shhhh, don't tell

One of Santa's elves has let me in on a little secret...

Santa is bringing Millipede THIS for Christmas!!!


Camilla Engman cot sheet.

A bit of a splurge really, but one that will certainly help to ease my pain of having to get up to the little one with the shouty-mouth 5 times a night. How thoughtful of Santa! ;D

confounding

Screen Print by VWorkshop on Etsy.

YIKES, I really have dropped off the face of the internet haven't I? I have so so many months of Millipede catch-ups to do, and months and months of general life news to. But right now I am tired.

So so so so very tired.

Millipede has reached a plethora of "stages" seemingly simultaneously; teething, crawling, separation anxiety, and an apparent 9 month sleep regression stage. At least I'm using all those as reasoning for his horrendous nights at the moment. And when I say horrendous I mean I can no longer form whole words, let alone sentences.

Luckily during the daytime he is the cutest, most gorgeous, adorable thing on the face of the planet. It's a survival mechanism. A very very clever one ;)

But check this for a *can't think of a good word, insert one here, with your own well functioning brains*... during the night he will wake if my clothing brushes softly against a wall, and just every hour anyway, but today he slept through the smoke alarm going off right outside his bedroom door! TWICE!!!!!!!

the making of memories

The strangest thing just happened to me.

A little backstory first though...

People would describe Mr You as a collected, calm, generally co-ordinated "got it together" kind of guy. Though sometimes, once in a very very blue moon, something, well, strange happens.

The first time it happened was waaaay back in the very beginning. We had been good friends at uni for a year and a half before we became a couple. I count the first time we kissed as when we crossed over into couple-dom, and it was during this first night...

...I was working on a Photoshop piece for uni, way back before Photoshop even had layers (yes folks, I'm getting a little long in the tooth). Mr You had his own computer at home at the time, and being skilled and generous as he was, he invited me to come over to borrow his computer to finish off my work.

It was during this evening (before the kissing started) that the first "strange event" occurred.

I was sitting at his computer, he was crossing the room towards me, he said something I swiveled in the office chair to face him as he spoke, he tripped on the corner of the rug and head-butted me with his big noggen on his way down. I broke his fall and was almost concussed in the process.

I tried really hard to not cry infront of him, he blushed bright crimson, and after the shock and awe of it all wore off we laughed, hard! We still laugh at that.

Somehow we ended up kissing that night. Perhaps he thought he needed to give me a concussion for that to occur?


Flash forward another year... Now we're a couple. I'm hanging out with him in his funny little uni-student-share-house-bedroom, it's morning and we're getting ready to go out for the day. He pops the top off his deodorant bottle, flips the bottle high in the air intending for it to spin, him catch it, and then apply it to his manly-pits all in one smooth impressive move. What actually happened was as he flipped it high in the air he lost control, it spun and hit me square in the head. Again, pain, but eventually, and to this day, many tears of laughter!

Getting the pattern here?


So just now, baby is finally having a day sleep (HALAY-JULIA), I'm sitting here quietly at the kitchen table replying to emails, Mr You comes in from his office an we have a quiet whispered chat as he makes himself a cup of tea. All seems safe and well, right? Wrong!

What happens next is the single strangest thing, I'm still baffled and laughing...

He comes up behind me and gives me a little kiss on the back of my neck, goes picks up his full cup of tea, pauses, walks back towards me purposefully, is half way through saying "hang on", then POURS THE CUP OF TEA DOWN MY BACK!!!!

I can only assume the rest of his sentence was going to be "Hang on, you'd do well to taste more tea-like".


I'm in tears of laughter typing this now. I still can not explain to you WHY this happened, or what his original intention was. All I know is that one minute I was safe, the next I'M COVERED FROM EARHOLE TO BUM-CRACK IN HOT TEA!!!

We both yelped, jumped, queried, exclaimed, wiped and laughed... all in hushed don't-wake-the-baby tones.

Thankfully Mr You drinks his tea very milky or I could have suffered a nasty scold and be left trying to explain the whole soggy incident to Family Protection.

little papercup

Oi, if I was more on top of that illusive notion that is time, I would have told you all about the grand opening of a gorgeous new shop who will be selling my wares.

Little Papercup is a new shop/gallery space, run by the incredible illustrator that is Jo Dyer. I was tickled pink when she invited me to be involved.

Anyhoo, the shop opened just yesterday, and now it's alive and kickin'!!!






If you're in or near Newcastle, stop in for a cuppa one crafternoon!

Shop 18/19 Market Square Terrace Level, Hunter Street Mall, Newcastle, Australia 2300.
Hours: Tues - Fri, 11:00am to 5:00pm. And Sat, 10:00am to 2:00pm.

