children’s toys

Not Your Grandma’s Craft Fair: Crafty Bastards Cabin Fever

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Crafting is in my blood, even though I am not a Pinterest mom. My mom is High Mistress of Preschool Crafts and Perfectly Wrapped Gifts. When she wasn’t sewing my Halloween costumes, she loved dragging my dad and I around to craft fairs. Despite these fairs’ variable quality, I grew to appreciate beautiful hand-made things, from their creators’ unique vision to the ethics of buying small. So I love Crafty Bastards, DC’s annual professional-level craft fair supported by the local alternative newspaper. This past weekend, they held its first indoor winter edition (Crafty Bastards: Cabin Fever) in all of its hipster glory.

Buying stuff – even from small crafters – may seem contradictory to my simplifying goals, but I had a very particular focus: baby clothes and accessories. Although the new baby will inherit most of Sprout’s clothes and toys, I want him to have at least a few of his own things as well. Even though he won’t know the difference, I don’t want everything to be a hand-me-down. One of my worries is that I’ll compare him to Sprout too much and not value him as an individual. Buying a few things just for him provides a little bit of peace on that front.

Hecht Warehouse Crafty Bastards

Hecht Warehouse Lobby

Unlike the summer event that’s held outside, Crafty Bastards Cabin Fever was in a warehouse. But it wasn’t just any warehouse – a development company is in the process of turning into swanky condos. It was the most hipster place I’ve possibly ever been, both the good and bad of that term. From the food trucks outside to the distinctly steampunk lobby, it oozed cool. The lobby simultaneously made me think “Well, this is a bit much” and “This is really cool.”

In contrast, the booths were in the unfinished part, a veritable wonderland of interest for a kid. The organizers used the unpainted wall as a canvas, commissioning an artist to spray-paint a mural. Sprout enjoyed pointing out “pink flamingos!” several times. The uneven floor, especially one place where there was a gap between two concrete slabs and another where it sloped dramatically, were also big points of interest. Sprout walked up and down, back and forth, feeling how the changes in the floor felt and affected his balance. Most importantly, the large, open area created wide aisles to run down. Sprout usually did a good job holding our hands, but I let him wander where it wasn’t too crowded. (With me close behind, of course!)

Flamingos at Crafty Bastards 2When we weren’t chasing our child, Chris and I did manage to find some adorable clothes for the new baby. Mirasa Design had lion-patterned pajamas and supported literacy programs in developing countries. I couldn’t pick just one, so we bought two screen-printed onesies from Earth Cadets. From Stronge Designs, we not only picked up a onesie, but the seller talked us into getting a matching shirt for Sprout. It was on sale! I particularly liked that all of the vendors had great gender neutral clothing. It’s easy to find adorable stuff for little girls, but clothes for boys often shift abruptly from overly babyish to bizarrely aggressive. (Or worse, outright sexist.)

There were also a number of displays with items we loved that just didn’t fit our needs at the moment. Sprout was drawn to the booth of an artist who did huge, colorful paintings that he then nicked up like graffitied school desks. He spent several minutes looking at a painting of a garbage truck and two different ones of whales. The person at the booth (who I think may have been the artist’s wife) explained to us that the trash truck picture was actually inspired by one of her toddler son’s favorite books, Trashytown! Definitely one we’ll have to check out at the library.

Sprout also liked the handmade wooden cars at Christina Boy Design, which I may purchase later for the little one when he’s older. Zooguu’s mounted dragon heads were fantastic, but Sprout had his eye on the smaller dinosaurs. All of the artist’s items were particularly neat because she made each one with fabric scraps, making them both envi
ronmentally sustainable and totally unique. I came very close to purchasing a print of a raccoon under the stars for the baby’s room from Small Doses of Wonder, but I wanted to settle on a definitive theme first. As Chris said, if we ended up going with the jungle theme over the forest, the print would be like a raccoon on vacation.

We even sampled a few of the food vendors, with Harper Macaw handing out pieces of chocolate. Much to my surprise and delight, Sprout enjoyed the 74% dark chocolate (or at least he didn’t spit it out), a far cry from the milk chocolate most kids prefer.

