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When Baby J and I got back from Oregon two months ago, I told Freckles excitedly that we'd gotten all these new baby clothes from "some random Swedish children's discount store."

Yeah, about that.

Leave it to me to be so clueless that I missed the most expensive children's clothing store while I was literally standing there breathing its air.

I discovered last week that Hanna Andersson, the store in question, is, like, haute couture for babies and toddlers and the rich families who love them. I discovered this when I brought my friend Aurora a catalog (one of the two identical ones we'd recently discovered in the mail), and everyone else looked through it, remarking on how they loved their clothes but thought they were way too expensive.

Wait a minute, I thought, wasn't this supposed to be some kind of discount store?

The store information in Oregon describes a Scandinavian woman who moved to the US in the 80s, and quickly discovered that she couldn't find any soft, comfy, high quality clothes for her child. So she started to make her own, and quickly developed a following.

That's cute, I thought, wondering out loud to my mother (who introduced me to the store) whether the kindly lady with the accent at the desk was actually Hanna Andersson herself.

Turns out that's not bloody likely.

It also turns out that the store in Oregon where we went is the Hanna Andersson OUTLET. Which likely explains why Baby J's $50 bomber jacket was marked down to $20. Yeah. Makes more sense now, huh?

But now I'm totally hooked. The clothes ARE completely cute (did you not process that Baby J has his own little BOMBER JACKET???). And at the outlet, they cost pretty much the same as clothes we could get at Target, but they're higher quality and way cuter. If we got really into it, we could all buy matching family long johns. Everyone at Starbucks who looked at the catalog thought that was ridiculous, but I secretly totally want matching family long johns for Christmas morning.

Anyway, I guess the point of all of this is that I don't think my mother knew how famous and upscale they were when she first started shopping there, either. I don't know if she knows it now. (Well, I guess if she reads this, she will.) I think she was just drawn to them by some innate sense of good taste that I wish was genetic.

I guess I can't complain, though. Thanks to her, I have spent most of my life being able to fake looking well put together with pretty much minimal effort. Happily, now my son can benefit from her positive fashion influence while Freckles and I bum around in our sweatshirts and running shorts drinking organic ginger beer.

I miss my mom.