Showing posts with label Stars & Flowers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stars & Flowers. Show all posts
Friday, August 7, 2015
No Sleep Till Brooklyn. I mean, Gingerbreadtown
We - that is, my husband - decided to "sleep train" our son. Now, I apparently agreed to this but I can't remember doing so (which is what happens when you're sleep deprived), so my husband read all of the Expert Literature on getting babies to sleep and decided we would do the "gentle method" (as it's called in German.) This involves putting baby down to sleep with some nice cuddles and soothing words, then leaving the room, only to return at regular, short intervals to soothe him and reassure him you're there. It works, I was promised. Even my friend Sandra reported her sister's success - it worked for her son and sometimes he even screamed for an hour and a half.
Oh, I laughed bitterly.
My son can scream in pure rage and fury for FOUR hours. FOUR HOURS, people. If we leave him alone for more than three minutes, there's an ominous silence, followed by more Screams of Rage: that's the point when we have to go in an extricate him from the bars of the cot or from underneath the mattress where, bizarrely, he has managed to jam a hand or leg. After ten days of intense battles, we have reduced the screaming to 90 minutes on a bad night and he hasn't lost a finger on a bed spring yet, despite his best efforts.
Now, let me just remind you of the facts: we are two adults in our late thirties. My husband hit 6' (180cm) and kept going for a bit. I'm not a small girl, not by anyone's standards. Yet our nine-month-old demonstrates a strength and stamina that leaves us speechless (and sleepless). If he wants to get down off our knees, he's getting down. If he wants to climb into the washing machine, well, darnit, he's going to climb in. And if he thinks there's a chance to get out of the cot, he will do his utmost, by hook or by crook, to escape Baby Alcatraz.
Anyway ... let's move on to more exciting things. My latest pattern is being tested by two sets of nice ladies, with eagle eyes and sharpened hooks. It's called Stars & Flowers because ... well, maybe you might see why:
It's close to finished and I hope it'll be ready to download just as the weather turns cool in the northern hemisphere (i.e. by September, at the latest!)
Read more »
Oh, I laughed bitterly.
My son can scream in pure rage and fury for FOUR hours. FOUR HOURS, people. If we leave him alone for more than three minutes, there's an ominous silence, followed by more Screams of Rage: that's the point when we have to go in an extricate him from the bars of the cot or from underneath the mattress where, bizarrely, he has managed to jam a hand or leg. After ten days of intense battles, we have reduced the screaming to 90 minutes on a bad night and he hasn't lost a finger on a bed spring yet, despite his best efforts.
Now, let me just remind you of the facts: we are two adults in our late thirties. My husband hit 6' (180cm) and kept going for a bit. I'm not a small girl, not by anyone's standards. Yet our nine-month-old demonstrates a strength and stamina that leaves us speechless (and sleepless). If he wants to get down off our knees, he's getting down. If he wants to climb into the washing machine, well, darnit, he's going to climb in. And if he thinks there's a chance to get out of the cot, he will do his utmost, by hook or by crook, to escape Baby Alcatraz.
Anyway ... let's move on to more exciting things. My latest pattern is being tested by two sets of nice ladies, with eagle eyes and sharpened hooks. It's called Stars & Flowers because ... well, maybe you might see why:
It's close to finished and I hope it'll be ready to download just as the weather turns cool in the northern hemisphere (i.e. by September, at the latest!)
A Dirty Floor and the Creative Urge
Up till yesterday morning, my kitchen floor was filthy. Really, really dirty. When my sister and her family left, they also left behind a floor that suffered for a week beneath ten pairs of mucky feet, fresh in the door from rainy playgrounds and damp sandboxes. And I meant to clean it, honest I did. It's just so ... tiresome. I hate housework, I really do. The advent of mobile devices has assuaged my hatred somewhat, as I now can watch documentaries about the Vikings on my iPad while scrubbing the bathtub, but given the choice, I'd rather not scrub anything, ever.
