“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.” — Mary Lou Cook
“home birth is not simply the subtraction of medical technology from birth, but the addition of an entirely new process that has substantial benefits for mother and baby” — Stand and Deliver
Fine Art Print by Jessica Tremp
![“Dine In or Take Away” Fine Art Print by Helen McLean [123996-13] - RedBubble](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l2p4csjvpi1qzw8t0o1_500.jpg)
“Dine In or Take Away” Fine Art Print by Helen McLean [123996-13] - RedBubble
We do our grocery shopping online, and so I ordered a box of baby wipes without really thinking much of it. Until they arrived with Winnie The Pooh plastered all over the container. Now before you think I am some sort of pooh-bear-hater, let me assure you that I am quite fond of the pre-Disney character. But there is something very strange about a bear who doesn’t even wear pants advertising nappy products.
Acknowledging that I had given this way too much thought and was almost certainly thinking irrationally, my mind was made up. Winnie had to go, or at least put some damn pants on.
Alas, I did not have any Winnie sized pants around the house. And even if I put pants on Winnie, what of all his pant-less friends mocking me from the side of the box? What I did have, was an off cut of fabric that has been in my hoarding pile for several years.
As if by magic, it was the perfect size for what I needed. The final dilemma was how to get it on. I have wanted to learn sewing since I was 14. Mum let me use her machine but it broke after just one day and that was the end of that. I’ve hand stitched a few bits and pieces since then, but the last time I moved house my modest sewing kit hit the bin along with nine tenths of my stuff. The choice was now between sticky tape or safety pins. I went with the pins.
Goodbye Winnie!
Mwah ha ha! I win. No more commercialised pant-less Disney characters adorning this box of baby wipes! Winnie has been clothed and silenced.
Well, I never thought it would happen, but yesterday for the first time in, well, my whole life, I felt like cleaning. Apparently I can thank my hormones for this.
I decided to make the most of it and got the spare room in order. There were piles of crap all over the floor and boxes of god knows what. Thankfully, we bought a new bookcase a couple of weeks ago which meant I could at least transfer some stuff from the floor to against a wall. This has has provided us with uncovered carpet for the first time in months. Alas, my intense hatred of vacuuming continued through this cleaning mood and I opted to craw around on my hands and knees with a brush and shovel for an hour instead of pulling out the vacuum for a quick suck up.
The idea of using this room as a nursery or child’s bedroom is still laughable. There isn’t room for a cot, let alone a bed, and it looks like the desk will be doubling as a change table for now. We have a temporary crib in the bedroom but I have no idea where we are going to put this kid once she outgrows it. Good thing babies are very small!
“It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.” — Edward de Bono
The apartment block we live in seems to have paper thin walls. We can hear when our neighbors cough, flush the toilet or plonk into bed. So, the idea of giving birth at home, along with the usual sounds of labor, has made us a bit concerned about what the neighbors will think. Rather than leave them guessing (and risk someone calling the police to make sure we’re okay) we made up some little survival packs and a letter to let each of them know what is going on.
Each pack contained:
1 x Coffee Bag (for a caffeine hit)
1 x Tea Bag
1 x Set of ear plugs (to block out unwanted noise)
2 x Panadol (for any headaches we cause!)
…and a little note letting them know what is going on and passing on our apologies in advance if we keep anyone awake.
We also dropped off some quick notes to the apartment block next door, with some added fluff attached to hopefully avoid it being mistaken for junk mail.
Fine Art Print by Paul Louis Villani
A couple of weeks ago Christine and I headed to Ikea for a look around. I’d already been online checking out some options for storing all the baby paraphernalia and thought the EXPEDIT bookcases were a flexible option when partnered with BRANAS baskets for drawers. At the time, there was a massive pile of the baskets, but I didn’t want to make the purchase without discussing it with James first, and since then, my two other visits proved basketless.
Determined not to waste a third trip, today I contacted the store ahead of time to ask if they had any. Confidently, I was told they had 21 in stock. I was in the car within 10 mins and on my way!
Upon reaching Ikea I noted that yet again, the spot where said baskets had been on my first trip was now full of some other type of basket. So I grabbed the nearest staff member to query where the 21 in stock baskets might be. Apparently, “21 in stock” is code for “the system says we have 21, but everyone who works here knows that we’ve been out of them for over a fortnight”. He suggested I go through the displays and pinch any from there, but that there would only be a few. So I spent the next hour scouring the whole store and found a single solitary basket in the size and style I wanted.
They tell me another delivery is estimated for within the week, but cautioned that I should check in before driving out again because the system can’t be relied on and that the delivery might just not come.
As much as I love Ikea, this whole basket buying experience is sucking big time.
Fine Art Print by David Barnes
“The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” — Alan Alda
Fine Art Print by Michael Alesich
