Names and Trends -

 by: Kirsten Hawkins

Parents live vicariously through their children and play dress-up.

One of the joys of being the parent of an infant comes in the form of choosing cute outfits for the baby to wear. Over the years, parents have narrowed this down to an art, finding and choosing the most adorable outfits that they can imagine and making it seem that every day is Halloween for their infants and toddlers. While scary and grotesque outfits rarely show up on a baby even during the actual Halloween holiday, there are plenty of parents that like to dress their sons as baseball players and their daughters as princesses. It’s almost as if the parents start to relive a second childhood through their infants and just want to play dress-up.

And that’s ok. It’s part of being a parent.

The Sailor

“We want you as a new recruit,” sang the Village People at the close of the 1970s in a song so popular that the US Navy thought of making it an official theme until someone finally advised the top brass what it implied. People love ships and sailors, though, and have been dressing their baby boys in naval inspired clothes for nearly a hundred years. The reasons aren’t very clear but it seems that every little boy or grown man comes across pictures of himself as an infant or toddler in a sailor’s suit at one time or another. If he could speak he might say, “Batten down the hatches and swab the poopdeck, matey! And, unless I get a little help bottom-side, poopdeck may take on a whole new meaning!”

The Baseball Player   (continued...)

Extra-Cute Baby Outfits
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