Tricks to putting on baby's pants
a song about pants
Today I didn’t want to wear pants. It’s a hard day after a long string of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days (as our friend Alexander would say). I spent the morning in urgent care with my son, once again, after I thought we had closed the page on that bout of sickness. Instead of writing something new for today, I followed the old advice to nap while the baby naps.
I hope you’ll enjoy this essay about pants that I found buried in my laptop from 8 months ago when one of my top Google searches was, “How do I get my son to wear pants?” (I couldn’t wait to move past that stage, and now, what I’d give for the simpler days of pants woes.)
I’m trying to teach my son the value of pants. He’s 7 months old. Every attempt at putting on his pants involves a crazy little dance where he marches his feet right out of his pants approximately 73 times before I can even attempt to get them on. One foot in, one foot out. Other foot in, other foot out. (Repeat, repeat, repeat).
A few spectators have already used the phrase, “Oh, just you wait…” for when he’s crawling/walking/talking/fill-in-the-blank-ing. I actually hate that mentality. It’s as if they’re saying, “Oh, you think this is hard, *psh*…” I can feel their eye rolls.
We can only know what we know. Right now, the experience of him marching out of his pants is challenging. It makes putting on pants 73 times harder than it was when he didn’t know how to march. That’s all I know. When we get to the fill-in-the-blank-ing stage, then we’ll worry about what comes after learning how to put on pants.
So, I’ve adapted. We pause on pants while he’s in the mood to march. We put on pants on the floor instead of the changing table. We put on pants backwards and upside down while he’s rolled on his belly.
Sometimes though, we’re in a hurry to get out the door and I just start singing a song (to the tune of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”), “Pants are not optional… not optional... not optional. Pants are not optional, we must wear pants today.”
***
My friend has to go back to work in the office for one day a week since pre-pandemic days. She texted our group chat, “Survived my first (half) day back in the office.” We joked about how exhausting it was, even though it very much was exhausting on a pretty real and not-so-funny way after years of remote work. “Big girl pants” as we called it. She said, “Literally. Had to wear pants with a zipper. Pants are hard.”
It’s exactly the lesson I’m trying to teach my son (who likely won’t care about lessons for quite some time). There are days when we must wear pants. There are days when we won’t want to wear pants. There are days when we will feel like marching right out of our pants before the day has even started.
But my very brave and smart and hardworking friend will show up again next week with her pants on. She will make her lunch and drive to work and chat with coworkers in new and weird ways that feel foreign after years of hibernation. Maybe she’ll buy new pants or put them on to a silly song. Whatever she has to do to get the pants on.
Whatever it is for you, that hard and seemingly impossible thing you have to do, join me in singing, “We must wear pants today.”
Give these a try…
These pants from Old Navy have been game changers in the pants game at every size and stage so far.
My brother and sister-in-law gifted us a Little Sleepies onesie that has been the longest lasting piece of clothing. It’s so soft and stretches with him as he grows. He’s worn the 6-12 month size for more than 6 months. We have a cute pattern with tools so we call him Mr. Fix It. When pants are hard, just wear pajamas all day.
For terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days, I listen to a lot of podcasts around the house or on walks. You might recognize Caitlin of Big Time Adulting from her hilarious Instagram videos. This episode, “The Invisible Labor of Motherhood with Eve Rodsky,” the author of Fair Play, is well worth a listen. I’m digging into this book and other resources on motherhood’s mental load. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this soon…