Things I never thought I'd have to explain

Melody LOVES zip-up footed winter jammies. I have to hide them from her ten months out of the year, or she will sweat to death, insisting that she wants to leave them on. She would be much happier living in arctic climes, which would provide opportunity for arctic jammies.

In the Great Closet Upheaval of '08, some have apparently resurfaced.

A few details about Melody's anatomy would be pertinent here: Melody is a tiny child. Her weight barely registers at the bottom of growth charts, her height is slightly below average. Her elbow is the widest part of her arm, ditto her knee and her leg.For the longest time, she had a round belly. It was not chubby, though. It was round due to the need to hold organs. But even the belly has slimmed down. She has no butt. No hips. Basically, she resembles a fairy.

The 0-3 month sized clothes that most babies wear for a few short weeks, she wore for nine months. And when I was 9 months pregnant with Charlie and took her shopping to buy a homecoming outfit for a boy and one for a girl, she came home to show daddy the clothes, decided she wanted the girl one, and put the newly born infant sized clothing on her two-and-a-half-year-old body and it fit.

Melody also walked super early. She was nine months and five days old. She weighed all of sixteen pounds. I attribute her early walking to three things: she'd always been really healthy, and had no bouts of illness to set her back; she had no bulk to her and needed no muscle mass to move her tiny self; she is stubborn (like her mother).

So Melody, at age four-and-a-half was trying to wear a pair of size 2T footed jammies. Were it not for the feet, they would have worked as a pair of wooly capris. So I coaxed her into trying a pair of size 3 instead.

They zipped. Barely.

They were stretched taught from tiptoe to shoulder. So tight, that when she laid down on the living room floor in them, she kind of fell in a straight stick form to the ground, where she found herself unable to move. She reached out one arm, and I gave her a boost. She was unbending in her rise from the ground.

She tried to take a step, but ended up on the ground again. I hoisted her up and she goose-stepped around the living room a bit. I could have painted her up to be a nutcracker, really.

After a good stretch of this, she had finally decided that this wasn't working. So she came to me to unzip her jammies, and the following conversation ensued.

Gretchen: Girl, those jammies are so tight, I can see your shoulderblades and your buttcrack.
Melody: What's a buttcrack?

Seriously? She's made it this far and doesn't know what a buttcrack is?

G: Your crack is the . . . well, it is the little crack between the, er, sides of your, well. Huh.
M: I want to see!

Melody, who is unzipped at this point, starts looking for the crack on her jammies. Of course, they have disappeared, much like the lap you lose when you stand up.

G: Well, you can't see them once they're not on . . . Let me show you.

Did I mention that I have a friend over? And, while Christine is a very close friend, she's still a human being with NO interest in seeing what is about to happen next. I stand up, then turn around.

G:See how my booty has two sides to it? And there's a space in the middle? That's my butt crack. And when my jammy bottoms are loose, you really can't see it. But then I give myself a wedgie and, voila!, my buttcrack is revealed.
M: Oh.

And then Melody, wearing naught but a pair of very saggy panties, starts searching for her butt crack with both hands. She is craning her neck, grabbing her rear, trying to twist and turn, but to no avail.

In retrospect, I should have handed her a flashlight.