Microfashion, cosmology, theology ... This post has it all (without actually saying anything)

Proof of my pathetic (but wonderful) life ...


I'm so excited. Tonight, Vivienne wore her pretty pink dress to church ...

We made sure to get a picture of the dress
a week ago while it was still crisp and clean.
The chances of mommy ever ironing it so it
looks this good again are slim to none.

... AND HER LITTLE BLACK CARDIGAN. Yes, I'm excited over a sweater. Pathetic, I know ... but before you judge too harshly, let me explain. (I don't expect you to be excited by the end but hopefully you'll understand why I am.)

I am a bit obsessed with baby clothes. I have been ever since I was a little girl and my practical mother wouldn't let me buy expensive baby clothes for my baby dolls. Therefore, in my baby-filled house, I'm livin' the dream -- especially with a baby girl sandwiched between my boys. It's probably a good thing I'm not living in America during Vivienne's baby years because it takes a little more effort to find cute clothes at reasonable prices, but by now I've scoped out every day market and night market and everything in between and I am a baby-clothes-shopping pro. Still, there are some quirky things about baby clothes in Taiwan that I've had to work around. For one thing, despite the fact that it never gets below freezing, it's difficult to find girls' winter clothes that don't involve quilting or fur at times. It's also really hard to find unadorned, solid colored things, which you want from time to time. Therefore, last year when I was home in America, I was overjoyed to find a solid black cardigan in one of the winter clearance sales.

Because you really wouldn't want to pair
a dress like this with polkadots.

We also found a great navy blue one (albeit with a fairly bright yellow flower) at Old Navy, so I figured I was set for this year.

When Stephen's parents came in July, I packed both these sweaters as well as her little navy polka dotted jacket because a typhoon was coming and I didn't know how cool it might get near the water.

Vivienne making good use of her jacket
at the beach.

When we got home, I remember very clearly folding up the cardigans while unpacking the babies' clothes in their bedroom, and then ... they, along with the jacket, disappeared into the clothing black hole that exists somewhere in our house. Yes, we have a black hole with a taste for fabric, apparently. I first noticed it when Jonathan was a baby. I bought him a few onesie/pants sets from Costco. One of them had a pair of camo pants with a white shirt. I cut them off the hanger at the same time and put them in the drawer -- and never saw the shirt again. Same with two long sleeved onesies I bought a bit later. I took them out of the bag at the same time and never saw the yellow one again. He wore the blue one at times, but that has since gone MIA, too. Over the years, an increasing number of articles of clothing have vanished in dribs and drabs. Sometimes, of course, they are lost in the Clark family chaos. Occasionally, they turn up again. But quite a few items (many not-yet-grown-into) seem to have vanished completely, and I have been through most corners of the house since the early ones went missing, so if they are still here, they are in some really strange and unused nooks and crannies. (It's a smallish city apartment. As cluttered as it is, there aren't really that many nooks and crannies.)

Over time, I have grown accustom to losing a certain percentage of the children's wardrobe over time, but it confuses me.  I have several theories as to why this happens, the first being that Jonathan periodically throws things in the trash that we don't notice. Now, this would be an excellent theory except that he only really has access to one or two trash cans which I peek into from time to time, and the clothes started disappearing before he could crawl. Then there's the theory that the nanny is a kleptomaniac with a secondhand baby clothes business on the side, because really, little else goes permanently missing from the house. My last non-blackhole theory is that some day, when we finally get around to packing everything up and moving, we will find a colossal pile of outgrown, never-been-worn baby clothes in some corner of the house we never knew existed and we'll have to have a couple more kids just so we get some wear out of them.

And then there's the blackhole theory, but I had not yet resigned myself to that in this case. For one thing, I knew they were together and things rarely disappear as sets. And so, I've been tearing apart the house searching for them ever since getting back in July. It really annoyed me because I knew they made it back from vacation and because that was basically all of Vivienne's fall-weight sweaters/jackets except for her fancy little white one. But, I had no luck finding them. So, when the wind from the typhoon (that didn't hit) cooled things down this week, I had to bring out that white sweater. Two wearing later and half a bottle of stain pre-treat, it's sitting ready to be washed. Let's just say, little white sweaters are adorable on toddlers; toddlers stains -- not so adorable on little white sweaters. They should definitely be saved for Christmas, Easter, and the occasional photo shoot or Sunday, not be worn to nursery school.

Yes, yes, that is a giant duck in Kaohsiung Harbor.  And a
little white sweater.

And then, yesterday I found a bag with our Christmas stockings and went to put them with the other Christmas stuff under the top bunk in a cabinet behind Vivienne's bed (let's just say not a very high traffic area). What should I find but a whole basket of random clothes put up on a shelf there -- including both cardigans and the jacket. I know it was NOT Stephen or I who put them there but a little elf named Jonathan. I have been losing the battle of the disappearing baby clothes for years. It's nice to have a victory from time to time.  It's totally my modern-day equivalent to Jesus' parables of the missing coins/sheep (and proves my life these days is rather dull).

So tonight, Vivienne wore her black cardigan to church, and I was excited. What was really, really nice was sponging off milk tea at least twice from Vivienne's cardigan and knowing that I could go home and hang it right back up in the closet. Even nicer? Knowing that it will never, ever need a stain stick applied to it!

On a related note, I was going through Vivienne's clothes drawer tonight when Jonathan walked up, pulled out a shirt, and clearly and distinctly said "trash can" while headed for the diaper trash behind me. Yeah. I really, really want to nanny cam the closet.