Eli is 11mo old. Here's the semi-unintuitive stuff we've learned with regards to clothing him.
- Zippers. Love 'em. Baby clothes come in all sorts of different connecting pieces, e.g. snapping down the middle, snapping down the legs, and all sorts of other snapping. The problem is snapping sucks, especially when the baby is wriggly. With the zipper, you just shove in their legs, zip up and you're done.
- Footsies. Babies aren't supposed to sleep with anything in their cribs, but they can get cold. So what we've converged to doing is dressing him in a fleece with footsies with a onesie underneath. If the pajamas don't have footsies, then their feet get really cold, and so you end up having to put socks on them. Not only are socks annoying but they have a tendency to come off in the middle of the night. And even if they don't, without the footsies the leg can ride up and expose their calves.
- Snurgle. For the first few months we swaddled Eli, in what we came to call the Snurgle. Swaddling really worked for us.
- Onesies. They're awesome. There is a tendency to buy lots of different types of clothes, i.e. overalls, shirts, pullovers, etc. because they're all cute. And that of course is true. However, the onesie has a special appeal because they can just wear it as is and it classifies an outfit. Additionally, you can layer over it (pants/shirts) and if they get that dirty (food/whatever) you can take it off but don't have to take off everything. Finally, it keeps their belly covered, whereas if they just wore a shit it would not.
- More onesies. We've like the Gerber and Carter ones the best. You can buy the white ones in the multi-packs, which we routinely use as a base layer. Note, however, that the Gerber ones run small. You also have to be careful about the head openings being too big (with any brand). Finally, we've found that if you take the head size into account, you can get bigger sizes and they work just fine.
- Changing with the bottle. Changing clothes can be a pain. I've taken to making Eli a bottle first, and letting him eat while I change him. He is then calm throughout. This technique only started working after he could hold his bottle though, at around 6mo or so (I forget!).
- Sizing. The sizes vary so much from brand to brand it is somewhat ridiculous. It's to the point where you can't really trust them at all. Additionally, the width of the clothes varies a ton. Eli's really skinny, so that has a big impact. Bottom line is if you have to really look at the item beyond the size.
- More sizing. We bought a ton of 6-12mo clothes, which is the standard size. But really at 6mo they didn't fit Eli because they seem to be for more on the 12mo side even though they say 6-12mo on them. So we had to go back out and get a bunch of 9mo stuff, which is harder to come by.
- Stores. We found a lot of good stuff and good prices at Target, Carters, and Costco.
- Outside fleece. We bought a really thick outside fleece at Target that was proved invaluable. We put him in it in the late fall and early winter when we went outside for walks. He was warm and sometimes it lulled him to sleep. It covered his hands and feet and had a hood.
- Hooded sweatshirts. Sweatshirts are cute, but we were too nervous to put him to sleep in ones that had hoods.
- Shoes. Haven't had much of a use for them :)
- Laundry. We initially underestimated how many clothes he would go through. Between peeing, eating, and generally getting into things, we're changing him often a few times a day.
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