babywearing baby wearing baby

(My apologies go out to Big Mac in advance for the fact that he appears in none of the photographs in this post. He was born in the dark ages before I had a digital camera.)

Sweet baby Small Fry has indeed become herself a babywearing baby. She spent a great deal of time today wearing her baby, Ruby.

Small Fry herself might not have named her babydoll. I might have named her Ruby for her, since she isn’t really old enough to name babydolls and all. And maybe I named her Ruby because that is currently my most coveted baby girl name, one we didn’t get to use with Stellan because he was, well, a boy. But I’m not telling if that is really how Small Fry’s babydoll that she is seen babywearing in these photographs got her name or not.

Ahem.

As for me, I’ve been a babywearing mama all my life. Or for the last four and a half years. I’ve worn all my babies and absolutely loved every minute of it. Well, except for the minutes when I’ve been wearing them so long that my back aches and my sciatic nerve is getting the beejeebers pinched out of it. Except for those minutes. But all the other ones? Totally spectacular.

Anyway.

Wearing a fresh, soft newborn is about my all time favorite thing to do. Here is MckNugget when he was a wee babe, in the sling with me when he was about a week old.

And here is Small Fry earlier today, much older than a week old, but still my baby. A babywearing baby at that. A babywearing baby who is wearing, you guessed it, a baby.

Small Fry loves to wear baby Ruby in her little butter yellow sling. She rocks her back and forth, pats her bottom and sings lullabies to her. It’s the cutest darn thing I swear (except I typically don’t) you ever did see.

She wore her baby to Target today, in fact. While I wore Stellan in mine. Kind of like I wore Stellan here, when he was a wee babe and Prince Charming and I took him on vacation in the middle of the winter.

I just love babywearing. And if the way she cares for her babydolls now is any indication, Small Fry is going to be attached to her babies when she grows up, too.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t already miss the days when she was not growing up, though. Like last summer when she was a wee babe I carried around in a sling.

But now Small Fry, who turned 23 months old today, has become a babywearing baby. A mama in training.

As I look at these photographs, I am forced to wonder which is cuter: Small Fry patting baby Ruby’s bottom through the sling, or Small Fry’s pigtails.

Pigtail, patting, pigtails, patting, pigtails, patting. Ack! It must be a tie.

As I said, Small Fry is a patient, doting mother. Patient and doting, that is, until she gets fed up with Ruby being all up in her face in the sling.

At which point she rips Ruby out of the sling with force. And that’s that.

So, Small Fry is not a 24 hour a day babywearing baby wearing a baby. But at least she is a little better at caring for her babies than she used to be.

We’re at least making baby steps in the right direction.