Adventures in Toddling

Back when Julia was only a few months old, our good friend Ellen pointed out that baby clothes have pockets, despite the fact that babies have no use for them; on children’s clothing, pockets are a waste of fabric, thread, and manufacturing capacity. On a later occasion, I decided to prove her wrong by filling Julia’s cargo overalls with all of the things a baby would put in her pockets if she were able to make use of them: pacifiers, teethers, fake keys, small toys, and other miscellaneous knick-knacks. We all got a kick out of it.

Later, I found that some of her pants had impostor pockets, designed to look like pockets but lacking a pouch to hold anything. It makes sense that a feature which was included soley as decoration not have the functionality of the original item it was modeled after. Yet, I can’t help but think that it’s just silly; if you’re going to include a pocket, you might as well make it a real pocket.

The solution to all this is to drop the ornamental pockets from clothes where they will see no use. Of course, this will never happen; we love that little toddlers look just like tiny adults and eliminating the pockets will reduce this effect, a sort of uncanny valley of adorableness.