I can't believe I forgot - YAY AMYPARKER!!! (I miss her.)

Our daughter wore lots of "boy's" OshKosh overalls in red and yellow and blue.

This is a positively brilliant plan.

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I remember someone saying they just bought all white and dyed as they saw fit. It sounds like a reasonable thing to do, but I may be a little over-invested in my "no pastels" edict.

It's reasonable if you're not me, the world's least domestic woman. To me, dying baby clothes is right up there with making my own baby food as "nice ideal, but if I expected myself to do it, I wouldn't, and it's not worth the guilt."

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Robin, what beth said.

I just thought this was the normal way to do it, since my neighbor has always marked the stuff she's loaned us, and every time Annabel outgrows a size, I go through the old stuff before I box it away so I can give it back.

I think your way is the normal way. I think I am the oddball. I didn't want to feel obligated to get stuff back to people, and assumed everyone else felt the same way. For the most part, except when Ben was a newborn, our babies came during good financial times. And even though it was a little harder when Ben was new, because we'd just given up my salary, he was our first child, and my parents' first grandchild, so it seemed we didn't have to buy much for him on our own.

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Oh, yes, yay amyparker.

So ... why *are* all baby clothes pink or blue? It seems to me there should be a market for brights and neutrals, between people who don't like pink and people who don't find out what they're having until the birth and want to shop in advance. Are those people just not numerous enough to bother serving them?

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There are neutrals, but it's in the more utilitarian separates. Jeans are neutral. Solid color shirts are neutral (Julia looked great in red, and so did Ben--all three kids look great in blue). It is when you get into outfit-land that the clothing is more sex specific. My children are all fairly fair, so I did like pastels on them. Julia had so much pink (from people) that if I still had all her infant clothing, I'd be tempted to have a face off with Aimee and Emeline. Pink looked great on Julia though, so it was fine by me.

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So ... why *are* all baby clothes pink or blue?

My theory? Baby clothes manufacturers want to make money. If most baby clothes are androgynous, they wouldn't sell as many clothes, because it'd be that much easier to borrow from friends or re-use what you had for a previous baby.

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If someone were hypothetically putting together a box of tiny baby clothes to loan to a hypothetical friend whose baby will be almost exactly a year younger, is a Sharpie on the tags a good way of marking them, or will that run in the wash and create black, inky mess?

Sharpies will not create a mess, but I find that when marking costumes, the sharpie usually washes out. this may have more to do with actor sweat than the laundrey, and I doubt babies sweat as much as actors.

The laundrey markers are called Rub-a-dub, but I am having a hard time finding them (they seem to no longer carry them at wal-mart, target, or CVS)

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To me, dying baby clothes is right up there with making my own baby food as "nice ideal, but if I expected myself to do it, I wouldn't, and it's not worth the guilt."

You were clearly not raised by my mother, the mad dyer. Don't like the green throw? Put it in the washer with a bunch of red Rit dye. The woman has probably tea-stained more things than the entire lineup on HGTV. I'm so used to the idea that I routinely throw black dye in with fading black jeans.

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Those things that are not pink or blue are pastel yellow or pale green.

We ventured into Pottery Barn Kids yesterday. I'm scared of it. It's like Easter exploded in there.

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The woman has probably tea-stained more things than the entire lineup on HGTV. I'm so used to the idea that I routinely throw black dye in with fading black jeans.

Hee. I think I read somewhere that when Marilyn Monroe married Joe D, she tinted her veil with coffee.

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