Baby stuff from Africa

If you have a puzzle full of tiny scratchy wooden pieces I do not recommend removing the outer wrapping. The photo above is a picture of my nemesis. Africa puzzle. I bought it for a few dollars in Nairobi. Today I made a bad choice and unwrapped it. I lost all of north and west Africa.

Dozens of tiny tiny confusingly shaped sharp edged puzzle pieces on my office floor.

Luckily I work from home. Which affords me the time to work on puzzles. Of course it couldn't have been Sub-Saharan Africa right? No, it was the entire portion of the continent that I know nothing about and haven't thought about since I took an African civilizations class in college.

The dogs sniffed the pieces and considered eating them. Most of the pieces had jagged edges (new project for J - sandpapering every back surface of this puzzle - should be super enthused to do that!)

Did I use my trusty wall map to figure out which countries go where? No! I did it all on my own and it only took 10 minutes or so. Should only take baby, oh, let's guess at 6 years and at least 10 choking incidents, to get this puzzled solved. For now it is going away in the closet. Far away.

My optimistic summer has been followed by a pessimistic fall.

I think it's because I left for Africa before the leaves even turned yellow and returned to Colorado in a special edition of Denver skips autumn and embraces winter.

Halloween. Y.u.c.k.
Holiday season begins with pumpkin patches and hay rides and costumes and cheery little voices at your door all night.

In my overly active imagination this year we are a safari themed family.
Baby is a giraffe (a magazine - how dare they send this to childless couples?? - arrived last week with tiny children in tiny animal costumes.) So baby is a giraffe. Jeremy could be either a lion or an elephant - something big and manly. And I will be whatever animal is the happiest. We stroll around the neighborhood showing off. Baby learns to say trick or treat. We gobble her candy after she goes to bed. Ahhhh. Maybe next year?

In REALITY Jeremy has to work - this always happens on Halloween for some reason. So it will be another year of answering the door every 2 seconds. Enduring children who barely dress up shoving bags in my face without saying trick or treat. (Who are these parents???) The dogs will be freaking out as usual and I will be promising little hands that they don't bite (and praying that they never make me regret those words.)

At some point I will be stuffed full of cheery Halloween friendliness and so I will turn out the light and ignore the angry teenagers who start coming out later. I will sit on the couch, watch scary movies that I should never watch alone, wonder where my youth went (ahh, remember the year in high school when I convinced mom and dad to let me go to my first Halloween party with COLLEGE friends?!) and eat the rest of the candy in the bowl. Candy that I bought to suit my taste anyway.

Where is this blog going? Oh, yes I think I called it baby stuff from Africa.

I am finding ways to keep cheerful. Mostly this involves baby name game which I use regularly to torture J, my sister, and random friends who are stupid enough to bring up the topic. Window shopping - which actually looks more like looking in the window for one second and then bounding into the store followed by me asking a million questions to the store people and pretending that I'm actually bringing a little someone home in the next few weeks. (A couple of times this has ended awkwardly as they've asked her name, age, etc. Sometimes I make things up and other times I admit I don't know who she is. Bleck. I prefer making it up during this game.) Finally - grand finale - organizing Africa "stuff" in the office/baby room and choosing prototypes for furniture I want J to build for baby.

Whew. Finding ways to stay cheerful really does take a lot of energy!

First up - the bed that J is making for baby. He doesn't love copying other people's designs but we both loved this daybed and we need the bed and trundle for guests anyway.

http://www.ethanallen.com/product?productId=1429&categoryId=8223
(He's building a side rail into the design.)

Second, fabric I bought in Africa for making throw pillow cases for the room. A few of the fabrics are so cute that I'd like to have pajamas or dresses made. I cannot sew though. At all. I will have to find someone willing to do this for me. Preferably for free. Out of pity would be fine.

If you own a sewing machine but do not want to be my new baby seamstress it would be best to pretend you didn't read this.

~A