My sister-in-law saved me $39.50 this week. That’s the price of a brand-new L.L. Bean fleece coverall. Now Pumpkin will have something warm and cozy to wear this winter and I’ll have some extra money in my pocket for necessities (like milk and Cheerios).

This isn’t the first garment I’ve received from my sister-in-law, whose youngest son is a year older than Pumpkin. I would have been even luckier if her son had been a daughter. (Please, no lectures on gender equality. My daughter can grow up to be president, but in the meantime, her little pink turtlenecks will have lettuce edging and embroidered hearts.)

I’ve been pretty fortunate in the hand-me-down arena. I have a couple of friends in the newsroom whose daughters are just a little older than Pumpkin (and who were a whole lot bigger, considering my girl is a preemie) who gave me some clothes over the past year. I was always very grateful because children’s clothes are expensive and quickly outgrown.

As Pumpkin has grown out of quite a few clothes herself, I’ve thought about passing along some of her outfits. I like the idea of another mom enjoying the clothes the same way I did. Of course, as I mentioned in this earlier post, I would keep a selection of favorites to share memories in the future.

How do you handle hand-me-downs? Do you mostly share with family and friends? Has anyone started a swap? (I’ve thought about asking other moms at work whether they’d be up for that.) How important are hand-me-downs to managing your family’s budget? (And just imagine what it was like when families had six, seven or eight kids!)

Every day, in this quiet corner of suburbia, an epic struggle tests the will of two warriors.

On one side we find a 74-year-old grandmother. On the other, an 18-month-old baby. The grandmother, determined to get the hair out of baby’s face, uses the barrette as her weapon of choice. The baby, equally determined to take off anything on her head, simply waits until Gramma’s not looking and pulls out the barrette.

In the middle: the mom.

Don’t get me wrong, I can totally see my mother’s point of view. A lot of the time, Pumpkin looks like Sam the Sheepdog from the old Wile E. Coyote cartoon. It’s amazing that she can see where she’s walking. But my sympathy does not affect my unwillingness to cut a lock of my baby’s hair.

See, my mother would like me to trim Pumpkin’s hair into bangs, mostly so she can see better, but also in part because Mom thinks bangs are cute. (Note: I had bangs. And no, they weren’t always even.) But I dream of letting Pumpkin grow Rapunzelesque tresses.

I also see Pumpkin’s point of view in the conflict: “Hey, this thing they put in my hair feels interesting. Let me take it out so I can look at it.”

Eventually, Pumpkin’s hair will be long enough to tuck behind her ears or wrestle into a (hopefully more secure) ponytail. In the meantime, I have made quite an investment in barrettes. We’ve already lost all of these and these, and only have one left out of four of these.

What about you other parents out there — how long did you wait for baby’s first haircut? And, how did you get your children to tolerate barrettes? (And hats!! Winter is coming and we are planning to rely entirely on hoods because a hat seems completely out of the question.)

When you buy a gift for a baby or young child, you have three choices:

A). Something the child would enjoy now, like a toy. (With no guarantees. Little people are both whimsical and guileless. They won’t play with something just because it’s a gift from a beloved gramma.)

B.) Something the child’s mom and dad would enjoy, like clothes or a deposit into a college fund.

C.) Something the child will enjoy in the future. (Most interesting and challenging, I think.)

While sportscars and ponies certainly might fall into this latter category, what I had in mind were mementos, keepsakes and artwork.

When I think back on my own childhood, the treasures I remember (and mostly saved) include figurines, stuffed animals and pictures.

Pumpkin has received many, many wonderful presents, including clothes, toys, stuffed animals and money for college. But I suspect that 35 years from now, when she’s a grownup, the things she’ll treasure most from her childhood will be the unique keepsakes she’s received.

She has a lovely and tiny ceramic box with a fairy perched on top that’s waiting to hold her baby teeth (most of which haven’t sprouted). She has a sweet figurine of a purple bear. She has a pink dinosaur coin bank.

When my husband and I buy gifts for his siblings’ children, we sometimes go for the easy choice. (See A. above.) It can be hard work to find a keepsake that’s unique or beautiful. But a Web site called Etsy makes the task a little easier. It’s an online marketplace exclusively for craft artists from all over the country (and internationally). You buy directly from the artist. Etsy just serves as a venue for buyers and sellers (similar to eBay, but without the auction). There are a wide array of choices for children’s gifts, including toys, clothes and artwork — all handmade. I wrote a story about Etsy in today’s paper that featured some local sellers and explains what it’s all about.

When it comes to giving gifts for children, which option do you choose: A, B or C?

And, for your child, what do you like to see when the wrapping paper comes off?

The leaves on the trees in my front yard are starting to turn red, the temperatures are dipping into the chilly 50s at night and the time for all things summer is past — including Pumpkin’s play clothes.

But, oh! It’s hard to pack away the sweet little outfits I picked out just this past spring. Plus, there are all the wonderful clothes Pumpkin received as gifts. It’s not because of the clothes themselves (cute though they might be) — but because I’ll be saying goodbye to the little baby who wore size 6-12 months.

It seems like last week, not a season ago, that I was shopping for summer clothes and anticipating all the fun she would have in them. She met her cousins for the first time on Easter in a yellow checked one-piece. She celebrated her first birthday party and went to her first movie in a pink plaid dress. She went swimming for the first time in a red bathing suit. And she cried to go home on her first vacation in fruit-patterned bike shorts.

