Catching Hobo-toe Fever

Pajama's at my house have been coming down with an unsightly affliction as of late. I have dubbed it, "Hobo-toe."

"Hobo-toe" occurs when your big toe has managed to wear its way through the tip of your footed pajama's and create an ever-growing hole that soon allows your other toes to peep through into the outside world.

At first, I had thought that this ailment was isolated only to Vivienne's pajama's because she does the cripple-baby crawl where she ends up dragging that one foot underneath her body as she walks along on the other foot.

I have discovered that "Hobo-toe" is catchy, however! It has since spread to both of the baby boys' pajama's as well, and rapidly so! We have only a few pairs of quarantined and whole pajama's.

In my quest to discover how such an affliction spreads, I started asking the parental units of other like-aged children if they had ever run into this problem since my eldest hadn't when he was little.

The cause appears to remain mostly unknown, however I have been exploring many theories.

My father offerred up the most reasonable cause for such a problem. He has experienced the same thing happening to my nephew's pajama's as well, and attributes it to the babies growing to long for that particular size.

This seemed logical in theory, so I set out to obtain a set of pajama's in the next size up, thinking with much relief that maybe my babies really were growing up and into a normal size for their age.

Bregon and I headed down to the Boardwalk to the mega-versions of Carter's and The Children's Place, the only 2 places that I know of that carry footed pajama's in larger baby sizes.

We bought two different sets, one at each store, and it ended up with basically 2 sets per baby.
Since the currently afflicted sets at home were size 12 months, we purchased them in size 18 months as that's the next size up.

We were very excited and rushed home in time for bedtime so that we could try the new pajama's on the babies so that their tiny toes would be all cozy and snuggled in their new, whole footed pajama's.

For Kian, we had found red pajama's with little fire trucks and police cars on them, his favorite! Kaiden had a green camouflaged set with triceratops dinosaurs in the camo to match his favorite Easter basket. Vivienne had a pretty pink set with hearts all over them.

Everyone seemed pleased with their new duds. Then, I made a startling discovery. The new size was about 5-7 inches too long, depending on which baby we measured.

I was very confused as usually the sizes and lengths only vary by an inch, or maybe two...never as much as five. After all, these were the same brands we always buy.

The boy's seemed to be able to keep theirs from sliding down while they walked, so I had hopes that Vivienne would do okay in hers.

Unfortunately, as soon as she assumed her cripple-baby-crawl position, her tiny, baby girl foot came up out of its foot place and she was soon dragging around the excess leg and foot behind her as she crawled.

When she ended up where she was going and decided to stand up, her foot didn't go back into the foot part of her pajama's, either.

She was walking on what should have been about the mid-calf area of the leg of her new pretty pink pajama's.

All three babies tried the new size for two days before I ended up switching them back to their size 12 month's. They all slid around the floor quite a bit, and they all took turns falling all over the place from slipping on the excess material.

Even the little skid-cloth on the bottoms of the feet didn't keep them upright for long. I suppose it had something to do with the way the excess fabric slid down as soon as they started really walking around.

I don't know if it's just because my babies are multiples and are just that much smaller than the average 18 month old, or if there really is a need for an in-between size between the 12 & 18 month sizes.

I know we have always had trouble with clothes not fitting because they just do not grow at the same rate or in the same way as other children their age do. Things that fit length wise usually are much too wide for them and their diapers usually overlap tabs at the waste because they have such tiny hiney's.

If only they were regular pajama's I could roll them up. I even have hopes of washing them in hot water and shrinking them a bit. I just don't think that much material will shrink up that much, though.

So for now, if you come over and the kids are in their pajama's, please understand that they do have whole pajama's without holes in them. It's just that they cannot wear them yet because they make them fall down too much!

In the meantime, I am going to have a LOT of darning to do so that they can have pajama's!