Julie's Boggle

Inspired by my favourite blogger, and the fact that we are having our bedroom windows replaced soon and will need to move or cover most things in our room, Tom and I had a bedroom “declutter” session last Sunday while Jon was napping.

It was great.

Between us we filled about 9 or 10 plastic bags with unwanted clothes and another couple with shoes (mine). Mostly items that were worn out or didn’t fit any more, but also ones that just weren’t getting used. It was hard, but better to go through a brief and traumatic goodbye than to live with a mountain of unnecessary “stuff”.

Tom was much better at it than I was when it came to being ruthless with clothes. He just rationalised. E.g. “I only use tracksuit pants to sleep in. I only sleep in tracksuit pants when I’m cold, which is not often. I have two pairs of tracksuit pants and I only need one, so the older ones can go.” Voilà.

I tried to emulate, with a little less success (my clothing uses and categorisations appear to be a lot more complex than his) , but still whittled my stock pile down so that I probably have only 2 – 3 times more clothes than Tom does at the end of it all!

(The clothes and shoes then went off to the big SCOPE textile recycling container nearby.)

We also filled a black bin liner with things that we really don’t need any more, and created a good-sized pile of paper to be recycled. Again, a bit hard to say goodbye to some things, but best to be brutal and honest about their need and usefulness in one’s life because the alternative is to drown in them.

Sitting back later, the bedroom looks a whole lot better. And we have a whole free shelf in our cupboard to start transferring medicines to, as a pre-emptive step in baby-proofing the bathroom.

Not bad for a couple of hours work!

One by one, Jonathan’s little peers are all gaining a level of mobility that signals the end of their parents’ days of relaxation…

We’ve watched Jon progressing in the general direction of autonomous movement, and are very grateful that for the meanwhile, his primary locomotory skills are limited to rolling.

He manages to get into some rather unusual positions, but on the whole, he seems to find it all enormous fun. In the above shot he is under the coffee table one evening at my parents’ where he got at least 10 minutes of enjoyment!

As we found on holiday, Jon’s random roly-poly explorations are great for keeping him busy after interest in his toys has waned, and while the adults are getting on with their conversations.

He tends to find lots to keep him occupied.

As evidence of this, the dirty face on the right is the result of his protracted, and rather sloppy, stone-tasting experiment with the paving on my folks’ verandah…

Jonathan (10 months) on Umzumbe beach

As usual, the days of our holiday seem to be whizzing by. Already Tom has headed off back to London but Jon and I stay on for another week.

It’s been really good so far. Somehow we’ve managed to see everyone on our list, Kristy and Wayne’s wedding went off really well, and we still feel that we’ve got in a fair bit of relaxing in the (mostly) balmy Durban weather.

Jonathan has been an absolute star all round. Everyone always wants to know how he flew and once again, the answer is “very well”!

He was officially too old for an airline basinette this time but there were a few seats free in our cabin and as I prepared to move a row or two back to make space, the lovely man in an adjacent seat offered to move instead so we could all sit together.

(I should mention that we were in the Business class cabin again in exchange for some thousands of SAA Voyager Miles. Let no one say that Voyager Miles are completely worthless!)

Jon then proceeded to coo and chirp till well past his bedtime. I was somewhat on edge waiting for baby tiredness to set in, with the consequent unhappiness that it typically brings…

But miraculously, that didn’t happen at all! Jonathan finally dropped off quietly at 22h45, after Tom discovered a little panel that could be raised to screen off Jon’s window seat from the rest; thus limiting his view and allowing sleep to take over.

Then at 05h30, I was woken from a restless sleep by some very happy baby burblings… The cabin was mostly dark as there was over an hour to go until breakfast, but young Jon was still enjoying himself.

Tom got creative at this point and made a little tent out of a duvet over Jonathan’s chair. This had two positive effects: (1) burblings muted by the duvet, so less likely to wake anyone else, (2) view severely inhibited so Jon went back to sleep after about 25 minutes.

Of course the trip back with just me will require a bit more work and organisation on my part, but I think I’ll just relax and see what happens! Chances are good that Jon will do the same!