If you're not near by, you can always be facebook friends anyway :)

through rose coloured glasses

I've returned from our month away, (we've been in Sydney) all keen and eager to get back onboard the home renovation train. We don't really have the skills, time, or money to do anything major at the moment, so I'm directing my ambitions to smaller corners.

Our front door has bad yellow 1970's glass panels in it, but it's otherwise a pretty nice door. So I'm thinking of replacing the 6 yellow glass panels. Mr You was thinking of normal clear frosted glass. I, on the other hand, am thinking colours. Mr You said I'd need to sell the idea to him, so here goes...





















Image sources: Historic House Parts, Wallpaper for Windows, DIY Designs, Mama's Happy, and ezl.com. Thank-you.

pink for girls, and blue, stripes and cars for boys

I love the colour blue, but I'm putting my foot down. Enough already!

Trying to dress a baby boy I've come to learn how uninspired baby clothing can be. I mean practically everything is pale blue (despite all the amazing shades blue has to offer), and for a boy it's a choice of stripes or traffic (cars, trucks, planes, trains...), it's like a smoggy old peak hour out there!

What about red, grey, green, orange, purple, yellow, brown, maroon, aqua? Or even some variations of blue?

So this article on Etsy really caught my attention...

- - - - -

As reported by Jeanne Maglaty for Smithsonian:

In June 1918, an article from the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department advised, "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." Through the following decades, several department stores, including Filene's, Halle's and Marshall Field, recommended that boys be dressed in pink.

Maglaty describes the turning point as the women's liberation movement in the mid-1960s. Young women gravitated toward gender neutral clothing to rebel against the subservient role of women dictated by society. But by the mid-1980s, gendered clothing returned in a big way...
..."All of a sudden it wasn’t just a blue overall; it was a blue overall with a teddy bear holding a football."

- - - - -

Fascinating!

(Remind me to do a show-and-tell of all the teddy bear reassignment surgeries I've done too).

To be honest, the challenge of finding clothes for Millipede that are a little more unique is kind of thrilling me at the moment. So when friends gifted us these I was nearly beside myself!


Alpaca jumper sent from Bolivia from friends currently traveling around the world. Apparently made by a woman who's been doing it for over 20 years.


And these gorgeous pants; "coffee bean" fabric hand printed, and pants designed and handmade by my friend who runs Hyde Clothing.

four months

This month things got easier. Life with Millipede became all sorts of fun.

Now he's entertainable! We've always read books and sung him songs, but now he smiles to let you know he's enjoying it. I took him shopping for a new toy, waving a selection in front of him one by one, and there was a clear winner (a suspicious looking stick-shaped red elephant, we like to call Saveloy), he selected it by himself, with nothing more than a giant smile.



I marvel that life with Millipede has changed; as a newborn his default setting was crying (to be fed, sleep, pain), but suddenly it has shifted so dramatically that his default setting (for want of a better phrase) is smiley. And it's made a huge difference. Now we know he's having fun too!

That's not all that's changed. For some ungodknown reason I've started referring to myself in the third person as "mummy". Why does this happen?!
I sing everything as though I'm in a musical. We have songs for everything; walking around the house, getting dressed, his beautiful face, his nicknames, even pushing poo's through!!!
And when I'm not narrating our day through song, I find myself singing adult songs with the word 'baby' in them.

It's a strange and wonderful life, this life with our boy...

Our boy who receives compliments about his blue eyes, and who's eyelashes are often likened to Mr Snuffleupagus's.



Our boy who talks and talks. Obviously he doesn't understand language yet, thinking when we're speaking to each other it's merely a sequence of random sounds rather than words. And in this understanding he joins in with great gusto. When we return home from a day out he "retells" his day to Mr You with such conviction.

He has started repeating sounds, saying what sounds like "How good", to which we have many replies; very good thanks, super, not so good right now... and I overheard Mr You reply "over the moon" the other day. :)



He drools alot, spends much of his day battling between grabbing at his knees and feet (both new discoveries), or stuffing his whole fists in his mouth. He pokes his tongue out a little when concentrating, and makes a quiet num-num-num noise, like a little engine, when he's feeding.

MAN, we though he was cute before, but now... well quite frankly the cuteness is rediculous!
And of all his expressions, we often wonder if it's bad that the one we find cutest, the one that cracks us up and makes us melt the most is this one:



The one with the big bottom lip, that threatens imminent tears.

But perhaps my favourite thing about this month is that when I pick you up now, you wrap your little arms around me.