Skid Pants & Slings: Colorful Style from Dittany Baby

SkidPants are the creation of Shannon Krieger, a Virginia mom who founded Dittany Baby, and whom I spoke to about her unique baby accessory.  She invented these stretchy, colorful leggings for her son Elias when he had badly scraped knees covered with bandages due to vigorous crawling expeditions.  Shannon is a skilled seamstress and designer who created the SkidPants to hold his bandages in place, and they took off from there.  They come in the most gorgeous and creative patterns and solids ineither a lightweight nylon/lycra blend, or heavier cotton/poly/spandexfabric, all made in Shannon’s Virginia workshop ($10-12/pair).

I don’t have a crawler at home, so I put these adorably patterned SkidPants out to three friends with 9 to 11 month olds.  (I didn’t hear from them for a while because it was summer in the Northeast where not all of us have central a/c, and the moms hesitated to use them in sticky weather.)   But the reviews came back as the seasons changed:  the moms loved the stylish patterns, and the toddler siblings of the crawling babies seemed to enjoy these as fabulous accessories, wearing them as leggings or scarves for dress up, or even tied as headbands!  The mom testers all suggested that they add padding to the knees in future versions.  Celebrity babies who already have SkidPants include:  Kingston Rossdale, Violet Affleck, Ruby Sweetheart (Toby McGuire), Liam Aaron (Tori Spelling), Sam Alexis (Tiger Woods).

I’m a ring-sling lover, and tried out a pouch sling for the first time when Dittany Baby sent me the Heros Blue (blue camo/reverse to brown, $40).  I’m nuts about this color combination, and loved the matching drawstring pouch.  My baby was then 4 months old, and I was proudly still dropping the baby weight, but the Medium was a tight fit in a cradle hold.  Then the company sent me a Large.  Ouch–I’m a size 12 post-partum, but you know the problem some of us have with going up a size…Oh well, the company staff were extremely accommodating about the exchange and plan to look into their sizing.  The benefit of the pouch sling is the ease–slip it on, pop in your babe, and go.  No adjusting of rings, but you do need a perfect fit.  I got the hang of this sling very quickly.  I’d like to see the models they make with a little stretch, too.  They have a great variety of fabrics, and I’m keeping this compact and colorful sling in my 7-month old’s diaper bag.

You can buy Dittany Baby’s SkidPants and Slings here, and CBB readers can receive a 10% discount when they enter the code CBB10 at checkout–no expiration date!