you have the velour items, whether dresses for little girls (there's a fine line there between cute and bad) and the velour pants/jackets combos. This is also not good. No one should wear velour, probably ever. Then there's the ritzy glitzy lifestyle options that offer things like cashmere baby sweaters. No one who has ever seen a baby spit up or poop has ever thought they should be dressed in cashmere.

9. Do baby clothes makers know about the weather and seasons? I don't think so. Do you know how much harder it is to find a long-sleeved onesie than a short sleeve onesie? It's seriously challenging. I don't know why. There are four generally accepted seasons: winter, spring, summer, and  fall and for portions of three of those long sleeves are appropriate. I don't even live in a cold place, it's moderate weathere here, but what do people who live in routinely cold places do? I understand that you can put a coat on a baby to go outside, but sometimes you need long sleeves even when you're inside and for an extra layer of warmth outside too. This is not rocket science.

10. Again, this seems fairly obvious to me, but I might be cluing some people in for the very first time. NOT ALL BABIES ARE GIRLS! I have boy babies and they need to wear clothes too, nice clothes, stylish clothes, well-thought-out clothes. 90% of clothes stores are for girls and there stuff is nicer than what people make for boys. It's completely stupid. Of course, there is a little payback because by the time girls are in "little girls" clothes all of their stuff has been taken over by the scantily-clad and illicit-suggestion prone world of what passes for fashion and so they're dressed like tramps by kindergarten and that seems to be where boy clothes are finally mellowing out into normal person appropriate items. So I'm glad I don't have to deal with that, but come on.

So there you have it. My tired complaining about buying baby clothes and the 10 reasons why my baby is only going to have five outfits and I'll have to do laundry every day to keep him dressed. I think I've come to the happy conclusion though that it's not me, it's definitely everyone else who has and is the problem. I'm just the one that has to suffer for it. :)