A room of baby's own

Every time I move, I put a lot of work into designing my surroundings.  My favorite room was in my college dormitory my junior year, a tiny room on the fourth floor.  I painted it golden yellow (ceiling and all), and sponged it white; I had an old oriental rug, little red lamps on my desk, and a very fluffy black duvet printed with yellow and red roses.  You could crawl over my bed and out the lead-paned gothic window onto a miniscule stone balcony overlooking the courtyard.

For years, the way I decorated never really changed.  I shopped for things in my parents' attics, and at estate sales and on Craig's list.  I relied on old, dark wood furniture, with brightly painted walls, lots of framed paintings and photographs, textured curtains, pillows, and bedspreads, and bookshelves packed with books as well as figurines and boxes that I bought when traveling.  I liked clutter!  Colorful, eclectic clutter.  It could verge towards messy pretty quickly, but when everything was clean and arranged just so, it was quite appealing.

Six months ago, I had a baby.  And everything changed.  I mean everything!  Somehow, unexpectedly, that included the environment I wanted to live in.

Suddenly, all the old dark furniture seemed like an endless, breakable dust repository.  The shelves filled with books and knick-knacks became a safety hazard, and the curtains and oriental rugs made me feel claustrophobic.

While we were visiting family in Taiwan recently, we went to the apartment of some family friends, who had a toddler as well as a baby about the same age as our daughter.  I didn't spend much time looking at their children, though, because my greedy eyes were too busy bouncing around the apartment.

There were bare, silky smooth blonde wood floors.  Built-in everything:  a low couch tucked under a window, shelving, even a bed that rested on a platform built up from the floor.  They did have a few spotless, soft white rugs.  I imagined that you could clean this apartment by sliding the furniture out of a given room and then simply hosing it down.

Unfortunately, new babies are not usually accompanied by a windfall of cash for the purpose of redecorating.  I've had to content myself with little changes.  One of the most satisfying has been packing up all of our rugs to leave our bare wood floors...bare.  It feels like my life is full enough now; I just don't need the clutter anymore.

N.B.:

Once our daughter started to roll and tumble, I realized that the newly bare floors were a bruised forehead just waiting to happen, and we bought one of those foam play mats to cover the floor of the nursery.   Usually they come in primary colors, but in keeping with my newly modern aesthetic, I found one that was printed to look like a light wood floor.  Here are the before and after pictures of our nursery:

With rug... 

New floor mat!

Baby clothes outside the (big) box

So, my baby has maybe 5 items of clothing (ok, not counting socks) that I actually bought for her new--mostly when she was still gestating.

Other than that, everything was via gifts, Craig's list, garage sales, and generous medical school faculty.

I'm really glad that I made the decision to go used, in part for environmental reasons, and in part because jeeezus, that baby grew FAST.  She started out in preemie sizes (she was six pounds and change at birth). She is now very comfortably wearing 12-18 month size.  (Yes, I know, she's not actually six months old yet).  The typical clothing item has lasted under a month before she grew out of it; some were closer to a week.

BUT.

Every so often I still drool over baby clothes.  If anyone out there has a baby in their life that they need to shop for, I suggest thinking a bit outside the (big) box.  Instead of Baby Gap, home of the baby harem pants, try Etsy, home of fabulous home-crafted items.  In my favorite Etsy baby shop, the seller makes things like this beautiful sweater, using felted wool from old sweaters.  They're "upcycled" clothing.  My only issue with it is that, frankly, I'd like one in my size:

Size 6-9 months

Practice Babies

People used to tell us that dogs are like practice babies.  That's true.  Especially if you feed your dogs 10 times a day, bathe them every other day, and change their diapers at least every few hours.  What's that?  Your dogs don't wear diapers?  Oh.

Anyway, we have two dogs (both rescues):

Ginny (L) and Milo (R), reclining in their pre-baby glory

Naturally, when I got pregnant a little over a year ago, we were very concerned about how our first "babies" would fare with the new addition.  Here is a chronology of how we prepared the dogs for the baby.

Many months before the due date:

• We switched to invitation-only couch and bed sharing.  They used to be allowed up whenever; now we pat the couch or bed to invite them up.
• We played Youtube videos of babies crying and laughing.  Their reactions were at first hilarious--there was lots of doggy-head-tilting-to-one-side as they tried to figure out what was going on.  But eventually they didn't even twitch an ear.  That's what we were going for.

The minimalist toy box in 10 easy steps

Before our little bundle of joy and various other bodily fluids arrived, I was determined to spend as little money as possible on baby stuff.  To that end, I scoured neighborhood parent's lists and Craig's list for deals.  And wound up finding a large variety of baby toys for next to nothing; I just threw them all in a bucket of soapy water (for the hard toys) or the washing machine (everything else), and figured that they were cheap enough to buy that if they didn't survive washing, that was O.K.

But for those who may not be so fortunate in finding used toys, here are some suggestions based on the few toys that my daughter has gravitated to over and over again from our considerable selection.  Presenting...the minimalist toy box (for ages 0-6 months):

1) a large open basket (this will help ensure that you actually put toys away occasionally)

2) a medium-sized, soft, light-weight ball (light enough that if it's dropped from a height of several feet onto baby, it won't hurt at all)

3) a large colored scarf (at least 2 feet on each side)

4) some small bells, like sleigh bells, that can be suspended; preferably a few different ones, so that they sound different when hit.

5) a natural rubber chew toy

6) a wooden rattle that can be either hung or held

7) a hand puppet

8) a soft mirror that can stand on the floor for tummy time

9) maybe one classic Lamaze-type toy that has 10 arms with different textures and rattle sounds on each arm

10) you--the most important thing in the box!  You can experiment with hanging toys, or rolling them, or dangling them, or wrapping them in the scarf and knotting it off, or playing peekaboo, or making the puppet dance and sing...your baby will love it all.


[so--what have I missed?  Leave your additions or subtractions in the comments!]

EDIT:  For those who might want to assemble this toy box as a shower gift, I've added some links to suggested products in the "Baby Gear" page, under "Toy Box."