Baby Legs

I heard about Baby Legs, the funky baby leg-warmers that come in a million different colors and patterns, back when I was still pregnant and thought they sounded like a great idea. They promised to keep baby's legs warm, make diaper changes easier and protect little knees once baby starts crawling. Plus they are super-cute. I fully intended to pick up a pair for Baby M but shopping for baby leg-warmers moved to the bottom of priority list once Baby M was born.

So I was excited to see that Mechie, a new children's boutique on Venice Blvd that happens to be on our afternoon walking route, carried a good selection of Baby Legs. I picked up a cool striped pair for Baby M.

A few days later I got a chance to try them out and pulled the Baby Legs on along with a red onesie. Most of the photos I'd seen show the leg warmers going up pretty high on the baby's thigh with just a thin strip of skin showing between the sock and the diaper. Well, I could barely get the leg warmers up over Baby M's knees. Now Baby M is a big boy. He measures consistently above the 90th percentile in both height and weight and has been called "sturdy", "hefty" and "solid." Now it is obvious that we should also call him "thunder thighs".

Even though they didn't look the way I had expected I was not ready to give up on the Baby Legs yet. Besides, they were still cute in a weird, Flashdance kind of way. I carried Baby M out to the living room where my husband and his friends were watching a basketball game. They took one look at Baby M and asked "So is he going to Jazzercise?" My husband, appalled, said that Baby M looked like Richard Simmons and demanded that I remove the leg warmers and put him in some proper pants. So the Baby Legs are back in the drawer for now, but I'm not giving up on them. Once Baby M starts moving those thighs might thin out and if not, maybe we'll find a Mommy & Me Jazzercise class. There's got to be one out there somewhere.

Shhh... He's Not Sleeping

So just about every new parent has a story that starts, "I was so sleep deprived I...[fill in the blank] ." Maybe Mom put the diaper on over the onesie or Dad drove to work in a pressed shirt and pajama bottoms. This week I made spaghetti for dinner and instead of opening up a jar of spaghetti sauce I cooked up a nice batch of spaghetti and meatballs with Garlic Lover's Salsa. What's even more telling is that my husband and I diligently ate this concoction without noticing anything was amiss until I threw the jar into the recycling bin after dinner.

Baby M is nearly 6 months old now and not anywhere close to sleeping through the night. He is still up 2 or 3 times a night. We have had the occasional night with only one waking-- to be precise we've had exactly 3 of them. I recall those nights fondly and wish for their quick return. As Oz pointed out her blog Knocked Up, people always want to know if your baby is sleeping through the night yet and judge your baby (or you) based on the answer. The older Baby M gets, the more inadequate I feel when I have to admit that, no, he is not sleeping through the night. And aside from feeling inadequate I am also feeling dead tired. So I am going to stop telling people exactly how often Baby M wakes up and stop explaining all of the strategies we've tried to get him to sleep longer. I am going to follow Oz's lead, answer that he sleeps like a baby and leave it at that.

I'm Disgusting

Since becoming a parent I have done many things that I would have found repellent in my former life. I've smelled Baby M's bottom to see if he needed a diaper change and stuck my finger in his diaper if the smell test was inconclusive. I've picked buggers out of his nose. I've spent days in a spit-up covered sweatshirt with unwashed hair. I'm regularly soaked with drool, but today I reached a new low.

Baby M & I went to the Bridge theater at the Howard Hughes Center for the Mommy & Me screening of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (good movie, but not as much fun as the Mommy & Me screenings at the Grove). About halfway through the movie I took out a Lara Bar to snack on. Since I was holding the Lara Bar it was by default Baby M's favorite new toy and a brief struggle ensued. Then he got distracted by my water bottle and I was able to unwrap and take 2 bites of the bar before he changed focus and whacked it out of my hand onto the floor. I'm not sure if you are familiar with Lara Bars, but they are made out of nuts and fruit and have a slightly sticky consistency. Even if I had picked it up within the constraints of the 5 second rule, which I definitely did not, it's probably not the sort of thing you want to eat off the floor of a movie theater. But, I was really hungry. Since I've been breastfeeding I am hungrier than I ever was when I was pregnant. I reasoned that it was the first screening of the day and the floor was probably cleaned the night before, and really how dirty could it be? So I picked up the Lara Bar and finished it. Unfortunately, while I was eating it I realized exactly how dirty the floor could be.