head exploding cuteness.

I no longer see my baby niece every single day as I did during my three month stint as her nanny. She is in DC, and I am in Richmond, and sadly I go weeks sometimes without witnessing her insane levels of cuteness.

But there is one small comfort to tide myself over until I can see her in person, one of the great joys of being an aunt.


BABY CLOTHES.


Literally every time I go to Target I end up buying this baby clothing. I could literally be going to buy toothpaste, just toothpaste. I'll walk in knowing that I'll just go right to the toothpaste aisle, pick out my selection, then check out. That's it. No diversions. Not gonna look at the adult clothes. Not gonna look at the shoes this time and walk out with two pairs of sandals I will not be able to wear for three months. Not gonna look at the DVD's or the magazines. I walk in feeling confident in my ability to be strong, to resist the evil lure of Target.

And yet, somehow I always end up in the baby section, like I've been sleep-walking and instead of sleep eating or sleep fighting I end up sleep adorable baby clothes shopping. Because they are so adorable. They are so adorable I sometime emit little noises despite myself, frightening passersby. I pick up little sweatshirts or little tights or little itty bitty shorts (squee!) and just want to cuddle them, because they are oh so cute, so terribly, terribly cute.

Which leads me inevitably to purchasing things like this.

Isn't this the cutest little spring dress you've ever seen? Before I had a niece I used to scoff at all the pink and girly fru fru baby clothes, but now I see something pink and some strange, primal instinct kicks in, like MUST BUY PINK ITEM AND TAKE HOME TO YOUNG! YOUNG BABY GIRL MUST WEAR PINK SO AS TO DISTINGUISH FROM BABY BOY. I really have no control over it. It's practically a biological imperative that I buy these things.

And I mean just come on. Try to look at this and not just melt into a silly puddle of awwwwwwwwwwww.

Especially when you see that under the little skirt there are SHORTS! It's a skort. I wore skorts when I was little. I remember vividly one printed with roses that I wore until I was like thirteen (by that point it was no longer cute, just sad). I used to get into epic fights with my mother because I only wanted to wear that skort to any remotely nice function. And now I can pass on the skort tradition to my niece. I mean they are tiny little yellow shorts! Underneath a skirt! On a baby!

So anyone who isn't into babies probably zoned out and just heard static and high pitched noises during this post. And yes I realize that I may not sound all that intelligent when I am going on about baby skorts.

But just, it's a BABY SKORT!