Dear The Children’s Place,

First of all, I’m not sure you took into consideration the problems with giving yourself a name starting with “The.” It’s tricky, isn’t it? I mean, do I really have to write “Dear The Children’s Place”? That looks ridiculous. But “Dear Children’s Place” isn’t right. I suppose “Dear TCP” would work, but not everyone knows you as TCP. It’s puzzling. If this were a real letter actually sent to you, I would do “Dear Madam or Sir,” but since this is a blog post, that’s insufficient information for the readers. “Dear The Children’s Place” it is, then.

Secondly, considering that three of my last four orders from you have been shipped even though some of the items I ordered were “unfortunately” “not available,” do you think it is perhaps time to make modifications to your inventory system? As I see it, there are two good options here:

1) Fix it so that it doesn’t let me order things that are not in stock. Considering that things in my cart often go out of stock as I’m shopping, it seems you have systems in place for this already. Perhaps you could make them WORK. You say you “try very hard” and that you “sincerely regret”—but a 75% failure rate means UR DOIN IT RONG. You KNOW there is a problem, and I know you know, so we both know you need to fix it somehow. Your allegedly sincere regret is an insufficient solution.

2) Or, you could contact me BEFORE you ship the items, to let me know that your inventory system has failed ONCE AGAIN, and to give me the option to cancel or modify my order. It is not fair to ship the order and THEN say “O SORRY ITEMS UNAVAILABLE KBAI!!!” Sure, I could return everything else, but (a) that’s a hassle for ME and I’M not the one who SCREWED UP here, and (b) I’d lose my shipping fees. Sometimes the item that’s unavailable is the reason I placed the order, and the rest was just stuff I added in as long as I had to pay shipping anyway: I didn’t really want an order of six pairs of socks sent to me. Other times, if I’d KNOWN you were out of stock in green, I would have ordered the orange. Now that a week has gone by, the orange is also out of stock.

In short, your currents system sucks. That’s right: I said SUCKS. And I mean it. Get it together, you cheeseheads, because I LOVE your clothes and I LOVE your sales, and I would like to continue to dress my daughter and any future nieces in 99% TCP clothing until they’re out of your biggest sizes. KTHANXBAI!!!

Love, Swistle

I dreamed Sundry and I bought a Blogging House, a big Victorian, and all the blog world peeps could come and hang out. We had big handmedown-type couches and chairs EVERYWHERE, and computers EVERYWHERE, and big throw rugs on the wide-board hardwood floors. People were flopping around and chatting and eating, and wandering from room to room, and complaining about how their writing was going, and saying “I am soooooo hungry for a brownie right now,” and we had a crafts services table or whatever those huge long tables of snacks and foods and drinks are called on movie sets.

I was in the kitchen working on some experimental chicken recipe for a post; I had a laptop on the counter and I was typing in my notes as I encountered problems, and there were several people sitting at the kitchen table and calling out suggestions. And Sundry was measuring JB for an article she was doing on the subject, and he will be either pleased or totally squicked to hear that he was measuring Impressively. Jess Loolu was looking online at purple shoes, with all of us walking past the screen and saying “OOOOO, cute!” or “No, too casual,” and most of us had fancy coffees in hand, and people were always coming in or going out and yelling, “Hey, do I use ‘its’ or ‘it’s’ here?”

And then I woke up. Paul had accidentally failed to completely latch the outside door when he left for work, and that door is faulty so it was hanging wide open, and several flies had gotten in, and also it was just creepy to find that the door had been open while I was asleep. Then I discovered that a cat had thrown up on my upholstered computer chair.

In case you have been wondering, “I wonder what is the opposite of having a cool Blogging House with bloggy friends hanging out and eating and chatting?” it’s “Cat threw up on computer chair, and there are flies.”

You guys, my brother WROTE ME A COMPUTER PROGRAM to choose winners for giveaways! It is so awesome: I type in some code and then I put in the url of the blog post, and the program bustles into the comment section, chooses a random winner, and tells me who it is and what their comment was. It also adjusts for multiple comments from the same person: like, if you comment and then have to leave a second comment to correct something or add something, it counts those two comments as one entry rather than as two. SMART MUCH?

I used it for the first time on the Whimsical Walney t-shirt giveaway. And the program chose Fine for Now! Yay! I’ll email you right now to put you in touch with Dana at Whimsical Walney, and she’ll get your shirt out to you!

And speaking of Dana, she wrote me to say that she felt sorry for all the losers the commenters who didn’t win:

Your readers have been so great I want to offer them a 15% discount on the Use Your Words shirt(s) of their choice. If they email me between now and June 25th at wewantwalney AT whimsicalwalney DOT com, mention you, and tell me which shirt(s) they want, I will send them an invoice through PayPal (they don’t have to have an account to use their credit card) that reflects the 15% discount. (I will be shipping everything first class.)

