7 weeks to go, growing a little reader

I was a big reader as a child, and still make regular trips to the library and semi-regular purchases at Half.com. I've been planning out baby J's reading material for a while, collecting books and book ideas since before he was conceived. I am using an old Moleskine notebook that I had taken with me on a trip to London in 2005. I was a children's book buyer for a bookstore at the time, so I wrote down a bunch of great books that I saw at the Tate Modern gift shop to order later. I don't think I looked at the list after I got back, but recently I checked it out and ordered some that I thought looked good. Two came in the mail today, one called I Saw Esau , which has funny poems and great illustrations, and the Everyman's Library book Lullabies and Poems for Children. The one book I couldn't wait to buy was a version of Jabberwocky, beautifully illustrated by Joel Stewart.

I wanted it for my future baby's nursery, and now we have two pages being framed!
My next search is for some Ant & Bee books, which I've heard are being reprinted this year (fingers crossed). They currently are about $100 each used.

Also on his shelves is a book my Dad gave me, which is still one of my favorites. It's an illustrated book of creation stories from around the world. It's perfect for a non-religious Anthropology major.
To end, I wanted to post a poem from the Lullabies and Poems for Children book that I found beautiful.

WOMAN TO CHILD

You who were darkness warmed my flesh
where out of darkness rose the seed.
Then all a world I made in me;
all the world you hear and see
hung upon my dreaming blood.

There moved the multitudinous stars,
and coloured birds and fishes moved.
There swarm the sliding continents.
All time lay rolled in me, and sense,
and love that knew not its beloved.

O node and focus of the world;
I hold you deep within that well
you shall escape and not escape-
that mirrors still your sleeping shape;
and nurtures still your crescent cell.

I wither and you break from me;
yet through you dance in living light
I am the earth , I am the root,
I am the stem that fed the fruit,
the link that joins you to the night.

Judith Wright 1915-2000

Help around the house

Biff has been renovating the kitchen from top to bottom, changing out the floor and counter, fixing and painting the walls and cabinets, and making the flow more cohesive into the small attached breakfast room. He's also painted and put together all the furniture in the baby's room. I keep telling everyone that he is doing this by himself, but that's not exactly true. He's had some assistance.

Prickle Socks has been very kind to test out the crib and changing table. She not overly enthusiastic, but she says they will work.

She also helped paint the cabinets. She thought the paint was too light, so she added some dark accents.


Balthasar is slightly less hands-on, but he shares his artistic opinions with us. He laid out a possible tile pattern which we actually really like.

Of course all this hard work is pretty draining for them, so they pass out after a long day.

current thoughts on living

Something about bringing a new human being into the world makes you really want to clean up your act. We've both had an almost reverse nesting instinct. We're trying to cut back on the amount of unnecessary stuff in our lives and household, much to the chagrin of excited future grandparents on both sides. I thought I'd post this to try to explain.

I was really inspired by this simple post "to buy or not to buy" and we had actually been following this philosophy to a large degree in preparing the nursery. We haven't bought a single new piece of furniture for him to date, everything has been Craigslisted or Freecycled. Freecycle also allows us to give away things that we don't need knowing that they are actually needed/wanted by the person who picks them up. We are borrowing a lot of things from friends and family who have recently had babies. With the speed that kids grow out of things like car seats, strollers, and clothes, it makes sense to just pass these around. We've also redone two pieces of furniture that we already had to go in his room, and repurposed others.

I love to shop for baby clothes, and a friend told me she had gotten nearly everything (and she has a really cute collection) from thrift and consignment shops. I make biweekly trips to the area thrift stores and have gotten many many cute things, which I can give right back to the community when he grows out of them. The one exception is handmade goods which we have found on etsy or locally.

Some lifestyle change successes we've had so far: We have only one car, and Biff takes public transportation to and from work in Chapel Hill. We use a clothesline for drying clothes. We save our shower water and use it to flush the toilet. We reuse what we can and recycle the rest. We compost. We (well me really) have been making weekly trips to the library instead of buying books. We have a farm share from Lil Farm, which gives us a box worth of local, organic produce each week.

Next steps in the stuff-reduction plan is to do away with all of the unnecessary cleaning and hygiene products and their plastic packaging. I'm searching for shampoo and detergent refills, with the eventual plan to make homemade laundry detergent. We're using up our current spray bottle cleaners which will be refilled with a simple vinegar, water and baking soda mix from the recipes in the How It All Vegan cookbook. I have several reusable shopping bags and am trying to get Biff to carry the one I got for him. I definitely have to curb my urges to just run to Target, or shop for shoes and clothes online.

Since most likely we will be living with a lower income and increased expenses, we need to scale back anyway. We still have the guilt of being Americans in terms of energy and resource consumption (25% of the world's total energy consumption, 4.56% of the world's population), you've all heard this spiel from me before....but we're trying to shrink our footprint as much as possible.

The Story of Stuff video is one of my favorites and sums up our thoughts pretty well.