Now that I'm noticing these things, I've been seeing more and more off-color, obnoxious baby tees around. Who would put their kid in a onesie that reads "I met my dad on Maury"? or "Hung like a five year old"? I'm not a prude, but that's just an abuse of free speech. It's not like the baby can read his t-shirt, but his older siblings might have a few questions about it. There's a big difference between a funny onesie and an offensive, tasteless, not so funny onesie. If you put your kid in a shirt with a message that you think is funny, but 99% of the world sees as indecent and distasteful, the message is clear: You're a nincompoop, and hopefully your child can overcome the countless additional bad decisions you'll make for him!
We make (what we think are) funny onesies. We are proud of the baby clothes we carry, and our babies have worn many of our ideas proudly on their chests! Some of the shirts don't apply to our family, obviously. "Future Ballerina"? With three boys, probably not. "Future Mac User", now that's a shirt I know will apply. In fact, 2 of the 3 are already now Mac Users! They are hooked on PBSkids.com, a great site with tons of fun learning games. We've got their little eMac's set up so they can't go anywhere besides a few chosen websites, and all they want to do anyway is play Super Why's games. At 15 months, Bodie is not quite yet a Mac user. A funny onesie idea for him would be "Mac Abuser". His idea of computer usage is to bang my mouse until the batteries come out, put the parts into the office trash can, then climb onto my chair and start wailing my keyboard like a pipe organ, re-naming the files on my desktop if possible. He has many virtues, but a tactful approach isn't in his playbook.
Our boys have always had cool baby clothes. Sara and her sisters have made sure of that. Now that Sara is in the business of making baby t-shirts, I notice different designs everywhere I go. To be honest, I don't think I ever paid attention to whether or not other parents' kids had hip baby clothes or not. Little did I realize that all these little baby clothes accessories would become such a big part of my life!
I get a lot of ribbing at work from the guys. Mostly because I'm a part-time baby onesie maker, and partly because they want to see us get a little edgier. They always come up with ideas for us - sometimes in jest, but mostly I think they really want their vulgar slogans on our baby onesies. They are a great group of guys, and a riot to work with, but their ideas can be pretty crude and tend to be mostly boob related. One of my buddies was in DC for the weekend and saw a group of topless protesters in the street with signs proclaiming "Boobs NOT Bombs". He came back on monday practically begging me to use it on our funny onesies section. I told him I'd put it in Sara's suggestion box.
Life around here isn't crazy enough, what the heck, let's do a onesie contest! Sara is busy updating this website to a newer, improved version while nursing a finicky 4 month old. Bodie has been so fussy lately during the day, Sara can hardly put him down. He spends most of his time in her lap on the Boppy pillow, cuddled up to the mammaries. Life is good for him.
I spend most of my free time, which is usually from 3:30 to 6 AM, stocking up for the Christmas flood and filling orders. Lately, even that little bit of free time has been getting cut short. We've got mice in the attic, so I've been trying to humanely catch them and banish them to the countryside. My humane trap has consisted of a 5 gallon bucket with a granola bar at the bottom. I positioned it next to a stack of small boxes so that the mice could climb into the bucket, but not get out. This morning the granola bar was half eaten and there were little mouse poops in the vicinity. Who knew a mouse could jump out of a 5 gallon bucket? Not me. All of my attic shenanigans every morning have made the boys get up earlier and earlier, and when Gavin and Garrett are awake in the house - nothing gets done by me. I try not to get frustrated, that's just how life is right now. They need attention. Someday they'll be self sufficient and I'll miss these days of chaos. I think.
Running a small business like this is a big undertaking, not a leisurely venture. I'm not complaining a bit though, this is a little slice of the American dream for us. We've taken our ideas and made them into something people will buy from us! It just kinda happened by a fluke that Snugfits is doing our first design contest! We've been wanting to do something like this for awhile, we just weren't sure on how to get the ball rolling...
Along comes an awesome company called Brickfish (and a dear friend of Sara's named Karisse Green who worked there) who said "HEY! Lets do a onesie design contest!" With their experience and ridiculously huge network of Brickfish members, soon we will be awarding prizes for the best onesie designs. It'll be really easy for anyone to enter this contest - you don't need a degree in graphic art or have Photoshop expertise. Brickfish has templates on their site for you to use, no special software required. All you need is a unique onesie design (just a good slogan we haven't thought of is dandy) and a desire to win money and prizes!
The Grand Prize winner (selected by us out of the top 200 highest scoring entries) will have a onesie or tee inspired by their design created, featured and sold on Snugfits.com plus a copy for themselves, a $200 shopping spree at Snugfits.com and $300 cash.
