I Love Giveaways. I Think Giveaways are Fun.

Let us say that you are doing a giveaway, because you think giveaways are fun. And let us say that the first step of that giveaway is to take a photo of your one-year-old son Henry modeling a shirt. You are in luck, because I have photo tips customized for your EXACT SITUATION!



Do not use a location that by its very nature obscures the design of the shirt.




Remove distractions from the room.




Do not say, "Yay! Pretty shirt!"




Do not say, "Look at your SHIRT? What's on your SHIRT?"




Do not suggest the child channel Kate Moss.




Do not schedule photo shoot too close to naptime.




Do not hire a child in the "everything goes in my mouth" stage of development.




Do not hire a child who appears to have crafty plans of his own for this session.




Improve your odds by taking 200 photos. You're bound to get one usable one.



Now, for the giveaway part. The shirt is from Whimsical Walney, and it's a "Use Your Words" shirt. Henry's is the "Soy Bombero." I took French and Latin, but Paul took Spanish and he says that means "I'm a firefighter"---a boy firefighter. That same picture is also available in "Soy Bombera," which is "I'm a firefighter"--a girl firefighter.

I went back and forth about what size to order: the sizes up to 18 months are ringer-style (pretty colored trim) bodysuits, but Henry is long-torsoed and I wondered if the bodysuit style might not fit---but on the other hand he's not quite in 2T for regular shirts. Well, it worked out great: the 2T is "room to grow in" and not "comically huge" as I'd feared. (For reference: he's 23 pounds, 31 inches tall---with short legs.)

The shirt is SO YUMMY. You know how a lot of gorgeous-picture t-shirts are printed on icky shirts---like, 3-pack-for-$5 shirts? This is a thick, nice, soft t-shirt. And the weird thing is that you can't FEEL the picture. Like, you might expect it to be a plasticky overlay or a stiff painty area, but if you just FEEL it you can't tell where the picture is: it's just as soft as the rest of the shirt.

If you would like to enter the contest for a free Use Your Words t-shirt from Whimsical Walney (if you don't have kids, this would make an excellent baby gift for your childed friends), go look at the picture choices and then come back here and leave a comment saying which one you want. I'm afraid you're going to have a tough time---or at least, I did. My favorite was the firefighter (duh), but it was a tough call between that and La Zanahoria ("carrot"). Or Soy Piloto ("I'm a pilot"). Or El Papalote ("kite"). Or La Sandia ("watermelon") or Soy Pescador ("I'm a fisherman"). Well, or La Fresa ("strawberry") or La Alcachofa ("artichoke"). I mean, GEEZ! How many opportunities have you had to get children's shirts with artichokes on them? NONE, right?

The contest will run through Wednesday, June 11th, at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Pacific time. I'll use a random number generator to choose one person, and that person will get the shirt they chose in their comment. Yay! (And good luck getting a photo of the child wearing it---SHEESH.)