Baby socks are the world's most infuriatingly useless items. Yes, strawberry huskers, battery operated cheese graters, and Snooki may top the charts in most eyes, but none of them provoke the same sense of panic and judgement as does seeing unclad baby feet on any day less than 70 degrees.

Yesterday my husband and I hilariously decided to catch a movie, thinking if Annika's first movie were to be James Bond, she would be a hardcore individual for life. Her love for Ian Fleming, however, waned after the opening scene.

Having been "those" people who want to throw popcorn at the people with the crying baby in the theater, the moment I heard her so much as breathe loudly, I sprinted out of the cinema like a bat out of hell. I glanced around the hallway just outside the theater in the hopes of breastfeeding there. That way, I could still hear the dialogue of the movie and not be entirely worse for the ware when at last I could join back in. I sat down, and propped Annika beneath my nursing cover, attempting my first public appearance as a breastfeeding mom. After 11 weeks I assumed I'd garnered enough skill to pull it off.

I did not. Annika, however, did have enough skill to pull it off, "it" being my nursing cover. In front of an elderly man excusing himself to the bathroom. There was my breast, yet again exposed to the public. Having tired of a life oppressed by fabric and stigma, 'righty' has thrice let it be known to the world that she exists. In the midst of my panic, Annika vomited down my shirt, pants, and shoes, and began to cry. Since the patrons in the theater could still hear us, I hurried her out of the hallway, dragging the carseat with one hand, and holding the baby to my half bare chest with the other.

I expected the staff member strolling up and down the corridor to say something encouraging or lighthearted upon my vomit-soaked and halfway indecent escape, but she took one look at us, and said: "Hey, your baby is missing a sock."

Heaven forbid. No "Hey your child is vomiting like that possessed girl from the Exorcist" or "Hey you're partially naked and that kid's movie is almost finished so you might want to take care of it before traumatizing the innocent." Not even "Did you come out of the theater for a delicious oil-drum sized popcorn that'll cost you half ff your arteries and an hour's salary?"

No. Just that I was missing a goddamn sock.

It was one of about 250 pairs I'd received at my baby showers: all of which were made to look like ballerina slippers complete with pompons. I had an entire drawer filled with lace and frills for tiny toes, and it had seemed superfluous at the time. What nobody had told me, however, is that baby socks have an average lifespan of 32 seconds. The beluga caviar of the sock monster's culinary repertoire, they vanish in moments. And so a stash that should have lasted for 17 years has lasted 11 weeks.

From now on, I'm duct taping them to Annika's shins.