So you get all that? EMAIL her (instead of using the cart on the website) with your order between now and June 25th. MENTION Swistle in the email. And she’ll take 15% off, because you are so great. It’s the Greatness Discount.

This was so fun, as usual. I love giveaways. I hope I don’t overdo giveaways so that you start thinking, “Meh, another giveaway, is that ALL she does now? Where is the COMPLAINING? And what about the WHINING? Oh, for the days of whining! What I wouldn’t give for a good WHINE!”

Let us say that you are doing a giveaway, because you think giveaways are fun. And let us say that the first step of that giveaway is to take a photo of your one-year-old son Henry modeling a shirt. You are in luck, because I have photo tips customized for your EXACT SITUATION!

Do not use a location that by its very nature obscures the design of the shirt.

Remove distractions from the room.

Do not say, “Yay! Pretty shirt!”

Do not say, “Look at your SHIRT? What’s on your SHIRT?”

Do not suggest the child channel Kate Moss.

Do not schedule photo shoot too close to naptime.

Do not hire a child in the “everything goes in my mouth” stage of development.

Do not hire a child who appears to have crafty plans of his own for this session.

Improve your odds by taking 200 photos. You’re bound to get one usable one.

Now, for the giveaway part. The shirt is from Whimsical Walney, and it’s a “Use Your Words” shirt. Henry’s is the “Soy Bombero.” I took French and Latin, but Paul took Spanish and he says that means “I’m a firefighter”—a boy firefighter. That same picture is also available in “Soy Bombera,” which is “I’m a firefighter”–a girl firefighter.

I went back and forth about what size to order: the sizes up to 18 months are ringer-style (pretty colored trim) bodysuits, but Henry is long-torsoed and I wondered if the bodysuit style might not fit—but on the other hand he’s not quite in 2T for regular shirts. Well, it worked out great: the 2T is “room to grow in” and not “comically huge” as I’d feared. (For reference: he’s 23 pounds, 31 inches tall—with short legs.)

The shirt is SO YUMMY. You know how a lot of gorgeous-picture t-shirts are printed on icky shirts—like, 3-pack-for-$5 shirts? This is a thick, nice, soft t-shirt. And the weird thing is that you can’t FEEL the picture. Like, you might expect it to be a plasticky overlay or a stiff painty area, but if you just FEEL it you can’t tell where the picture is: it’s just as soft as the rest of the shirt.

If you would like to enter the contest for a free Use Your Words t-shirt from Whimsical Walney (if you don’t have kids, this would make an excellent baby gift for your childed friends), go look at the picture choices and then come back here and leave a comment saying which one you want. I’m afraid you’re going to have a tough time—or at least, I did. My favorite was the firefighter (duh), but it was a tough call between that and La Zanahoria (“carrot”). Or Soy Piloto (“I’m a pilot”). Or El Papalote (“kite”). Or La Sandia (“watermelon”) or Soy Pescador (“I’m a fisherman”). Well, or La Fresa (“strawberry”) or La Alcachofa (“artichoke”). I mean, GEEZ! How many opportunities have you had to get children’s shirts with artichokes on them? NONE, right?

The contest will run through Wednesday, June 11th, at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Pacific time. I’ll use a random number generator to choose one person, and that person will get the shirt they chose in their comment. Yay! (And good luck getting a photo of the child wearing it—SHEESH.)

When I was shopping for the new refrigerator, I narrowed it down to two options. They were very similar, but one came in a absolutely smooth white glossy finish, and the other came in the textured white I was more familiar with as the owner of a refrigerator that was made before some of you were born.

The salesperson said the glossy smooth kind was more current. I wondered if it would get all scratched up and crappy looking, and she said no, she didn’t think so, “unless you put a lot of magnets on it or something.” Which is kind of funny, considering my fridge:

Front: photos of friends’ children, school reminders, children’s drawings, timer, coupons, Leap Frog alphabet magnets set plus two supplemental lowercase letter sets.

Photos of kids, decorative magnets, kitchen utensils hanging from magnetic rack.

Grocery list, school information, commonly used phone numbers, magnetic basket holding pens and pencils and batteries, baggie for box tops, decorative magnets, magnetic notepad, recall notice about one of our cars, and a little cluster of magnets in case we have something else we need to put on the fridge.

So I got the textured finish.

If you’re wondering what happened to the downer post “Emotionally Messy,” I took it down. Because GEEZ. But I can summarize it for those of you who missed it:

1. I am still a little…off, emotionally-speaking.

I was looking through my old journals to get the information I needed for the post about milestones, and since walking happened around the same time as weaning, I kept encountering the exact same sentences again and again, in 2000 and in 2002 and in 2006—about how I was soooo irritable and sooooo moody and soooo emotional and how if it didn’t stop I was going to ask the doctor for a prescription. And then evidently it gets better and there’s no mention of it until the next baby is weaning.

