Toddlers and wobbles... it’s NY baby race
NEW YORK: It’s a race of laughter, false starts and wild bottle waving: New York’s Diaper Derby sees 30 infants battle it out for glory in a three-metre crawling contest.
There is only one rule: trying to stumble to your feet is not allowed. From the sidelines parents will egg on their progeny with bottles of milk, TV remote controls or key jangling.
There is no stopwatch, and the time it takes these racers to power down the 10-foot mat is unpredictable. One child might suddenly peg out midway. Another breaks down in tears. A third crawls off backwards.
Held in the same Manhattan hotel that hosted Donald Trump’s victory party last November, it has been organised for the last seven years by the New York City Triathlon.
While most parents are after fun memories rather than the diapershaped trophy, Tamara Cacchione admits to warming up nine-month daughter Maya up with the theme song from the Hollywood boxing epic Rocky. “She loves other babies... I am worried she may try to kiss the other kids,” she says, having travelled from upstate with her husband, grandparents, aunt and uncle.
“This will be something fun to tell her... maybe if she has children or when she is bigger I can show that she did this.”
Kimi Mei, from Brooklyn, admits to subjecting 10-month-old son Hunter to a “little bit” of training by setting him against a friend in the park. But her “secret weapon” is the remote control he “is not allowed to play with and he always wants to play with.” “So I brought it today. I hope I can light it up and he will go for it.”
But in the end 11-month-old Brooke crawled off with the trophy. An out-of-town girl from Dallas, Texas, she made a bee-line for the finish line and won all the glory.
“She just likes to crawl around a lot,” said mother Kristy Bender as her daughter dribbled into the microphone.