Floor Swimming

So what have I been up to lately, you ask?

A little work, a little play, but the short answer is that I've been up to nothing. Yet I've been oddly busy. Not in a bad way, just a busy way. 

Have you ever had one of those weeks where you feel like you did the army crawl through a mud-drenched obstacle course and then, at the very end, you got hosed down with elephant dung? This wasn't one of them. This was just one of those weeks on the hamster wheel, where you do one little thing you have to do and then another and then another and the next thing you know, you're a week closer to death and no more fulfilled than you were last Monday, and you still haven't done the things you really meant to do. And now it's Tuesday and I've caught the sniffles. 

The good news is that while I was busy chasing my tail, young Noodle was moving in better circles, namely floor circles. For a couple weeks now she's been wheeling around on her belly like a top*. Progress was marginal until yesterday morning's nap. When she awoke she could propel herself forwards with her fingertips and tippy toes. Ladies and gentleman, McNoodle has achieved locomotion. Crawling ahoy! 

Hope you're achieving great things this week. And I'll be cheerier tomorrow. *Sniff*

* I haven't seen anyone playing with a top in years and in all my recent visits to diverse toy stores I have not seen a single top. I haven't even thought about toy tops (or semi-professional tops, for that matter) in years. Do they even do tops any more? 

Booting Out Baby

In the oceanic dusk of four a.m., a voice rings out. It rolls across the hills and valleys of our bed, ever more insistent, like the refrain of a lonely humpback whale. 

"Awawawaoooooooooooooh," she sings. "AwaaaawaahahahaOOOoooWAHHHHHhhhooo."

Fast asleep, leg still in hand, by 9 a.m.

"Please, no," says a different, hoarse voice. It might be mine. "Please. Just ten more minutes." 

And so it has come to pass that we are throwing our daughter out. It's time for her to have her own room. A room far, far away where we can supervise her via a creepy spy cam and--crucially--turn off the volume in the event of a non-emergency. 

The good news is that we have two bedrooms. The bad news is that since we were co-sleeping anyway, our so-called "nursery" has never been anything more than a disgusting hoarder's paradise. It's where we hang our laundry. It's where we keep tools and our tent. It's also where we keep stuff that we're just not that into. Like, you know, stuff we just use but that we don't like to talk about with other people. Towels that are clean but discolored. My orange shopping trolley. Swiffers. Stuff with a good personality.

No one show my mother this photo.  

About a month ago we realized it was time to take action. It was time for a clean break. So obviously, instead of doing that, we took out what will soon be the babe's crib and painted it white, and then re-inserted it among the jumble. 

Pro Crastinating. 

Then it was really time to start sorting through the nonsense, so the next weekend we went out to the hardware store for supplies, came home and constructed little pinewood feet with which to elevate the crib and the pull-out sofa. 

Then we really were going to clean that room up, but first we needed to put the little feet under the furniture so we could stow our suitcases, but this was a chicken-and-egg dilemma that would involve real commitment, so we just ignored it completely for another week.

Dude, it's hard to break up with some stuff. But eventually, we did. Okay, actually we just hid it better, but that's basically the same thing. 

And voila! We now have a plain and empty bedroom. So what if all the furniture hovers two-and-a-half feet over the floor, as if a baby giant is about to move in. It's stuff-free and we're ready for the fun part: decorating!

Floating furniture. And yes, that's our laundry.
Look, it has to go somewhere.