Modest clothing for children

Mini-sprog (Spaceghost) is growing so fast (if my ever-so-accurate measurements with the Wii-fit and a tape-measure are anything to go by, she's at about the 97th% mark for height, and she's nearly grown out of her 3-6 month sleepers, which is quite a feat considering she's not yet 4 months old and has only been wearing them for 6 weeks), I'm on a constant search for clothes. Critter too, but until I learn to sew properly I've given up on finding pants that fit him correctly. He just has to make do with everything needing a belt, or being a little too short, or both. There's no lack of good, cheap stuff out there, and with 3 second-hand shops a mere 15min bus ride from my house, I'm able to keep her dresser well stocked. On Thursday for example, among other things I found 2 brand new (seriously, they still had the tags on and everything) t-shirts in the next size up, for $1 each. They will be perfect when the weather changes and things start getting warm again, as I'm sure she'll be well and truly into that size by then.

Being able to get so much good quality stuff so cheap, the cost of her wardrobe isn't really an issue. What is an issue, is modesty. At the moment, its not a problem. Its winter, its cold, most of the time when we're out she's either wrapped up or covered in her pram anyway. However, when spring rolls around, it will be a different story.

I stopped wearing pants about 18 months ago. In fact, a few weeks ago I commented on my facebook than I do not remember the last time I wore pants, other than PJs. I remember wearing pants in September 2007, when we were painting the Critter's room, but I don't remember if I've worn any since. For me, a skirt is the more modest choice. The shape is less revealing, and I don't have to worry about showing my underwear to the world every time I sit down. I have never found a pair of jeans that really fit right. They're always too tight in front, with a huge gape on my back - the waist is the right size, just not in the right spots. For Spaceghost, I'm not sure this is going to be the case, at least until she starts walking.

In her admittedly-short-so-far-life, Spaceghost has only had two skirts, and one dress. I would love to have her in skirts, and once she's walking, since I'm the one who does the shopping, I'm guessing skirts will make up most of her wardrobe (I'm not going to just ban pants outright, my husband would flip out, and I want it to be her choice, which will immediately be "pants" if I militantly never allow her to wear them), but at the moment, pants are more modest. The skirts and dress she has are adorable - pink and purple, with flowers or butterflies embroidered on them - but they hardly even cover her nappy (this is admittedly contributed to by the fact that she wears cloth nappies and they are by default thicker than disposables). Skirts for babies are all made super- short, for some unfathomable reason*.

As I said before, since its cold at the moment, this isn't really an issue. I just put a pair of thick tights or soft pants underneath, and she is both warm, and adorable. Its cold enough that she would be wearing tights under her skirts even if they were longer, but it gets quite warm here in spring and summer, and I'm not going to have her in those teeny little skirts with nothing underneath. I'm not even sure that learning to sew better would solve my problems. At this size, when they spend most of their time lying down, everything rides up (I can't even begin to count the number of times I had to pull her dress down in church on Sunday. She did look utterly adorable though) so a longer skirt wouldn't do its job for long anyway. Once she starts crawling, a longer skirt may be a hindrance, causing her to trip. Especially if she does the hands-and-feet thing Critter did, rather than the hands-and-knees babies generally seem to stick to.

I think, for the moment, if I'm to have any chance of keeping my girl dressed nicely, I'm going to have to stick to pants. The current fashion for toddlers-preschoolers does seem to be calf-length skirts, and I'm hoping it stays that way so I have a chance to get decent stuff for her when she gets bigger. Since I have absolutely no idea what size she'll be by then, I'm not going to buy bigger stuff now. I'll stick to pants in her current size,or one-up for growth, until skirts become a reasonable option, and then I'll go wild. In the meantime, I'm going to practice my sewing skillz, so my Spaceghost can wear clothes no-one else has, and look right good doing so.




*If the length of most of the baby-skirts I've seen were translated to skirts for biggerpersons, they would be only just past the length at which I cough **belt** when I see someone walking past in one - when you hope you don't see them sit down, because you have no desire to find out what colour underwear they have on, if any.