I never knew (or even noticed) how beautiful childrens’ clothing could be until I became pregnant with a girl. Then one day, as I was heaving towards the 9th month in a big mass of belly and fatigue, UPS came calling and brought me  a package. A present from one of my mother’s friends. I proceeded to unwrap the brown papered box that it came in and upon unfolding the most perfectly folded tissue, encountered the most exquisite little dress I had ever seen in my life. Simple, but sublime. A cotton red gingham dress with a scalloped hem, with a matching embroidered cardigan. It could not have been more perfect that the embroidery was of a girl wearing … well, of course, a little dress.

And in that dress it occurred to me that, wow, I was going to have a GIRL. The dress reminded me of that beautiful, precious, sublime truth, which had thus far been the imagining of an embryo, and then eventually, and affectionately, a “bean”. Now, she was indeed, a girl … something I had somewhat, to this point, felt a bit apologetic in yearning for, amidst the hip unisex baby strollers splashed in retro orange loaded down with mod Skip Hop bags. Instead, here was a dress. Not a onesie. Not even a skirt. A dress. For my girl.

My daughter was born in the summer of 2006. All of the blessings in my life heretofore paled in comparison to this moment. My life was forever changed, altered, transported to the sweet and sublime foreverafter. I became a Mother to a Girl.

Amidst all the life-altering, earth-shattering and indescribable joys, challenges, love and work that followed in the days, weeks and months to come, I kept coming back to this one small little thing that brought me a most mundane-yet-not-mundane and trivial-yet-not-trivial pleasure and constant in my otherwise upheaval’d world. A little dress… though still too big for my newborn to wear, as it was size 18 months. I neatly hung the dress on a hanger, and hung it from the pull of my daughter’s dresser drawer, instead of hidden inside the closet. I gazed at it as if it were an object of art on the wall of a museum, admiring it, dreaming upon it, referring back it, as the object of a certain revery whilst nursing my beautiful gazing-at-me and growing-before-my-eyes daughter, my primary activity in the first year of my daughter’s life.

Finally, the day (and occasion) arrived when she was old enough to wear the dress. The moment I had been waiting for, for 18 months (okay I admit, it was only 12 months. European sizes run small, thank goodness!) I debuted my daughter’s dress (and my daughter!), to my family-at-large, at my cousin’s summer wedding.

From that day, my obsession was sealed. I was now officially obsessed with the idea of dressing my daughter beautifully, everyday, and not just for a special occasion for which I would have to wait 18 months.

I have since dedicated an unnatural amount of time to the matter of dressing my daughter. But I have done so without having the means to purchase a Jacadi dress for everyday of the week. Indeed, this is perhaps why this endeavor has consumed so much of my time – because I have spent so much time searching in ordinary retail stores for clothing pieces that would look beautiful and unique, if creatively mix’d and match’d with other similarly “ordinary” pieces from ordinary retailers (with the occasional Jacadi-esque piece thrown in for good measure … purchased on sale of course!)

And so, here is a photo of the dress. And the beginning, of my blog.

“Once upon a little dress …”