A little over two years ago we brought our son Little J home from Voronezh, Russia. The weather has been strange here in central NC - today It's 70 and tomorrow I think it's supposed to be 40 - and I'm reminded of the situation with my son's hat when we were in Russia.

Russian people put hats on babies and children -- and not just in the winter. When we got Little J it was the end of September in Voronezh, a region south of Moscow. Siberia it was not. The weather was lovely. No cooler than sixty degrees Fahrenheit, even at night. But we'd been warned - bring a hat - or else! People will scold you in the street, our translator told us. Children must be warm at all times! We discovered it soon enough when, outside Little J's orphanage, we came upon a group of children with their caregivers. Every single child wore a zip-up snowsuit. It was 70 degrees! Some kids had snowsuit hoods over hats. No fresh air was getting to their heads, that was for sure.

We made sure to buy a chic baby hat in Moscow the first chance we got. It was a darling little Euro hat and cost a fortune but we were (unfortunately) in our Russian-money-is-not-real-money stage and were throwing rubles away right and left.

Despite all these warnings and clear-cut examples (as well as a cute hat) to show us how we ought to behave, we had the audacity to take Little J out of the car and walk the ten feet to the Minister of Education's office door. "His hat!" Ludmila, our translator, hissed at us. My husband quickly ran three steps to retrieve the object and we shoved it on our baby's tender head.

The upside to the hat situation is that all the children there are used to wearing hats. They don't tear them off as our often hat-less American kids do. The downside is that, because Little J's head grew so rapidly once he came home and was given adequate nutrition and stimulation, that expensive Euro-hat quickly became a thing of the past. I think I sent it to my neice in San Diego. It's a great hat for those cold southern California days.