Sweater weather is officially upon us. Not the “I’ll-just-wear-this-sweater-to-be-fashionable,” or the “I-know-I’ll-be-hot-but-I’ve-so-missed-my-sweaters” weather, but honest to goodness “I-need-a-sweater-to-be-warm-enough” weather. Our poor friends in the northeast with snow on the ground know exactly what I’m talking about! I’ll be frank, I love my sweaters at this time of year – come April when we are still wearing them, it’s a different story.
Unfortunately, the cooler weather presents a different challenge for babies with adorable cloth-diapered tushies. Six months ago, I was downright gleeful to put my baby in dresses with no diaper cover. I would challenge myself to see how many different cloth diapers I could coordinate with each dress (a surprising yellow under a blue dress or peek-a-boo pink with a white frock). Nowadays, the dresses require tights or leggings underneath and the pants need to be big enough to stretch over the cloth diaper.
All summer I knew this day – the day I’d have to worry about pants fitting my girl again –was coming. I tried to put it out of my mind as long as the weather stayed mild. I have to say, with a girl, it’s probably a little easier to find bottoms to fit – stretchy leggings and tights fit nicely and accentuate her fluffy bum. I really do feel for the moms of cloth diapered boys out there because even with a girl, I’ve had to go back to the drawing board, the hand-me-down bin, the church rummage sale and the mall to make sure she has enough pants that fit to get through the first few months of winter.
Even though she is a petite 10-month-old that fits in 12-month clothes on top, I’ve run into a conundrum when fitting her pants. Most stores go from 12-month sizes directly to an 18-month or worse, an 18-24 month size. Why isn’t there a size for 15-months? Twelve-months are a little snug in the bum (though some brands do still work), but 18-month is ridiculously long in the legs and even a little too big in the rear.
What’s a fashion-conscious mom to do? “Wait until she’s potty-trained” says my sensible self. But my optimist “other side” thinks there is still a brand of pants out there that fits a larger bum…and that side continues the quest. Until I find something that works, we’ve been doing dresses and skirts and wearing holes in one knee of leggings and tights (she’s a mighty fast one-legged crawler).
I know we’ve had this discussion on the discussion boards and Facebook in the past, but what do you mamas do to clothe your tots in the cooler weather that fits over their cloth-diapered tush?
Sarah is a mom of two and blogs about her adventures in motherhood, cloth diapering and everything in between. Catch her “Cloth Diapering Unwrapped” series on the FuzziBunz blog every Tuesday.
