Babeland!

"Everything except for hair," I replied. He had more by now, but there still wasn't enough to notice.

"That'll be $300 even."

This was, by the way, in addition to the $120 we had already mailed in. And on top of the $100 we had spent at the mall pageant. And there's the nearly $200 we spent on Henry's new outfits. For those scoring at home, that's about $720.

I counted out the 20s. Sunburst is an all-cash, no-receipt business. Three-hundred dollars, in my humble world, is not an insignificant sum. Handing it over genuinely hurt. But once you're standing there with all the other parents, you don't want to cheap out.

The pageant took place in the first-floor "ballroom," a big, generic meeting space with a dark red, ornately patterned carpet, the kind that looks the same no matter what you spill on it. At the front of the room was a long, narrow, knee-high stage with a lectern at one end. There were banks of bright lights and an expensive-looking video camera. Behind the stage hung a multicolored Sunburst banner, and, below that, hundreds of shiny, gold-colored trophies were lined up in neat rows on folding tables.

During orientation, we learned that no photography would be permitted in the ballroom. The reason given was that cameras interfere with the professional photographer's equipment. A suspicious parent might think that the ban had to do with charging $15 a pop for the official shots. Regardless, plenty of parents flouted this rule, to the extreme annoyance of the organizers.

Pat asked us all to be polite, to be on time and to go easy on the makeup. Despite this last bit of advice, I saw 5-year-old girls wearing lipstick and eye shadow. I watched a mother use what looked like a white marker to give her daughter a last-minute French manicure. Other girls seemed to have been dipped in sunless tanner. The effect on them was eerily doll-like.

THE FIRST EVENT WAS THE MODEL SEARCH. Minutes before we were scheduled to go onstage, I felt, for the first time, kind of nervous. Nothing serious, just low-grade apprehension. Which was silly. All I had to do was say Henry's name and age into the microphone. Oh, and his height.

Wait. How tall was he?

"Twenty-seven inches," Kellie said.

"You just know that off the top of your head? Are you sure?"

She gave me a Look.

When it was our turn, I climbed onto the stage, walked to the taped X and pivoted to face the judges. I then squatted down so Henry's feet could rest on the stage. He stood, staring blankly at the judges, no doubt dazed by the lights. The judges stared back, just as blankly. When the staring contest ended, we exited stage left and returned to our seats.

"How did we do?" I asked Kellie, anxious for reassurance.

"You did great."

"Really? I worried he didn't look happy enough."

"No, you did fine."

"Fine?"

"I said great."

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

I wasn't. Even though we would spend the whole weekend here, the only time that mattered were those few seconds onstage. That would separate the kings and queens from the commoners. If you had asked me, I would have told you I didn't care how it ended. But I'm not sure that would have been the truth.

I HAD THOUGHT, GOING INTO THE SWIMSUIT COMPETITION, that Henry's hat would set him apart. I was wrong. There were babies with hats and sunglasses and flip-flops. One little boy carried a miniature surfboard. Another donned a set of child-size scuba gear. Pat had us all parade in front of the audience while techno music blared over the fuzzy hotel speakers. When the musical prancing concluded, I tried to start a conversation with the father standing next to me.

"How did you get dragged into this?"

"I just do what I'm told," he said.

A word about dads and pageants: While the moms definitely outnumber the dads, there were more men at the contest than I would have thought. The half-dozen or so I talked to all gave me some version of "My wife made me do it." One guy, referring to his wife, told me that pageants were "her hobby" and that he was just along for the ride. "She has him until he's 5," the dad said. "Then he's mine." He listed some of the manly activities his son would later be encouraged to pursue, including karate and competitive paintball. "No more beauty stuff," he said. He paused. "Unless some modeling agency really wants him. But they have to call us."

THE NEXT MORNING, WE BEGAN AT 8 WITH THE INTERVIEW. When I saw "interview" on the schedule, I wasn't sure what to expect. Would they ask Henry questions? Would they ask me questions? Would they expect me to answer as if I were Henry?

Actually none of the above. Pre-verbal children don't have to submit to an interrogation. But they do, for some reason, have to show up. Older children answer simple questions about their favorite classes or TV shows. During the interview, all children (including the babies) are required to wear the official, brightly colored Sunburst T-shirt featuring the words "Model Search" against a pink-and-purple background.

Between events, I watched parents coaching their children in the hallway. "Hand to cheek! Hand to cheek!" one mother reminded her daughter. The girl, who appeared to be about 7 and was dressed in a sparkly green dress, put her hand to her cheek as instructed, tilted her head and flashed a saccharine smile. My favorite was a pudgy-cheeked 4-year-old who tilted her head, put her hand on her hip, blew a kiss and spun around. That takes practice.

WHY?

That was the question I kept coming back to. Why had we become so invested? Why were we and all these other parents willing to spend all this money and put our kids through this craziness? What was the point?