I find it helps to spend money. And so it was good timing for our 22-year-old refrigerator to shuffle off its condenser coils (I think appliances can SMELL economic stimulus checks), because normally I would be so cheesed to have to buy a new one, but instead I was skipping like a schoolgirl. Well, plodding like a mother with a double stroller.

I hope it works out, because it was an exceptionally smooth and easy purchase. My dad (he’s the family expert on What’s the Best Thing to Buy) did all the research and told me the two he recommended, and then I went in and lucked into a salesperson who was laid-back and non-pressurey, and I just chose a refrigerator and bought it and the end.

Look. It’s my new fridge. White. Fridge-like.

I ruined my high, though, by taking the twins to have their pictures done. Generally I go around recommending the JCP Portrait Studio all over the place: I left Sears for them, and have never been sorry. And I’m still really happy with the pictures they take. But the last two times I’ve been there, they’ve gone way over the top trying to push all their expensive portrait options. I keep saying, “Oh, no, thanks, I always just order sheets,” and they KEEP SHOWING ME MORE OPTIONS. And then cooing over their own work, like, “Ooooo, that’s so CUTE! How can you resist??” With me actually not having any trouble resisting.

Today she actually pulled out, “Awww! You HAVE to get that one! You’ll never get these moments back again!” Um, true, but this creation you’re showing me represents only THIS moment, of YOU trying to SELL ME STUFF while my children fight in their stroller and I am clearly itching to get out of here. And since I just bought prints of all three of those poses, I don’t see why I now ALSO need to buy them clustered on the same page, with a fake-paint-splashes background and “We love you Mommy!!” written in a stupid font. I mean, frankly I think the particular combinations you’re putting together there look tacky, but I don’t want to say so because after all this is your CAREER here.

Then, when I’d persevered and gotten ONLY what I wanted (I just said, “Okay! Now! I need a 10×13 of that one, and…”), she put on an Excited Tone of Voice and said I’d ordered enough sheets to qualify for a SPECIAL PACKAGE DEAL! The special package deal? I could spend TWICE AS MUCH for the same pictures! AND I’d get a FREE 8×10! Has she lost her mind? Do they not pay them enough to afford food, and she has gone all dizzy and confused with hunger?

I realize it’s that they HAVE to do this, and not that they get any personal joy out of pressuring me. Probably they have bosses breathing down their necks saying “SELL SELL SELL!” Perhaps there are nasty attack animals in the back room, and anyone who doesn’t meet a certain hourly quota has to spend “quality time” in the cages. But the thing is, if they don’t knock it off, they are going to lose what they DO sell me. You know what I need, is a little sign I can hold up silently, with a bored flick of the wrist, after the first few vocal repetitions of the same words: “No, thanks. I just buy the sheets.” Maybe the bottom half of the sign can be a white board, so I can add rude endings as needed.

Henry had his one-year check-up this morning. I was a little worried he was going to get a Bad Baby sticker: he still doesn’t pull to standing or even TRY to pull to standing, and he’s only just starting to get onto his hands and knees (he army crawls).

I don’t know why I worry, since ALL my kids have been like this, and in fact Henry is earlier than some of the others: Rob didn’t crawl until a year old, and Elizabeth didn’t pull to standing until 14 months. And sure enough, the pediatrician says Henry is well within normal range.

I actually DON’T worry much about their development; what I worry about is OTHER PEOPLE worrying. “I’ll bet he’s walking all over the place now!” they say. And then when I say, “Oh….uh, no, he’s just crawling,” they get a funny expression and darty eyes, like, “OOoooo, dear, that’s not good. Should one of us…tell her so?”

Have you noticed this: People talk about the milestones their babies reach early, but they’re a lot quieter about the ones they reach “well within normal range”—also known as “late.” A baby who walked at 10 months? Everyone including the deli clerk has heard ALLLLL about it. The babies who walk at 17 months are just as normal, but we don’t need to bore the deli clerk with all the little details.

This greatly affects people’s perceived statistics: if you hear a lot about babies walking at 10 months, 11 months, 12 months, you might even think it’s SCARY and ALARMING and NEUROLOGICALLY SIGNIFICANT if a baby isn’t walking at 13 months. And yet it isn’t: none of my kids have walked before 14 months, and one didn’t walk until 17 months, and all of them have been still been within normal range for those things. And this is why I am telling you about it (you over there—quit yawning!): to improve the perceived statistics.

If you didn’t win the Pay it Forward contest and you’re still kind of cheesed about it, you can go to winner Melessa’s contest and try to win that! (Also, you can see what I sent her, if you’re voyeuristic like that.)

Those of you who like giveaways will want to head over to SundryBuzz: I reviewed a digital reader (it lets you read books on a little handheld electronic thingie), and I’m giving it away to a randomly-chosen commenter.

Remember this?:

Henry
May 31, 2007
8:35 a.m.
8 pounds 2 ounces
21.5 inches long

Awwww! Newborns! Love! But they are so rude, changing so much in just one year!