These are the clothes she wore when she took her first steps and ate her first ice cream and gave me her first kiss. I simply can’t say goodbye to them, so I’ll wash them and gently fold them away and keep them in a handy place where I can take them out and look at them from time to time.

I know other people are more generous with their children’s outgrown clothes — I’ve been the recipient of some very nice outfits from friends and family. But I’m just too sentimental to let them go. I remember this bittersweet feeling from the spring when I put away her winter clothes, and how sad and happy I was to pack up those little pants in size 3-6 months.

My intention is to eventually sew the clothes into a quilt. I can imagine Pumpkin and I sitting and talking about each square of the quilt and the milestones and memories they represent.

Whatever happened to shoes?

I’m talking real shoes – the things that kids used to wear, with supportive soles, laces made of leather, or even rarer, buckles? Those things that came in boxes and were fitted to your feet— not held together by a plastic cord and picked from a shelf?

These days, it’s a rare child who doesn’t wear sneakers to school – unless they have to wear a uniform.

This past Sunday, as we got ready for church, my 7-year-old balked at the brown, leather Dickies semi-boots that I bought without him at Marshall’s. (I liked the price, guessed at his size, and they came without a box). While our church is pretty relaxed about attire – sneakers are perfectly OK—we prefer our boys to wear shoes to church, at least. We’ve don’t always win the battle. My husband tries his best to get the boys to wear shoes to school at least one day each week, but that’s not always a success either. I’ve pretty much given up.

At any rate, the Dickies boots (above) were cool, in my 42-year-old opinion. At least they’re not the Foot Adductor shoes that I had to endure as a kid. Those near-orthopedic shoes, offered by salesmen who did a fantastic job of convincing my parents that they were best for my feet, were so embarrassingly nerdy.

But when my husband laced the boots on my son’s feet, he complained that they hurt and “felt funny on the bottom.� That funny feeling is something he’s not used to: a sole.

Despite the initial complaints, our son wore the shoes to church. And for quite a few hours afterward. Later, he was jumping around in the shoes that “hurt.� Finally, he declared, “They’re not so bad.�

Still, I’m sure getting him to wear them to school next week will be a battle.

Today, as we went back-to-school shopping at a local department store, I noted that there were two rows of sneaker choices for boys, compared with just five shoe options. The sneakers were winning again.

Do sneakers battle shoes at your house? Which one is winning?

There’s a lot to be said about school uniforms. Ask most kids about them and you’ll probably get a look as if you offered them a plate of beet-and-prune casserole. But parents, we can go on and on about how uniforms can simplify weekday mornings, make everyone feel equal, and take students’ minds off whether to rock Rocawear or Mecca.

A friend is going through this right now, as her 14-year-old son prepares to enter a high school where he’ll be required to wear dress slacks, a polo shirt and shoes — REAL SHOES — every day.

The mom reminds him about how blessed he is to be able to go to such a school. He’s stuck on not being able to wear his sneakers and jeans and he thinks this school choice will ruin his life.

I can understand both sides. In the 1970s, I attended a freewheeling Montessori school in Mount Vernon that was long on learning, but short on convention. We sat on the floor, worked at our own pace and wore whatever we wanted.

Imagine my horror when I graduated to an all-girl Catholic high school in the Bronx, complete with uniforms! Sure, my parents gave me the same speech (a privilege to be there, great education, yadda yadda), but all I could see was a sea of stiff, ugly pastel dresses with rounded collars. Hardly a fashion statement for teenage girls.

It wasn’t until my senior year that I understood the value of uniforms. As seniors, we were allowed to wear our own clothes on Fridays. What a nightmare! Planning an entire outfit that kept within the school’s dress code and was also stylish wasn’t easy. And don’t even think about wearing the same outfit two Fridays in a row. It almost made me want to just ditch the whole idea and wear the uniform on Fridays. But you could NEVER do that, lest anyone think that you were lacking in cool clothes.

What are your thoughts about uniforms? And does anyone have advice for this mom?

Here’s proof that arbiters of women’s fashion don’t consider mommies: Embellished tops.

You’ve seen them in all the stores, from Target up to Nordstrom. Sequins, beads, pearls, glitter and shiny plastic baubles of all descriptions are embroidered or glued onto T-shirts, gauzy peasant tops and cotton skirts. They are lovely, flattering and hip.

So, when I updated my spring wardrobe this year, I bought several embellished garments. A few were embroidered with thread only, and these I still wear.

As for the others, well, their fate is less certain.

There’s a fuchsia knit top with beads that’s in my closet, where it’s likely to stay until Pumpkin reaches 3, the magic age when she supposedly will no longer want to put everything she encounters on the floor in her mouth. Of course, that will probably also coincide with the day these tops go out of style.

A gauzy orange shirt dotted with tiny shiny beads — the top that inspired this post — is in the garbage. That’s where I tossed it after I wore it on a recent weekend when we had friends over for dinner.

The next day, I started finding the little embellished pieces all over the carpet. Even after a hasty vacuuming, they kept turning up.

The death sentence for the shirt came after Pumpkin ate one of the beads. I saw it on the floor, and was about to pick it up when the phone rang. I turned my back for a minute and when I looked back down, the bead was gone. This was a few weeks ago, and she didn’t get sick, but the incident showed me that my participation in this particular trend is over.

What about you other moms? What changes in your wardrobe did you have to make once kids entered the picture?