If You're Crazy & You Know It ...

Then you're me.

By now you all know how hyper-nostalgic I am. I mostly proud of it, partly embarrassed by it.

When we had our 20-week ultrasound and were ensured I was growing a person, I relaxed. Bought nursery furniture. Let it be real. I bought Dreft, people. It was serious baby time all up in our house. I took tags off the neutral items collecting in the antique dresser in the guest room, threw them all in the warm, sudsy washer, and set about softening up our lil' dude's stuff and things.

Dreft made my house smell like a baby's house, but damn, that stuff is expensive. So, by dumb luck I found All's Baby detergent. Believe it or not, All Baby smelled better than Dreft and was oodles cheaper. Doing laundry had never been so fun! Be gone, pesky little formula stains and blowout messes!


The lil' dude helping me with laundry, three months

Fast forward 15+ months and I'm doing laundry and the lil' dude's garments all are bigger and bigger every week and full of people stains like guacamole and black beans and Naked juice and dirt from the lily beds and crusty toothpaste. And yet I dutifully pour the reliable capful of All Baby into the washer ... when I fill my last cap. I mentally add it to my errand list.

Saturday we're at Target and the place is insane. I ask the Dad to drop me off so I can run in, buy my All Baby and get home and wash me some baby socks- the girl's fresh out and it's too cold for the flip-flops. I run through the store- through the baby section and over to the laundry aisle and swear internally when a red-and-khaki on a Walkie tells me they don't carry All Baby. She's not sure they ever did. I tell her they did. She's already walking away from me.

Well, great.

Later that night, under the cloak of darkness, I enter Wal-Mart under the premise of buying the lil' dude's Easter fare and the biggest vat of All Baby you've ever seen. This IS my Saturday night, people.
I run to the laundry aisle and spy the pretty white bottle with the yellow text and the little yellow ... where's the damn ducky? This is NOT All Baby. It's All Free Clear. What. The. Duck?
I run to the baby aisle. Nope. I am sweating and swearing, externally. I find a blue Walkie and get the answer I already know.

Don't carry it anymore.

I limp home, defeated. Earlier in the day, the Dad said he thought I had been using the big-people Era on all the lil' dude's duds. Ummmm, does she not smell like innocence and sunshine and giggles? That's the All Baby talking. Not her. The Dad suggested it was time to drop the baby detergent act and throw her clothes in with ours. All those tiny, delicious pieces of clothing in with my sweaty gym stuff and his hoodie collection. The gall of some people.

But it's now three days post detergent drama, and she did need socks.
I did what anyone in my shoes would do: I bought her some new ones.

No ... I didn't, actually. After Saturday, Sunday was not about to become The Day Devoted to Finding Her Size in the Right Socks.

So, she's an Era kid now, I guess. I could try the Big K and Shopko for All Baby, but I don't suppose I want another Walkie telling me what I already know: she's not a baby anymore.