On our way out, we hit up a couple of the non-buying opportunities for fun. A craft table with patterned paper and shaped hole punches held Sprout’s attention for at least 10 minutes. He sat on my lap as he happily punched out a bunch of hearts and airplanes. The photo booth – which I was more excited about – was less successful. He refused to wear a hat – not even a fireman one – and protested when I wanted to put on oversized sunglasses. While I wasn’t going to make him wear anything, I’m also trying to teach him he can’t dictate others’ choices, so ignored his directions on the sunglasses. As a result, he’s vaguely frowning in all three photos, while I’m making odd faces or trying to fix my hair because I couldn’t figure out when the camera was going off. At least the pictures were free!

Crafty Bastards Cabin Fever offered a great opportunity to get out of the house after almost a month of focusing on tidying. I’m glad that we have the chance to browse and buy from such great small artists and crafters on a regular basis.

Out-Growing Mommy’s Favorite Things

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 6 Comments

We all hold certain childhood objects fondly in our memories, even if we no longer have them. But until I became a mommy, I didn’t understand the relationship between the parent and the child’s possessions. Lately, Sprout has grown out of a number of things that are my favorites. Even if we have another child who uses them, knowing that he will never use them again makes me a little sad.

Most recently, Sprout got too big for his whale baby bathtub. I had needed to switch him into the real bathtub for weeks. By the last bath, his legs were squashed to the point where he had no choice but to bend his knees. Depending on his position, either his legs or butt were on the slanted section, throwing him off balance. While I kept saying that he couldn’t switch because the bathtub desperately needed to be cleaned (which it did), at least part of it was that I was sad to move him out of the little tub. I remembered picking it out for our registry while pregnant, charmed by the marine mammal theme. (We also got the whale faucet cover.) I remembered his first bath, when I gingerly laid him on the padded section, worried he would slip and drown. He spent the whole time frowning, punctuated with occasional crying. I remember him learning to sit up in it and discovering the joy of splashing. And by the end, I remembered him nearly crawling out of it, pulling up to his knees. So now it’s at least temporarily retired, well-loved, with its padding pulled off and its sides scratched.

Sprout has also grown out of a huge amount of clothing, much of which I was fond of. The first one that I really missed was a onsie my sister-in-law gave us a few days before he was born. It has a picture of the earth and says, “Hi. I’m new here.” The thought of that phrase in my tiny baby’s imaginary voice was so sweet and hilarious. We planned to bring him home from the hospital in it, but it was way too big. Once it fit, I dressed him in it in often because it brought some light to those difficult early days. Although he swam in it at first, he grew into it quickly and then out of it just as fast. He was no longer all that “new here” anymore. It was probably the first thing I was sad to put in storage.

More recently, we had to retire the most awesome pajamas ever. Over the winter, he regularly wore fleece footie pajamas with rocket ships. They were the epitome of everything kids’ pajamas should be – warm, fuzzy, comfortable, a little retro, and fantastical. I actually Googled “women’s fleece rocket ship pajamas” to see if I could find similar, non-footie ones for myself. Unfortunately, they do not design the same pajamas for grown women as they do baby boys.

Packing up these items did help me better understand a conversation I had with my mom a few years ago. I was sorting through a number of things in my old bedroom at my parents’ house, deciding what I wanted to keep and what to get rid of. Having decided not to keep a set of ceramic bear figurines, I told my mom she could give them away. Much to my surprise, my mom got rather upset. To me, they were just some cutesy knick-knacks that had always been on a bookshelf and didn’t reflect my personality. But she struggled with the fact that they didn’t hold any nostalgic value for me because they had so much for her. She bought me one each year for my birthday, so they symbolized all those passing years watching me grow up. For her, they evoked the memories of all of those birthdays that for me as an adult, were hazy at best. The bears had much more tangible echoes of the past for her.

It’s funny how even the simplest things – a bathtub, a pair of pajamas, a ceramic bear – can have such meaning imbued in it when it’s your child’s. I know we have so far to go, with so many clothes and toys yet to be bought, used, and retired. But those earliest things of Sprout’s will always hold a special place in my heart.