While here, Emily and I talked about her now-hibernating project to co-write (with other people, not me) about being a creative mother (or maybe that should be: Creative Mother). We came to the conclusion that it's very hard to teach someone how to be creative - and probably the last thing you ought to write a book about. If you're creative, you spend every single spare minute doing things and making things and thinking about ways to do and make things. You don't need to make the conscious decision to do this, you do it because not doing it is like not scratching an itch, not removing an eyelash from your eyeball or a stone from your shoe. You do it because you have to. If you're like me, your Amazon shopping basket is possibly full of soap-making supplies, your living room is full of bags of yarn, you have pens and notebooks stashed everywhere and a crochet hook in your nightstand. You also have a dirty kitchen floor, an over-flowing hamper of unwashed laundry (and, on that subject, you probably can't remember where you put your iron, it's been so long since you used it.) You occasionally shovel a spoon of apple purée in your infant son's ear, because you're daydreaming about your next project and don't notice him bend down to fetch a fallen toy.
See? Not the kind of thing you write about, not something whose virtues you extol in connection with mothering, as much of my creative urge results in neglected household duties and an apple-eared child.
But what's creativity anyway? One of my friends is adamantly uncreative in the traditional sense. She can't draw for toffee, she says. She mangled a scarf in knitting class forty years ago and has not picked up a needle since. But she's tidy, oh my goodness, she's tidy. She cleans and tidies for fun. Her house is beautiful, her cupboards are a joy. She puts things in order - by shape, size, colour, age. She expresses herself through order and organisation and I am every bit as much in awe and envy of her skills as she is of mine. I could no sooner teach her to be spontaneously creative than she could teach me to spontaneously clean. While my kitchen floor would make her itch, I can blithely ignore it till I have done more important (to me) things, like sew together a stack of motifs, testing my latest pattern:
When the last treads were woven in, photos taken and uploaded, then I got out the mop and did the kitchen floor. I now have a clean kitchen and a new blanket - happiness all round!
Read more »
While here, Emily and I talked about her now-hibernating project to co-write (with other people, not me) about being a creative mother (or maybe that should be: Creative Mother). We came to the conclusion that it's very hard to teach someone how to be creative - and probably the last thing you ought to write a book about. If you're creative, you spend every single spare minute doing things and making things and thinking about ways to do and make things. You don't need to make the conscious decision to do this, you do it because not doing it is like not scratching an itch, not removing an eyelash from your eyeball or a stone from your shoe. You do it because you have to. If you're like me, your Amazon shopping basket is possibly full of soap-making supplies, your living room is full of bags of yarn, you have pens and notebooks stashed everywhere and a crochet hook in your nightstand. You also have a dirty kitchen floor, an over-flowing hamper of unwashed laundry (and, on that subject, you probably can't remember where you put your iron, it's been so long since you used it.) You occasionally shovel a spoon of apple purée in your infant son's ear, because you're daydreaming about your next project and don't notice him bend down to fetch a fallen toy.
See? Not the kind of thing you write about, not something whose virtues you extol in connection with mothering, as much of my creative urge results in neglected household duties and an apple-eared child.
But what's creativity anyway? One of my friends is adamantly uncreative in the traditional sense. She can't draw for toffee, she says. She mangled a scarf in knitting class forty years ago and has not picked up a needle since. But she's tidy, oh my goodness, she's tidy. She cleans and tidies for fun. Her house is beautiful, her cupboards are a joy. She puts things in order - by shape, size, colour, age. She expresses herself through order and organisation and I am every bit as much in awe and envy of her skills as she is of mine. I could no sooner teach her to be spontaneously creative than she could teach me to spontaneously clean. While my kitchen floor would make her itch, I can blithely ignore it till I have done more important (to me) things, like sew together a stack of motifs, testing my latest pattern:
When the last treads were woven in, photos taken and uploaded, then I got out the mop and did the kitchen floor. I now have a clean kitchen and a new blanket - happiness all round!
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