Pants

This morning I was elbow-deep in a diaper when my mom called. She doesn't work on Fridays, so a little later she came over and for the first time in forever, she did not wonder aloud if Lyla was too warm.

I think all new grandmas are outspoken about something. Lyla's grandmas happen to be outspoken in completely opposite ways: my mom always thinks Lyla's too warm, and Julie's mom always thinks she's too cold. So if you combined them into one person, you'd have...the craziest woman in America.

Just kidding. Julie and I also often disagree on the temperature issue, tending to side with our respective mothers. Julie's mom stayed with us for a weekend and mentioned in a deliberately offhand way that we might want to send Lyla to bed with pants on, and Julie's been totally pants crazy ever since. My point (and my mom's) is...well have you seen Lyla's legs lately? They're like sausages wiggling in the wind. They need pants like a whale needs a sweatshirt.

My mom is all about stripping the child. "Mom, she's fine," I'll say, and she'll drop it before bringing it up again like five seconds later.

What we should really do is get both our moms here and leave them in a room with Lyla, a bucket of baby clothes, and two sets of boxing gloves. Julie and I will hide in the next room and periodically monkey with the thermostat. How long would it take before they stopped being polite?

As you can see from the above photo, pants-crazy Julie wins all of our boxing matches.