Is this smart or P2ndB and silly? Crawling and dresses.

[AKMD]

DD is due in October. DS is 2 and I remember being so glad that he was a boy at the crawling stage because the clothes were so much more practical than the cutsie dresses hampering the baby girls of the same age. It isn't easy to crawl in a skirt! So, on finding out that we are having a girl I decided to only put DD in a dress for formal events (church, weddings, nice parties etc.) between 3 months and walking and the rest of the time have her in trousers, romper suits and other things that won't get in the way. DH is a bit but is humouring me for now.

I'm starting to have doubts. Am I right or just being a bit silly?

do you think its the fact that you are saying what you are going to do is actully making DH go hmmmmmm. if you hadn't said anything but still did what you had planned i would guess he probably wouldn't really have noticed

Mine sometimes wore dresses when they were non walking babies and when they were properly walking toddlers.

thats also true - DP really finds it hard to dress DD. he just doesn't understand the difference between tights and leggings, or get the idea of a long or a short sleeve vest depending on what else she'll be wearing. I don;t even try to get colours matched!

That's probably true Morph, although we do have very different ideas on clothes. He has, for instance, gone out and bought 2yo DS two baseball caps, which are absolutely useless for actual sun protection. I've told DS that those hats are for indoors :o He is also into brands and Disney characters, which I think are yuck. We're going to buy something 'girly' tomorrow so it will be interesting to see what we come back with!

on the up side at least he's interested, my dp takes no interest in ds's clothes i could dress him in a plastic bag and he wouldn't notice

My logical side is saying trousers and romper suits all the way for my DD. However, I'm developing an unhealthy obsession with dresses with matching pants. I'm hoping for lots of warm days prior to her crawling so she can wear them as they're all light, summery cotton dresses and would look daft with tights. At this rate she'll be lucky to wear each one once. Have also managed to find a couple of babyvests with a short skirt on it which I love as is practical, won't ride up and still pretty. Still can't quite believe I'm the type of mother to love matching dresses and pants but there you go.

I think babies in dresses look weird. Like Winston Churchill in drag.

fhdl yes you sound like me! I have a 6 month DD and 2.8 DS. I swore I'd not get sucked into the whole clothes for girls thing but she looks so cute.

She also has lots of dark brown curly hair so doesn't look like winston Churchill [girl]

How many dresses have you seen Winston Churchill in Rilla?!!! I'm with you tho. Dresses just swamp babies and bunch up so they end up looking like a sack of spuds! Dresses are best for toddlers.

I was adamant that my DD would not be in baby pink, cream and pastel shades and went out and bought lots of lovely primary coloured clothes, she does look nice in pink so I've allowed some to creep in her wardrobe. Still vetoed any Disney, Winnie the pooh crap - hate it, hate it, hate it! Same with her bedroom. All White with bright splashes of colour and no bunny wabbits or forever friends crap on sight!

I think it's weird to have a specific clothing policy for a baby.

My DDs wore dresses as babies, but never anything that hampered their movement. There are plenty that don't.

You are right that you will probably find little leggings best at that stage, and she'll end up wearing them a lot.

"My youngest stayed in babygros until about a week shy of her first birthday."

:)

I love a nice onesie on a baby. Adult-style clothes look a but silly until they are on their feet.

Winston Churchill almost certainly wore dresses when he was a baby.

That's how they rolled in those days :o

puddlejumper H&M are great for bright coloured boys clothes

YY on the pink and the dresses. DD did have some dresses early on but really only for occasions. It was mostly babygros until she went to nursery at 9 months, and then mostly leggings. There were some short dresses she wore as tops over the leggings. She does get assumed to be a boy sometimes but her hair is quite short, and also I think people assume boy-ness in the absence of any massive hint like a bright pink frilly dress: she's been out in a dress or a girly-ish top before now and people have still assumed she's a boy. Oh well who cares!

Frilly knickers n'all?!!!

Ps when she was starting to walk there was a suggestion from someone (nursery?) that putting her in a dress would encourage walking cos it would make crawling more of a nuisance... So there's that to consider too!

Sounds fine- she doesn't care what she wears so it makes sense to be practical.

Completely with you there. I dislike colour coding of babies and agree that trousers are much more practical.

Before DC came along I was certain that I wouldn't want to dress him/her any differently based on gender, and resolved to buy only gender-neutral clothing. He turned out to be a boy and I found it just as difficult to avoid blue stuff with cars on it as you would find avoiding pink stuff with flowers. However, I did my best to put together enough clothing that I rarely felt I was dressing him in an outfit that I wouldn't put a girl in, and several pairs of his trousers, while mainly denim or beige, have subtle pink stitching somewhere or other (i.e. "hey these are trousers a girl is allowed to wear")

My sisters both seem not to agree with this at all though - all the carefully chosen gender neutral clothes that I passed on to them when their own firstborns came along (both girls) have been rejected, and my nieces seem to spend most of their time in pretty pretty pink frills.

It is a bit of a policy isn't it? Maybe I should type it out, frame it and hang it on her bedroom wall.

• No clothes that will restrict normal development.
• No dressing up as a pink marshmallow with legs.
• No headbands with flowers bigger than the baby's head.

I do like the very simple headbands that are just strips of material with a flat bow, but only when the baby/toddler actually has hair. Surely they are safer than hairclips?

Yep - another bug bear of mine, babies with hairbands when they have no hair. Er....why exactly? Because it makes them look cute. Er...no!

Jeans-style trousers are not more practical if you have a tall/long and skinny baby - they just come down as they crawl around.

Leggings are great, as are tights under a short dress.

I put my girls in blue clothes with cars on.

I don't accept that either blue or cars are just for boys.

They were mistaken for boys no more frequently than when wearing dresses :o

Hairbands on bald babies look hilarious. They just draw attention to the lack of hair.