A Little Orange Crab

Dear Jack,

In case you hadn't noticed, I like the color orange on you a lot. A whole lot. When I pregnant with you, I felt myself drawn to clothes with little orange crabs. This is silly, I know, but it's true. (Your sister, by the way, was a little yellow duck, in my mind.)

I decided that the logic for the orange was that yellow had been your sister's color and really, yellow, orange, and green are the three big options for gender neutral baby clothes and since we didn't know with either of you whether to buy blue or pink, we had to go with one of the other color options. So, yellow had been "taken" by your sister. Leaving green and orange. Why not green? I don't know. I just liked the orange.

As for the crab? Well, you were born in May, so a lot of the clothes I bought for you were summer clothes, so the crab I guess is beachy and several clothing lines seemed to have crabs on a least one or two of their outfits. I think you owned at least four orange crab outfits... one from Carters, one from Target, and two from Gymboree. So the crab was available.

But more than that, I think with your sister born on your father's birthday, I really wanted you to be a summer baby with me and Cancer the crab is my zodiac sign and I have always identified with certain aspects of a crab... the tough outer shell, the water, the affinity for home that a hermit crab has. So, when I thought of a crab and you, I was always thinking a little of myself. (And never thinking the word "crabby," I promise.)

So here we are, September, and you have completely outgrown two of your crab outfits and are really close to outgrowing the other two.

This made me really sad. It also made me dash out to the outlet mall....

This one will be for next summer.

Love,
Mom