Babeland!

I had planned to simply hold Henry, but now I wondered if I should try a more theatrical approach. He enjoyed being dangled by his arms -- maybe we could do that. But we hadn't practiced, and there was the very real concern that he might spit up on himself. I decided to play it safe.

Then came the announcement: "Here's Henry Bartlett!"

"Showtime," I whispered in his ear.

The judges looked at Henry and made marks on their score cards. One of the judges, I noticed, shielded her card with her hand so I couldn't see what she was writing. Like maybe I would confront her about it later in the parking lot.

It was all over in a few seconds, and we returned to our seats. While we waited for the winner to be announced, I chatted with a mother and her 20-month-old son. She acknowledged that she hadn't told her husband she was entering their boy in a beauty contest. "He wouldn't approve," she said. "He thinks we're shopping."

Henry made a clean sweep. He won the title of "Baby King" and all the side competitions. We walked away from our first foray into pageantry with a crown, two trophies, five medals and a sash.

For a moment, I felt bad for Blue-Sweatered Baby. But that moment passed.

AFTERWARD, I CHATTED WITH SUNBURST ORGANIZER PAT WELCH. Pat lives in Upstate New York but is in charge of Sunburst for Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. She runs all the preliminary and state pageants, which means setting up chairs, hiring judges, ordering trophies and handling emcee duties. Her adult son, Lauren, staffs the registration table and deals with difficult parents. They spend nearly every weekend from September to March on the road.

Pat is well aware that some people dislike children's beauty pageants. She has been confronted by strangers who tell her what she does is wrong and harmful to the children's psyches. They tell her she should be ashamed of herself. Others accuse her of being a con artist, of preying on proud, gullible parents.

They just don't get it, Pat tells me. "People like to say this is a money game, that you're ripping them off," she says. "But they forget there's insurance to pay, mall fees, franchise fees -- it goes on and on." For a statewide event, she might spend $15,000 on trophies alone. Although, as Pat acknowledges, it's not as if she's ever come out in the red.

Pat tells me, more than once, that the purpose of pageants is for kids to have fun, not to get modeling contracts or commercial gigs. Still, the message is undermined by Sunburst's marketing. The entry form says "Be Discovered!" not "Have Fun!"

But Pat insists that it's the parents who give pageants a bad name. The worst of them yell at their kids and argue with the judges. One parent, Pat remembers, was asked to leave an event after viciously upbraiding her child in front of several shocked onlookers. The most troublesome of all, according to Pat, are people like me, the parents of babies: "Everybody thinks their baby is the prettiest baby in the world."