Hello darkness my old friend

[susie_flo]

Good morning, fiends.
 
Monday morning and I've been up since the lark again...  and I'm not even going to work!  'Tis insania, I tell you.  
  
I think I gave myself ache-related insomnia through overdoing the DIY yesterday.  But at least there is a feeling of progress.  Our newly plastered spare room has finally been painted and just needs another coat before we can put everything back in there.  (Ugh - is there any job more horrid and arm-ache-inducing than painting ceilings?  I hope I never have to paint a ceiling again).  Afterwards there is a ton of woodwork to be painted and the hallway walls, but I'm debating whether to get someone in to do the hallway, now that I am so thoroughly bovine. 
  
We've also finally made some progress on prep for Ruprecht and have purchased a microscopic crib.  At least now if he decides to make an early appearance he'll have somewhere to sleep (though, obviously, Harriet believes this to be her bed).  We bought it second-hand from a lady in Richmond who'd only managed to use it for 2 months due to having a giant baby.  (Please god, do NOT let me have a giant baby).   She was a very lovely German lady, but G and I still had a lot of trouble not sniggering when she kept saying "Alles klar".

  

Anyway it's a very sweet little thing with a canopy and one side that comes off.  The theory is that it attaches to the side of our bed and I can feed him at night without having to get up...  at least for the first few months anyway.  (Once he gets too big for it we'll get him a proper cot and the spare room will become his bedroom). 

    
Those who know me might be somewhat astounded by my newfound stinginess when purchasing baby stuff.  It's funny how different it is to buying for someone else's baby...  (or shinies for oneself, come to think of it).  When G and I were buying stuff for Helena it was all "ooh, lets get the best one in the shop" and now we're buying for Ruprecht it's all "Jeez, I'm not paying that!  Get it second hand".  

   

The problem is not so much that we can't afford it as that the price of baby stuff OFFENDS me to the core.  How can such horrible, plasticky tat have the audacity to be so expensive?  And why does it all have to be so huge?  Plus I hate the way shops try to guilt you into buying so much stuff that you don't really need...  or spending a fortune on inflated versions of things with spurious extra safety features.  (I'm like some frightful old harridan wandering around Mothercare saying "nobody needed those when I was a kid".)   

 

To some extent you just have to swallow it for mundane essentials like car seats and prams...  but at least with clothes and fripperies you can let your inner Scrooge run free.  (Jo Maman Bebe, you do indeed have some lovely things.  But do I really want to pay you £20 for a single babygro that will be covered in sick and last 3 weeks, when I can get a 3-pack of Primarni's finest for £7?)  To be honest, I'd far rather channel money towards his future education than fritter it all on surfaces for baby sick that he won't ever remember.   Having said that, I suspect his new bedroom might become frippery central... this being the fun bit, after all.  (If I have time, I'm thinking of making a mobile out of small knitted dangley animals).

 

Anyway, he's due to be prodded by another midwife this afternoon and I'll hopefully find out if he's making the right progress.  It may be my imagination, but I think he might have suddenly dropped a few inches, as my bump feels lower and heavier than it was and I have started to walk like a duck with a limp.   Also G and I must really try and settle on a proper name for him soon.  (What will be v. weird indeed is if he turns out to be a surprise girl after all this time expecting a boy). 

 

In the meantime...  it's G's birthday in ten days and we need to plan a nice meal out somewhere.  But where?  Perhaps it is time to revisit the Glasshouse in Kew...

 

 

 

Well I hope you lot are surviving Monday morning and have good weeks ahead of you.  (Anyone feeling jealous of my time off might feel better if I tell you it has been nothing but hard slog so far!)

 

 

Comments

[sara-lou.livejournal.com]

Petersham Nurseries!

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

I think they're only open at lunchtimes... but I shall float the idea.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

YES about baby stuff! My god, when I was small I was bathed in the sink, and look how I tu ... ok, scrap that. But your point remains valid: babies don't need that much stuff, and expensive togs are a daft idea until they've noticed that they keep pooing on themselves and have decided to make efforts to pull themselves together and stop that.