I asked the mother of a 3-year-old boy why she entered him. "The savings bond," she told me. "For college." The most you can hope to win from Sunburst at the state level is a $1,000 U.S. Savings Bond, which can be purchased for $500. We spent that in entry fees alone. While you can win more at national competitions (Sunburst's top prize is a $10,000 savings bond), if you're in it for the money, you might want to recheck your math.

Another mom was more straightforward. For her, it was about fame and money. Her 8-year-old daughter already had an agent. This agent, the mother informed me, had another client who stars in Welch's grape juice commercials.

"Do you know how much they paid her?" she whispered.

"No," I whispered back. "How much?"

"Seventy-five thousand."

"Really?"

She nodded.

The story seemed bogus to me; it was also revealing. Other parents told me that "it seemed like it would be fun" and, "I thought we'd try it" and, "Her cousin does pageants, so we figured, why not?"

None of these answers seemed quite right. I'm not saying they were lies, exactly. They just weren't the truth.

NEXT CAME DAY-CARE WEAR. The boys were dressed in sweaters and jackets, button-down shirts and shiny leather shoes. One 2-year-old wore a golfing get-up, as if he might be hitting the links later. By this point, we had the stage drill down. I was no longer nervous. Henry, ever adaptable, seemed to be used to the routine, too. We were old pros.

The girls took the stage to the ABBA song "Dancing Queen," with its chorus about "having the time of your life." The boys followed, to another song. "You know, this is kind of fun," Kellie said at one point after taking Henry for a spin onstage. I agreed. It was fun.

When Henry wasn't competing, I would place mental bets on which children would suffer an onstage meltdown. The look on the face of a parent who realizes that an ill-timed tantrum has torpedoed any shot at the crown is both pitiful and (I'm sorry) hilarious. One little girl, during her moment in the spotlight, crammed an index finger up her nose. Her mother quickly pulled it out. It went right back in. Another kid literally fell on his face. His mother, in a single, swift motion, grabbed the boy by one arm and carried him, dangling, off the stage and out of the ballroom.

When roaming around the hotel, I always wore my pageant button and number, identifying me as the parent of a contestant. I felt less conspicuous that way. Without the button, I was just some guy hanging out at a children's beauty contest. And no one wants to be that guy.

Minutes before the formalwear competition, we noticed a red mark on Henry's left cheek. It was nothing serious; he had probably slept on his hand or bonked himself with a toy. In an hour, it would be gone. But, for the moment, it was clearly visible and, given Sunburst's emphasis on facial beauty, a possible handicap.

"There's nothing we can do about it now," Kellie said.

"Maybe I can turn him to one side or something."

"I don't know. It's pretty obvious."

It was also obvious that we both cared about the outcome. We were pageant parents, whether we liked it or not.

THE AWARDS WERE HANDED OUT SUNDAY MORNING. Unlike the previous events, the crowning ceremony required a ticket (in the form of a Sunburst button). We had received one button as part of our welcome packet but had to spend 10 bucks on another button so that both Kellie and I could attend. After shelling out a fortune in fees, spending more just to see if Henry had won was, to put it mildly, irksome.

The ceremony was even more packed than the formalwear competition. It was standing room only, with onlookers spilling into the hallways. Pat tried desperately, and with limited success, to quiet down the raucous crowd. Once underway, the ceremony went by so quickly that it was hard to keep track of what happened. Henry won in his age and gender group for best photo collage and best photo portfolio, but somehow managed not to win most photogenic. He didn't even place in the swimsuit competition (an outrage!), and I think he was runner-up in model search and day-care wear, but I wouldn't swear to it. Overall in his or her group, he came in fourth. Pat later told me that each judge devises his or her own criteria -- beauty, the beholder's eye and so forth. I was disappointed. When I saw the father of the winning boy hoist his son into the air and let out a triumphant "Whoop!" I felt only envy.

And that, I think, may be the answer to the "why" question. Pat was right: Every parent does believe his or her baby is the most beautiful in the world. And we want that belief to be validated. We want it to be true. The pageant may be shallow and silly, but the feeling is genuine. We want to whoop.

A couple of weeks after the pageant, I called Pat. She was on her way to Florida to assist in another beauty contest. She told me that one of the judges was "completely in love with Henry" and thought that, when he's a little older, he'd have a shot at winning it all.

If she was trying to make me feel better, it worked. And it got me thinking: By the time the international finals rolled around, Henry would be nearly a year old. He would have more personality by then and probably more hair. Perhaps even a tooth or two. Even though he hadn't won state, we could still compete in internationals, provided we coughed up the entry fees. What was a few hundred more dollars anyway?

As I was mulling this over, Henry was in my lap, happily chewing on my cellphone.

"What do you think, little dude?" I asked. "Should we go for it?"

Henry stopped what he was doing and looked at me.

"Buh," he said.

While I can't be sure, I'm taking that as a no.

Tom Bartlett, a writer who lives in Mount Rainier, last wrote for the Magazine about raw milk. He can be reached at www.minortweaks.com.