Over-stuffed

Babywhumpus has received its first gift, but until he or she gets here, it's mine, and that means it's not the cats'. Christine brought over a beautiful little baby blanket that looks like it should belong to a baby mermaid, which is kind of what I have in there right now, anyway. Isn't it Beautiful?

I just finished one baby blanket, I have another started, and my mom has been commissioned to crochet her special rainbow blanket that my niece and nephew both have and that I want. It might be one of the main reasons I am having a baby--to get that blanket. I have always been a sucker for arranging colors into rainbows.

I also have a little sweater and booties in the knitting queue, along the rainbow lines. The sweater and booties are both stripey, which is another favorite thing of mine.









Beyond that, I bought a monkey just before we got married. It's a stuffed monkey; I am not insane. I saw it at Whole Foods and could not resist. It's organic cotton and so adorable. Another reason to have a baby. If I don't, I am just a 37 year old woman with a stuffed monkey.

Oh, there's also our basement which is full of Rubbermaid bins courtesy of Aunt Cindy and Uncle Steve. I suppose I should start looking through those and organizing them. The family has been passing around baby things since 1980, I think, when my cousin Mary was born, and it has all been on hold with Ruth who had the last girl (my niece, Ashley) and Cindy and Steve, who have the soon-to-be-no-longer-the-youngest, Christopher (he's very pleased about this fact, by the way). When Cindy and Steve were moving to Boston, they shipped it up here rather than take it with them, which made sense.

Hand-mades, hand-me-downs, and second-hand items are spectacular and preferred in my world. I am all about the "hands." Given that we are already surrounded by the detritus of twenty-eight years of other people's child-rearing, we are already overwhelmed with stuff, and we don't want anything unnecessary. I am going to be pretty specific about new things that we need because they will have to be created from sustainable, healthy materials. Luckily, we have a number of shops here in the Twin Cities for such things, and I have collected a number of other resources as well. I am already dreading the grotesque horror of a Baby Shower because I find the whole idea to be repellent. Sitting around in broad daylight opening gifts while people watch you sounds like my idea of a tiny nightmare. The fact that they are usually all women is a further travesty. It's the sort of thing I would normally have to be drunk for, and as that's not an option anymore, it poses a conundrum. I'll have to do some thinking about how I want something like that to be, if I want something like that at all.

I am so difficult.