The size of baby buggies blows my mind. I would love to invent one that was only slightly larger than the baby (and didn't tip - I've seen some quite gigundous ones heave over backwards when the mum in charge hangs loads of shopping off the handles. Surely this can be factored in by giving the mother a place to hang/put the shopping which is directly above the wheelbase? DESIGNED BY MEN, BAH!

I'm the same way about the pointlessness of kitchen gadgets, very few of which are actually useful (though the ones that are are indispensable. I don't know how I cooked anything before I got my Kitchenaid and have to hold back from buying it little presents to tell it I love it).

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Ah, Kitchenaids are things of loveliness that deserve little presents.

And god, yes - the size of buggies is enraging. We simply don't have room in our flat for any of these glorified tractors. And the few relatively compact models that exist like to charge an extra couple of hundred quid for the privilege. (I bet they have tiny buggies in Japan. They're much better at smallification than we are)

[chiller.livejournal.com]

I am going to add this to the list of "Things That Are Absurdly and Infuriatingly Overpriced AND Poorly Designed".

- Baby buggies
- Omlet chicken houses.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Isn't it vaguely offensive to the inhabitants to call a chicken house Omlet?

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's not the most sensitive name ever, is it?

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Yay for Primarni sensibleness when it comes to babygrows - I winced at some of the stuff a relative of mine bought from ridiculously expensive babywear shops (partly the price but mostly the fact that it was hideous*) and she winced when she realised some of it was dry clean only and so consigned to the bin after one bit of sicked up bottle.

Plus they can always be dyed different colours or painted on with fabric paints or dressed up with mad cardies - which hopefully my Mum is putting together as I type....


* IMHO dressing your child like Little Lord Fauntleroy on acid is only a good idea for a fancy dress party and when you have made the costume yourself.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Hee hee, I'm certainly capable of inflicting handmade horrors on the poor boy. (That and stripes... I'm so addicted to them that his newborn wardrobe is almost entirely made up of convict-chic)

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Convict-chic is so where it's at for new borns :-) though my brian did momentarily confuse the word convict with convent and then I had a mental picture of a baby in a wimple and I thought 'hey that looks good'....

Thanks to my pernicious long distance influence and the cheapness of primarni t-shirts with skulls on my eldest nephew is mostly dressed in those - I'm calling it a result. Plus he loves wearing them too as he loves anything to do with pirates or Thomas or robots.

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Brain!!!!!! doh!!!!!!

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I think baby stuff is second only to wedding stuff for randomly adding an extra digit or two to the price; it's outrageous! Primarni is definitely the way to go; for work purposes, I sometimes frequent NCT sales, and the number of brand-new-with-tags expensive designer baby outfits that come through those, whose original owners obviously outgrew them before they had any special enough occasions to go to (because seriously, how many posh parties does the average 6-month-old get invited to?) is just silly. Given that they an easily go through five a day, go for cheap and washable (boil-washable for the first couple of months if possible!) and save the fancy stuff for when they've stopped vomiting and pooing with quite such abandon!

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

We went to just such an NCT sale on Sat and picked up a few bargainous items. (I do like the idea of reusing stuff that has nothing wrong with it rather than endlessly fuelling the manufacture of expensive new things.)

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

The sales themselves are awesome, yes; my friend S has two little boys, and has picked up loads of clothes, toys, and other equipment for them, new or nearly new (sometimes still in the original packaging) for very very cheap, and it's a much better option that throwing perfectly good stuff away, or letting it sit in an attic for years!

[tvted.livejournal.com]

Maybe we should have been knitting your baby gros (how do you spell that in the plural?) for the last 9 months?
Baby stuff is only just behind having a wedding for lets whack on an addtional 35% to the cost of everything.
I am sure you realise you could come up with the best name in the book and we are still going to call him Ruprecht!
I am still jealous you are off even if it does involve DIY and achy feet

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

I think he will forever be Rup for me too...

As for knitted babygros, I think I'd be traumatised every time he sicked up on something that had been hand-knitted by people with such skillz and dedication!

Hope your Monday was ok at work... mine was another day of hardcore decorating + midwife (but at least now the spare room walls are done - and I am ready to flop. Hoorah!)