1
Jul
2010
Björn it Up Baby
Baby Bjorn Babysitter Balance
I’ll admit that I like Baby Björn branding. It’s not just the clever word play, it’s that it also makes me think of Björn Borg and I can’t help but think that a little bit of his retro cool might rub off on me if I buy something from Baby Björn*. It’s his general coolness I’m aspiring to you understand, not his wardrobe at the peak of his fame – I’m not going to start wearing tight white shorts, long socks and terri towelling headbands. Though I don’t doubt there are some very fashionable people that could carry that off. I just don’t have the legs for it. Or the hair.
But I drew the line at the 80 plus euro for a baby chair/baby sitter/bouncing cradle. I remembered the metal frame strung with some slightly flexible material that people used from my youth and it didn’t seem necessary to buy an expensive, branded version. There must be dozens of alternatives I assumed. They’re so simple. Well, actually not.
28
Jun
2010
The morning routine
This week, on about the fourth day of the week, as The Spaniard left for work and I swore about something Monkey had done, I saw a distinct look on his face that said, “Good grief, I’m married to this woman”.
To be fair, punching the wall in response to Monkey wheeling in to my achilles heel with his baby walker was an overreaction. But it wasn’t really about the minor injury. It was about the tipping point of stress and frustration reached before hand – that brought on by THE MORNING ROUTINE.
We start with a bottle. It goes spectacularly well, if I may say so. I give him the bottle, he drinks it. It’s poetry. Sure, he appears to have no interest in ever holding the bottle himself or learning to drink from a cup, but I’m not overly ambitious on that front.
I give him a few minutes for the milk to settle while I try and finish getting dressed. This is when he starts tearing down everything from every shelf, table, bench top or other reachable point in the house. If I get particularly tired of removing USB chords from his mouth I put him in his baby walker. This is when he starts to ram it into my achilles heel or roll it over my toes more or less continuously in an effort to be close to me. Bless.
