Places I actually buy stuff from:

Clothes

Carter's Very gendered, but they almost always have one or two sweet boys lines that I actually think are cute, too. Loved the hungry caterpillar clothes; loved a boys line with dragons and knights on it. Again, you will have to pass up lots of terrible things. Some Carter's lines are actually not as well tailored as Children's Place, which is odd since they're more expensive. But they are more likely to have non-trendy, non-violent boys clothes. You have to buy these at other stores or at outlets. Carters makes different lines for different stores, so Carters at Target and Carters at Macy's are not the same clothes!

Children's Place Buy on the web or when you are in a good mood. Their clothes can be horribly trendy, and the awful ones are always out front in the stores. Paul is very happy with the clothes that arrive in boxes, but finds entering the store horrible torture.  As usual, you are more likely to find the plain stuff marked "boy", but they are sensible enough so that unisex clothes (like sweat pants) are treated as such and you do not have to look under "boy" to find blue and "girl" to find fuchsia -- both genders show all the colors. Sale clothes are cheap and often there are web codes available for even cheaper, so I just bought T-shirts for $2.00 a piece. Have patience; the website is buggy.

CWD Kids Again, it's useful to wait for sales, particularly if you're eccentric. But they carry several good lines. Dramatic animals, dresses covered in dogs...

Hanna Andersson Costs a mint, and is in European sizes. They have the best fleece baby coats ever. Oh, the cuteness of the hoods! Most seasons their baby clothes are unisex. The sales are good, and the clothes wear well and are built to last -- Opal is just over 100 cm at the moment, and 110s are large but often possible while her old size 80 (!!) dresses are wearable as shirts. And she is head-over-heels in love with them. She would wear a Daydress/Playdress outfit every day if only I would let her, even though they have no animals on them.

Hedgehog Good dresses in cottons with a nice variety of girly and not-so-girly prints. Also nice boy's clothes although some of them have an annoying tag on the front.

Land's End Can be lovely, but very inconsistent; some seasons have almost no baby clothes. Some seasons have lots of nice, plain girl dresses, and in others the girl dresses are all horrific. Plain play clothes are almost always shown only as boy clothes. You can also get some of their stuff at some Sears stores.

Kidsurplus A random selection of clothes other people didn't buy. A good deal if you have odd taste, as we do. Our very favorite bought dress (the blue sharks) and its matching hat came from here, but many times I troll effortfully through all the clothes and find nothing. At least I don't have to drive anywhere to do it, and when I find things I like they're cheap.

Toys and Stuff

Kidsurplus again Some of this isn't genuinely surplus (it's consistently available). But the prices are good as is the selection. Check out the Playmobil.

The Playstore The bricks and mortar store is in Palo Alto, and I love it. Wooden and fabric stuff; my father bought Opal a wooden train just like he had as a kid. And a wooden rainbow, great for all kids but especially good for any rainbow-flag families of your acquaintance.

For Small Hands I have to admit, I haven't ordered from them, but I adore their stuff, particularly the things for activities of daily living. It's surprisingly hard to find a proper flour sifter these days.

Fat Brain Toys If Kidsurplus has it, the price will be better there. But if you want cool building toys, or you just want a good selection that won't make you feel bad about the entire toy industry, or you're really hoping to use the kid's toys as an excuse to order something for you, Fat Brain is the way to go.

Discount School Supply It's school oriented, so sometimes things come in larger amounts than you might want. But they're sturdy, they're educational, the discounts are good, and they ship at light speed. In fact, if you live near a store, don't bother with next day shipping. Because we normally get our orders the next day with standard shipping...

Ikea The selection is basic, and our local store is often out of things randomly. But Opal adores several of their toys, including the wooden cars (she gnaws on the wheels), the bead maze, the stacking cups (these are better than most as they stack more ways), and a stuffed spider. She has a Brum bear in yellow, which for months she thought was hysterical; one look at it and she giggled. I have no clue why.

Oriental Trading Company They have crafts and toys cheap. Basically, this is because they're, well, cheap, but the amusement value is sometimes high anyway. Avoid the slide whistles (no seal), and don't expect any of the musical instruments to be in tune, but the maracas are big fun.

American Science and Surplus This is genuine surplus, and how. If they have the same thing as Kidsurplus (it's rare, but it happens) it will be half the price or less. You will either find it addictive or puzzling; it is not a straightforward toy shopping experience. But if you want some airplane toys (small, cheap, disposable) they're a better deal than any place else for a wide variety of fun things. Be sure to consider the non-toy options; we've gotten a lot of mileage out of a half-dozen compact-style mirrors, for instance. Oh, and for sheer adult puzzlement, few things beat the musk animal assortments; yes, other children have little plastic chickens, but who else has a ratel? Or three kinds of ferret?

Book Closeouts Finding things can be a challenge, but they have great prices on interesting stuff. Try searching by author if you want specific things or going to the "More..." button to get all the genres. I haven't found any way to get all children's book by type, which is a pity, because the assignment to fiction/non-fiction can be pretty random (since when is Barbie non-fiction?) for things like sticker books.