Baby’s growth leaves parents behind

It’s getting difficult to keep up. And she’s not even mobile yet.

Baby Schanz is about two months old now, and she’s changing daily.

She recently started tracking movements with her eyes, which are still a blue/brown combo and sparking a heated debate between her parents as to whose eyes she’ll have. (I have vibrant blue eyes, Chrissy’s are brown. We both want her to have our respective eyes.)

She’s started to mimic sounds — the long-O sound is her favorite — and her “coos” are becoming more prominent. Even while sleeping.

The day she was born she was lifting her head, and since then her neck has only gotten stronger. Although she’s yet not able to fully keep her head upright and control those muscles, we don’t have to support her head as much when we hold her anymore.

Perhaps the most noticeable change, though, is the rate in which she’s going through clothes.

We don’t expect her to be tall. After all, I’m 5-foot-8, and Chrissy is 4-foot-11.5. However, our daughter is growing like a weed.

When we brought her home from the hospital, we didn’t have any clothes that fit her. We didn’t expect her, at exactly one week “premature,” to be in preemie clothes. We certainly didn’t have diapers small enough to fit her either. Therefore, we had to scramble to find time to buy the proper size of both.

Her time in the preemie clothes was short-lived.

So, too, it seems, was her time in newborn attire. Granted, newborn-sized clothes aren’t standard from one brand to the next. For example, Old Navy’s newborn clothes are smaller than Carter’s. We’re learning Carter’s tends to run a little on the larger side, and the sizing of Honest Baby Clothing is anything but honest — we have a preemie outfit which is still way too big.

Items sized 0-3 seem to be a bit of a crapshoot. One day they’re too big. The next they fit perfectly and then in the blink of an eye they’re too small. The 3-month items are starting to fit her, but again it’s a crapshoot depending on the brand.

When it comes to diapers, she’s between sizes. The newborns are too small, yet Size 1 are just a wee too big at this point.

It’s a race against time. We’ve bought cute clothes we want her to wear, but there seems to be no telling as to when she’ll grow out of them. The most problematic issue, we’re finding, is the clothes become too small in length before they’re too small in girth. 

Maybe she’ll be tall after all? We obviously don’t know yet. The only explanation is that she’d get it from my late father, who was above 6 feet tall. (I have an older brother who’s a family anomaly; he’s 6-foot-6). Chrissy’s parents are both my height, so if Baby Schanz grows taller than her parents, it sure won’t come from her mom’s side of the family.

The clothes she has, and will, grow out of won’t go to waste. We started keeping the items we like the best in hopes of repurposing them — into a blanket, other clothes, whatever — rather than just donate them. While Baby Schanz will only be able to remember them through photos and videos, they hold sentimental value to us so we want to hang on to them.

It’s hard to believe my daughter is 2 months old already. It seems like yesterday we brought her home. 

Until the day she stops growing, we’ll constantly be chasing the right-sized clothes. 

I just hope we can keep up.