Baby Jail: Happy to be Locked Up

This weekend has the potential to to be a shining star on my November social calendar. Friday, what is sure to be the birthy fundraising event of the year is happening in Nulu and Saturday a group of my closest friends are getting together for food, adult beverages, and excellent conversation, at the newly opened El Camino in the Highlands. A place I've been dying to try.  My calendar, however, is blank...unless you count renting The Brave Little Toaster and watching it with my three year old.

The reason for this is we're in baby jail, a not-so-flattering term for declining adult only events because your child won't take a bottle, is having separation anxiety, or just isn't ready for a babysitter yet. In our case it's a little of all of that.

Hillary and I tried a dinner date a few weeks ago and ended up eating our dinner out of Styrofoam boxes in our living room. The babysitter called after an hour and a half (we waited 45 min for a table) saying Marlowe had been screaming the entire time. I wasn't entirely surprised. Hill and I laughed and got our food to go. But I have to admit there was a brief moment at that restaurant, as I was slamming my mojito, in which I thought maybe we should just stay. Familiar voices crept into my mind: the baby will be fine, crying is good for her lungs, you have to live your life.

I snapped out of it pretty quickly and remembered that my husband and I have chosen a different path for our family. We want to make decisions that respect our kids and their feelings and emotions, and that means taking into consideration the undeveloped emotional state and understanding of our five month old. I thought of her crying for two hours because she needed her parents, okay, let's be real, her mom, and my decision was easy. We'll try again when she's older.

So this weekend, while I will miss celebrating a huge accomplishment for local women and enjoying delicious food with my besties, it's okay. This time with baby Marlowe is fleeting. Soon she'll be toddler Marlowe and before we know it middle-schooler Marlowe and I'll be wishing I had some of that separation anxiety back in our lives.

Acquiring Kids Clothes

{My favorite outfit for B last summer. He still wears this American Apparel cardi.}

Kids clothes - I can not think of a more perfect thing to reuse, however you may get them, passed down from friends or family, snagged at a second hand shop or haggled for at a local yard sale. I mean, in that first year, they wear them for like 3 months and are grown out of them in no time, sometimes even before a second wear. Holiday outfits, I'm talking to you.

We have been very fortunate to be on the receiving end of some serious clothing and toy purges from our family and friends. Being the oldest child of not only my immediate family, but my extended, I had not experienced the awesomeness that are hand-me-downs. I love when our friends and family with older kids clean out their closets! Now that I'm thinking of it, my children may not always share my enthusiasm for this, but I still have a good few years of personal excitement while going through a new bag of used clothes.

Alas, the hand-me-downs don't fill every need and can be sporadic (also part of the fun, you never know when they're coming.) As summer approaches, we need some 3T essentials for Becks and as our due date approaches we need some little girl clothes. That's a lot of clothes to pick out at the local Once Upon A Child. I mean, have you ever tried to purchase clothing there? I love the concept, but it's like shopping at the local Good Will, also a place I'm glad exists, but just don't have the patience to rummage through the over packed racks for a few pairs of toddler shorts. (In my youth, I used to do this all the time, but have lost my taste for it over the years.)

This made me wish I could buy an assorted mix of kids clothes in a bundle, like the grab bag option at American Apparel. Which is, incidentally, my favorite place to buy kids clothes new. Solid color basics, made of natural fibers here in the U.S. (fair and safe working conditions - hello Bangladesh). Have you ever tried to find a t-shirt at Target or Babies R Us that doesn't say "Daddy's Little Girl" or "Mommy's Little Monster." It's hard and, just, gag.

Enter my new obsession: buying children's clothes by the lot. You get a bunch of clothes all at once and can search by any size. There are actually a lot of options out there. I was surprised. Okay, so I haven't actually purchased anything yet, but I have my eye on a few very colorful and floral pattern heavy collections of baby girl clothes on eBay. I started searching Craigslist, which I can see the upside being more instant gratification because you can generally pick them up locally, same day. 

However, people who use Craigslist are kind of incapable of focusing a camera and I didn't want to waste the gas to find out all of the clothes were stained or smelled like cigarettes. The eBay users are pretty good with a camera, for the most part, and know the benefit of multiple photos.

So who has been doing this forever? Tips? I'm clearly a newbie, but am in love with the idea of getting a bunch of new-to-us stuff all at once while saving the Earth and our money.

Ina May Gaskin Movie

Last night I saw a screening of the documentary - Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin & the Farm Midwives. It was so inspiring and amazing, not just because I'm a woman who happens to be pregnant, but because these women came up and into themselves in a time and place that let them bloom into exactly the people they were supposed to be. I think that's a hard thing for women, and men, today. Midwifery is such a calling and passion for all the women in the movie. It's a rare thing to get an in depth view of.

(I wanted to post the trailer, but free Wordpress won't let me. Watch the trailer here. Wordpress has many rules I'm finding. It's distressing. I will be moving the blog as soon as I can. But more on that later. )

As impressed as I was with the documentary, the midwives, the footage of all the different births and Ina May herself - she's a big time hero of mine - I was impressed with our birthing community. Woman and families of Louisville, you rock. I don't know the official turn out, but it had to be around 200 people. There were tables set up before hand with so many of our wonderful birth related service providers, from doulas to placenta encapsulation ladies, everyone was represented. After the screening there was a panel of local midwives, including two from my own birth team who answered questions and lead a very interesting discussion on the state of midwifery in KY today.

It's so heartening to be in a community that shares so many of the things I hold so dear to my heart.