My Kid Came Home in Someone Else’s Clothes

My kid came home from daycare in someone else's clothes yesterday. Don't get me wrong, they were cute clothes, but they weren't hers and that kind of skeeved me out.

My daughter started daycare last month and this isn't the first time something like this has happened. Last week, when my husband picked her up with the little baggie they send her stuff home in, I found a bottle nipple that had another girl's name written on it. A few days later, she came home with a full bottle and top with that same girl's name written on them. Some might say I should be more skeeved by the idea of my baby coming home with another baby's bottle than her wearing another girl's onesie.

I looked everywhere on the pink puppy dog onesie for some sort of identifier.

Who's adorable onesie IS this?! 

I even felt a little panicked for a minute about the actual clothing item.

Was this onesie pre-washed? What if it comes from a house with cats—I don't even know if my daughter's allergic to cats yet! WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE ON THIS ONESIE!?

And a little more panic...

Is baby girl X's mom wondering where that puppy onesie is? Is she mad at me/my baby? Does she even know who we are? Do the daycare teachers even CARE that I spent hours labeling my daughter's clothes!? 

Then I wondered if this was all a reflection of me.

Could the daycare teacher not find the extra clothes I brought for her? Do they think I didn't bring any extra clothes? Do they think I'm a bad mom?

I'm new to "mom guilt" but I've been experiencing it in full force lately, especially over No. 5 on Parenting's "31 Reasons You Shouldn't Feel Mom Guilt," which is "enjoying your work." Being a digital editor for 'GNA, we get lots of awesome experiences that I take part in, including shooting photos/videos for Countryfest, social media at the summer country concerts and more. We have pretty cool jobs here, and sometimes it's hard not to feel bad for having so much fun.

Part of "mom guilt" is getting stuck in your head though. It's amazing how you can have 30+ thoughts in -10 seconds when you're a mom and I had all of these and more within seconds of walking in the door to find my kid in someone else's clothes. I told myself it would be OK because she would be getting a bath in a few hours and slipped into her own jammies and we would get that onesie off of her!

But, as most moms know, when you're not having "mom guilt" you're usually having "mom expectations" which are always too high. There was no bath, there were no jammies, and sure enough, my daughter slept in that someone-else's-onesie.

She woke up still intact this morning and we found ourselves with a few extra minutes after our routine (no, no we didn't have a few extra minutes... see "mom lateness") so I flicked on the TV to watch the news with her as I finally got her out of this damn onesie.

The local news anchors were talking all about a deadly fire in Schenectady before "Today" opened up with a package called "Campaign Chaos!" all about Ted Cruz apparently snubbing Donald Trump last night at the Republican National Convention. Fifteen minutes of that story led into a breaking news story of someone putting a bomb in a cop car in Columbus Circle in NYC this morning. Though it's not a good excuse, having a baby has given me less time to pay attention to this election, or the police/Black Lives Matter issues (embarrassingly, I have made time to understand the Kimye/TSwift #TaylorSwiftExposedParty issue though).

I've somehow ignored some of the biggest issues facing our country right now and, instead, focused on much smaller things. But you know what took me less than 3 seconds to notice and then focus on for hours when I got home from work yesterday? The onesie my daughter was wearing.

Maybe that's a sign I'm doing something right.