Knock Your Socks Off

Most baby socks suck. They don't stay up. They don't stay on. They get sucked into the vortex of the washing machine and the netherworld behind the dresser. Even the cheapest socks cost far too much for something the size of a large avacado. The sock problem started at about 2 1/2 months when Grayson figured out that, by rubbing his feet together, he could push his socks off one foot and then the other, and then bang his bare heels against the carseat and screech gleefully. The poor child even had blisters and SCABS from a $30 pair of Robeez. He would just tug and rub until he mastered the art of pullin them off in a matter of seconds. Then winter came, for the most part I dressed him in footed pj's all day. This worked until spring came.....and now, I got nothing! Of all the socks we have, from pairs from Baby Gap to specials scooped up from those $1 bins at Target, the only ones that stay on - or used to stay on - where the hand-me-down-fuzzy-duck-stained ones. Only the duck socks. The alligator socks are supposedly the same size but fall off just as often as the cheap clearance socks.


Having bare feet doesn't seem to bother him, though his feet always feel icy cold to me. (Having sharp toenails doesn't bother him, either, though progress has been made on the toenail front and I succesfully clipped two nails last night. Woo hoo!) Since he doesn't care, I'm not going to spend too much time yanking his socks back on his feet while he's in the house. He's moving around more and standing already, bare feet will be safer on our kitchen hardwood floors. Leaving the house is another matter - it's not yet bare feet weather here in in Texas. Wait. I'm sorry, backup....It's friggin' fraggin' TEXAS!! The child DOES NOT need his feet covered. Why do I feel the urge to justify this to my "mommy-to-be friends"? I just have a weird, random sense that a sock-less child in public (unless its the height of summer) would brand me as an unfit mother who can't even clothe her own child and keep his feet protected from germs and ghastly glass shard-inflicted cuts and might result in strangers coming up to me and saying, "Did you know your child's feet are BARE and its SIXTY-TWO degrees outside?" I know it's a little paranoid, but I just thought I'd explain why I want Grayson to have his feet covered in public. Maybe we should just pack up and move to Austin, where flip flops are worn year round. I guess all those "No shirt, no shoes, no service" signs drilled in to my brain that it's proper to have one's feet covered, even if those feet belong to a eight month old baby who won't be requesting service of any kind for awhile.


The pairs of tiny shoes we received before Gray's birth looked so friggin' cute at 3 months even though they were still all floppy around the toes. But I see babies with socks (and no shoes) that stay up everyday, so I can't help but wonder if there's some sort of a sock trick we didn't learn. Do all those kids have rubber bands strapped around their ankles, cutting off their circulation but keeping their toes covered? Are they all wearing a secret brand of socks known only to a super-select group of mamas? Can anyone let me in on the baby sock secret?