Clothing, right on schedule.

So yesterday I decided that Jolyon outgrew two of his sleepers - the Just One Year by Carters, sold at Target. They seem to run smaller than the rest of his clothing, especially in the sleeves.

The adorable boutique preemie outfit we got at our shower that we brought him home in (which is in no way actually intended for preemies, but rather an average-sized newborn at birth) also no longer fits as of yesterday.

This is all very much on schedule - we were told to expect that newborn sizes might fit for the first month or so.

He's definitely outgrowing these in height, while there's still tons of room in width. Particularly, the arms were very short, and the torsos were taut. We don't have a pediatrician appointment to get official weights or heights for a while, but a few days ago according to our bathroom scale Jolyon was around 8.6 lbs (accurate to the nearest .2 lbs, and on the third iteration we got 8.8 as well), which would make him 8 lbs and 10-13 oz... and according to our tape measure, 22.25 inches.

The Carter sleepers will still fit for a few moments longer, and the Circo sleepers still have enough length and enough sleeve room to grow a bit more. I guess the lesson here is that it's good to have a variety of brands, because the next size up in the "Just One Year" sleepers is still way too big.

In terms of clothing, I have a couple of points for posteriority. The first being, that sleepers are excellent. By sleepers I mean the footie pajamas that snap up each leg, that I would totally want to wear if they came in my size. I think we had like 9 or so sleepers in circulation (+1 hand me down, -1 snap defect, -0.5 we found out we hate zippers). I think that was the right number without having to do laundry ALL the time. There are times when a sleeper will last over a day, but there are also times when a sleeper will last an hour... the chief offender here not actually being our baby, but Stephanie's inadvertant lactation onto the parts of the baby that are not directly involved in eating. Plus, poop and pee and the occasional spitup, too.

We have some really adorable, handed down outfits, and those are really great. I'm admittedly a clotheshorse, so I do think it's great to have proper outfits for outings... but realistically, you need ONE or maybe two cute outfits for going out, and that's already for the very fashion-conscious mom who thinks that a onesie is not for wearing out of the house. But really, 95-99% of the time, what you want to put on your baby for comfort and ease of changing, is a sleeper. You can just unsnap the bottom portion of the sleeper, expose the flailing legs, shove the unsnapped portion up behind the waist, change the diaper, then resnap, without completely unclothing your baby... which is good if one's baby hates to be undressed.

We have been using some onesies, and a short-legged short-sleeved romper, too, during the super-hot days. I'm sure we'll be using more of them in the fall when we will layer one underneath a sleeper. So having a handful of onesies is also good.

Things I have not found to be useful include socks, because see above point about the sleepers, which have feet to spare you the bother, and if it's too hot for a footed sleeper, it also seems too hot for socks.

The other thing that I have found to be absolutely annoying right now are t-shirts, which just ride up a lot whenever we pick up or transfer Jolyon. I should clarify that Jolyon really doesn't mind having his head shoved into openings; I know some babies hate that, and I suspect that's where the t-shirts with the kimono-front really hit their stride. For us, though, the onesies just work better.

The hand-mitts (on sleepers or separately) are a total waste of time, though. We man up and trim Jolyon's nails when they get talon-like, because he really likes having his hands free to suck on them or to grab at things. Biting them off also works fairly well, which I mention for anyone who has not been inured to the hazards of trimming infant nails by many years of trimming claws on black, long-haired cats with toe-tufts of hair obfuscating matters further. Compared to Priscilla and the late Alistair, trimming Jolyon's nails is a snap.