Its All About the Accessories... (100th Post!!!)

...even for toddler boys.

Kendry has been a hat baby pretty much from Day 1. This is obviously more my doing than his, but he cooperates quite well. Unless he is getting somewhat ornery, he will usually keep on whatever hat I may perch on his cute little head.

A few months ago I realized that Kendry was wearing a hat in most of the photos I was taking of him. The first step is acknowledging you have a problem, right? But before I get help for this addiction, please allow me to re"cap":

It all began when he headed home from the hospital:

Were you counting? Thats 13 hats so far. And thats just the hats caught on camera. I can assure you there were several more never worn or photographed.

In my defense, like I said above, Kendry seems to enjoy wearing the hats as much as I love putting them on him. Although, from time to time, he does get a little irritated with me:

"GET THIS THING OFF MY HEAD!"

But those incidents are few and far between.

My second defense? In case you haven't noticed, my kiddo inherited my fair skin. I cannot tell you how much I fear his first sunburn experience, and I am determined to not have it happen on my watch. And whomever’s watch it does happen on, you’d better watch out!

I have had too many serious sunburns to count during my lifetime. Now that I’m nearly 30 (shhh, don’t tell anyone!), I like to think I’ve learned my lesson. These days, in addition to a thick coat of sunscreen, I try to wear a wide-brimmed hat to help me keep the sun off my face, ears, neck and shoulders. And there is nothing like a cute hat to accessorize that beautiful sundress or fun swimsuit. Who can refuse a cute hat, right? Obviously not me.

Keeping with the wide-brimmed hat strategy, I found a simple bucket hat for Kendry at a yard sale a few weeks ago. The woman actually threw it in for free after I cleared her out of her 2T boys’ clothes. And its a good thing it was a free hat because it sooo does not fit my kiddo.

"Does this hat make my head look fat?"

Poor Kendry gets a circular imprint around his head after wearing this thing. If you look closely at the above pic you can just see it below his hairline.

Can you see where I am going with this?

Yes, I felt obligated to buy Kendry two more wide-brimmed hats (courtesy of TCP) to help us get through our hot and sunny summer. And how cute are they?!

(I don't normally dress my kiddo in big clothes like this, but this was the smallest size we could get for his family reunion t-shirt.)

I know I need to taper off my addiction a little bit - perhaps after I find him a Seattle Seahawks hat for football season. And then he will need his first tiny cowboy hat...

Man, I have a sickness!!

All kidding aside, I do not want to raise one of those kiddos who showers with his hat on. There are many situations in which wearing a hat is not proper etiquette (church, dinner table, classroom, shower etc.) and I think there are too many children/teens out there who were never taught this. My kiddo will not be one of them.

Furthermore, the last two Gimlin generations are not, shall we say, genetically blessed when it comes to keeping hair on their head. If there is even a slim chance that habitual hat wearing increases one's chances of balding, I should throw away all of Kendry's hats tonight because the odds are already against him. That being said, other than clearly inheriting his father's hairline, Kendry seems to have a lot of hair, just like his mommy.

And last but not least, the money for purchasing these hats really adds up. Most of them in the first year were hand-me-downs, but Kendry has now grown out of just about all of those. Fortunately, Kendry's head is fast catching up with his daddy's inexplicably small head; they will be sharing hats in no time.