Parenthood: day twenty-seven

There is some triple-nap action happening in our house these days (Oliver, Danijela, Pippin), and it is making clear the limitations of our space. We have six and a half rooms (using Québec notation, and not including the cramped utility/tool room and laundry corridor). The nursery, where Oliver sleeps during the day, is off the kitchen and has a hollow door that might as well be a beaded curtain for all the sound it blocks. However, it is currently the darkest room in the house and will probably remain so. Our bedroom is in the basement, away from the general noise (but beside the laundry) but has no curtain, and Danijela doesn't like to nap there. So when it's nap time, which means at least Oliver is sleeping, possibly Danijela, and almost definitely the cat, we or I must be very, very quiet. You might not think that a problem, but I'm used to spending a fair amount of time in the kitchen, and it drastically limits what we can do during these periods. It's not like I've got a lot of time to cook when Oliver's awake!

It's clear that we did not consider the implications of locating the kid's room beside the kitchen, for the near or distant future. Only now am I thinking of what it will mean when, at any time in the next few years, we want to have guests after, you know, seven o'clock. Ha ha ha!

We could put Oliver down to nap in our bedroom, but that is a temporary solution, as eventually we'll want him to sleep in the nursery day and night. We could also switch bedrooms, but some of you will know that we already did that in preparation for baby time, and we would be loath to do it again, for a number of reasons. For one, we bought a bed that won't fit in the nursery! The current arrangement is definitely a far better use of space, in my opinion, but it does present challenges. I can only hope that a good new door will take care of the greatest of them. If you will indulge my home renovationist for  a moment, we had hoped to put a nice french door there, and maybe even open up the wall a bit, but I don't think that'll be happening now! Of course, pretty near all of our planned renovations are in doubt now—except the bathroom. That must happen!

Notes

Oliver has clearly grown heavier, and we'll find out just how much tomorrow at our four-week (!) midwife appointment, another trip into Kensington, hopefully with less rain than last time.

Tomorrow will be four weeks of parenting! We haven't dropped Oliver yet, although he occasionally seems intent on lurching from our grasp.

I am intent on making the most of this glorious late summer weather and spending lots of time outdoors, preferably away from our property. I would like to spend time in the garden, which I've sorely neglected, leaving it to the whiteflies. There are tomatoes to harvest and plants to prune—always—but there's also lots of other household/personal/baby stuff to do.

Such as:

Cleaning diapers! A friend asked the other day how I'm dealing with diaper stains. I said I'm not bothering, which seems to me the only reasonable course of action. But I didn't mention that we're using diaper covers that hide any stains. Know this: cloth diapers will stain. Since we're using diaper covers, the important thing is not necessarily to whiten the diapers themselves, but just to make sure we thoroughly clean and rinse them. When the diapers reach a stain level where we can no longer stand to look a them, I suppose I'll bleach them and rinse, rinse, rinse. However, we have some diapers made of unbleached organic cotton and I'd hate to treat them that way. Those I might boil, treat with some other stain remover, and hang in the sun. Heck, if that works, I'll do it to all of them. But for now, they've mostly got pale green blotches, and that's okay by me.

Reading (about babies)! Our doula recommended Your Baby & Child: from Birth to Age Five by Penelope Leach as her go-to baby book, and we took it out from the library last week. I've only just started reading it, but it's very reassuring.

More later. Gotta go hang some diapers while the sun is shining!