My Sharpei Baby

Sharpei: a very wrinkly dog.  Pictured below for reference.

Notice that I entitled this post "My Sharpei Baby" and not "My Baby Sharpei."  This was intentional.  I meant for Sharpei to be an adjective and baby to be a noun.  The reason for this is that I do not own a baby sharpei.  I own a very fluffy poodle.  But this post isn't about him either.  This post is about my little baby girl, Gwen.  This is a picture of her that I took today.

I call her a sharpei baby because she has tons of rolls, much like a sharpei.  Note the deep wrist rolls.  Also see the ankle rolls (or should I say cankle?).  See all of the texture on her legs.  That is not a trick of the camera.  That is the beginning of cellulite.  Her leg rolls would be more pronounced, but she is wearing a cloth diaper that somewhat hides her chunky thighs.

This is a picture of her from a couple of days ago.  As you can see, she has rolls at her armpits and on her torso.  

Here you can see her amazingly squeezable, chunky cheeks.  If you try to squeeze them, you would discover that they are actually quite firm because they are packed so full of chunk.

If you had any doubts about the extent of her chunky legs, look at this picture.

I love her chunkiness.  I find her absolutely adorable.  I love adorable, roley poly babies.  While she has the core strength, I think, to sit up at this point, her belly is too big for her to reach forward and balance herself with her arms.  I find that to be so freakin' cute and endearing!  

But the one thing that I don't find endearing is cleaning her sharpei rolls.  I heard from someone, somewhere (and have no idea if it is true or not) that you have to clean between the rolls on sharpeis because if you do not the rolls will get infected.  The same is true with babies.  Gwen has not gotten any infections because I am vigilant about cleaning each and every roll each and every night at bath time.  However, how do you fit a washcloth between her shoulders and chin?

I face this challenge every single day.  And she does not do anything to make it any easier on me.  This has become increasingly important since she started eating solids.

I make her wear a bib.  I wipe her down with a wash cloth after each meal.  But, let's face it: she's not very good at eating yet.  About 97% of the food ends up running down her face and onto her body.

Before she started eating solids I would discover the occasional crumb in her neck folds (mommy or daddy apparently ate a snack messily while holding her).  But now I discover large amounts of pureed fruits and veggies in there.  I lifted up a neck fold yesterday a couple of hours after she ate and found an entire line of sweet potato.  It's not that I didn't clean her.  I wiped and wiped, but how did she get sweet potato on the back of her neck?!?!  I wiped under her chin.  I wiped her shoulders.  I even wiped off her back.  But the back neck fold?  I guess I either need to be more careful feeding her in the future, or I need to do a 360 degree cleaning.

Until her height catches up to her weight I guess I will have to clean her like the little sharpei puppy that she is.  (She started as the 7th percentile for both weight and height and is now, somehow, the 90th percentile for weight while only the 50th for height.  That makes her the 90th percentile weight for height.  I know how she made that jump, actually.  She eats her feelings.)  And, also, I'll continue referring to her by her sumo wrestler name: Gwenihito.