Runner Up (selected by us out of the top 200 highest scoring entries) wins a $100 Shopping spree at Snugfits.com and $150 cash.
Most Viral (selected by us out of the top 200 most viral entries) wins a $100 shopping spree at Snugfits.com and $300 cash. Learn about "Most Viral".
Best Surfers Healing Design (selected by us out of all entries that include the Surfer's Healing logo) wins a $100 gift card to Quiksilver.com and a copy of Clay Marzo's DVD "Just Add Water." Also, a onesie or tee inspired by the winner's design will be made and distributed to local surf shops around the country to be sold, with a portion of the proceeds going to Surfers Healing, a Foundation for Autism. We love Surfers Healing - see Gavin's video if you need proof!
Sign-Up Sweepstakes: Six winners who sign up for the Snugfits newsletter will be randomly selected to win a free onesie or tee of their choice from us.
Doesn't this sound like fun? And, if you are clever, the odds of winning are actually pretty good.
See all the details a link to the "official rules" by going here.
Helpful hints from the judges: By reading our blog, you've already got a leg up on the competition. We are going to keep an open mind and welcome any and all creativity, but keep in mind that this design will be added to the Snugfits collection (we allow ourselves the liberty of modifying it in any way we deem necessary for printing purposes and design feel). We want it to fit in and be attractive to the crowd of regulars that dig our modern baby style. If your design is completely different than what we currently offer - that's great! Maybe we can start a new line and collaborate with you. So, good luck Snugfits fans! Make yourself some extra money! You'll need it right after the holidays...
The transition from crib to bed isn't supposed to be easy, is it? Garrett has (almost) taken right to it! He loves sleeping in his little bed. The boys have a trundle bed from Ikea, very comfortable! Gavin is on the high part and Garrett gets the roll out bed. The problem is this: he has learned that he's free to roam the house at night if he chooses. I'm not sure if babies can sleepwalk or what, but he comes out of their room sometimes with a glazed look in his eye. He just wanders around. The other night I found him standing at the couch, sleeping with his face down in the cushion, sippy in hand. Weird! Does anybody know what is up with this? I'm afraid he's going to hurt himself some night. Thank God he can't unlock the doors, he'd probably meander on down the road if he could. He does it almost every night. He's scared me to death a couple times. I've opened my eyes at 2 a.m. to see him crouching like a gargoyle on the hope chest at the foot of the bed, a "Gotcha Daddy" grin on his face.
We use the Super Nanny technique of taking him back to the bed without saying a word, so he doesn't turn it into a game. It seems to work! That Super Nanny is awesome. I just wish Garrett would stay in bed all night! I don't want to put up a gate at their door, since we're also trying to get Gavin to use the potty at night on his own. This gives me a couple more t-shirt ideas: "Night Prowler" or "The baby that never sleeps" ...maybe?
Other than his nightly wanderings, Garrett is a great little sleeper. I can't really complain about either of my boys' sleeping habits. I've heard some real horror stories from other parents trying to make the transition. For Gavin's transition from the crib, we bought a bed tent that looked like a ladybug, since he was used to a crib that had a mesh tent over it. Sara found it on Amazon, I think. It had nice little pockets to hold the sippy cups inside. Gavin loved that part. So when we had to take the tent away and move Garrett to the trundle bed, I took Gavin to Target and bought some 99¢ car cup holders for him. They hook right on the bed. Sweet! He was so thrilled with his new cup holders, he didn't even notice the ladybug was gone. He finally got to enjoy the big green wall leaf thing (also from Ikea!) that hovers over the bed. I remember the first night for Gavin without the tent. We tucked him in and asked how he liked his new bed. "Green leaf." he said with a twinkle. You gotta love that!
The transition from crib to bed isn't supposed to be easy, is it? Garrett has (almost) taken right to it! He loves sleeping in his little bed. The boys have a trundle bed from Ikea, very comfortable! Gavin is on the high part and Garrett gets the roll out bed. The problem is this: he has learned that he's free to roam the house at night if he chooses. I'm not sure if babies can sleepwalk or what, but he comes out of their room sometimes with a glazed look in his eye. He just wanders around. The other night I found him standing at the couch, sleeping with his face down in the cushion, sippy in hand. Weird! Does anybody know what is up with this? I'm afraid he's going to hurt himself some night. Thank God he can't unlock the doors, he'd probably meander on down the road if he could. He does it almost every night. He's scared me to death a couple times. I've opened my eyes at 2 a.m. to see him crouching like a gargoyle on the hope chest at the foot of the bed, a "Gotcha Daddy" grin on his face.
