Firstly – I should mention that this is not a photo of Lily.

It’s a photo of a baby modeling the Zaky Infant Pillow — “The Zaky is an ergonomic infant pillow designed by a mom to mimic the size, weight, touch, and feel of her hand and forearm to help her baby with comfort, support, protection, and development. The Zaky can help calm your baby and help your baby sleep better through the night.”

I put it here because, while part of me thinks these weird cushion hands designed to comfort babies look extremely creepy, there is another (sleep deprived) part of me screaming “Oh what a brilliant idea! Where can I get a pair?” When Amelia was just a little bit older than the age Lily is now we were considering the idea of robots and monkeys helping us out in the middle of the night to sooth a seemingly unsoothable baby. A pair of strange muppet like hands seems quite reasonable in comparison.

But you know, if we did go ahead and invest in a Zaky hand, it would be almost guaranteed that Lily would form a long lasting, loving, security-blanket-style relationship with it.

Could I stand walking into the lounge room to see her curled up on the beanbag watching Sesame Street cuddling her big limp arm?

I can imagine the horror (the horror!) on the faces of the other children on her first day of kinder when she drags her weird, old, stained soft arm into class.

And then even worse is thinking ahead in years to her first school camp when she will want to take her Zaky hand hidden away in her suitcase and I can see it tumbling out at the most inopportune time leading to years of counselling.

It’s all too much! No Zaky Hands for us.

While one is watching some afternoon tv and a light sleep is momentarily entertaining the other, I thought I might try to throw some words up here to fill in the emptiness. This comes with a warning: I still don’t have a great deal to say – when one friend rang the other day and asked me if I had any exciting news, I weakly mentioned how I had gone up to the bakery the day before and bought a boston bun. Hmmm.

Lily has started smiling. Mostly she smiles at Christina’s paintings which hang above our bed and at shadows on the ceiling but at other times she will even smile at people, even me once or twice!

We have been sick again (again! ahh!). I came down with mastitis which was a bit of a shock. It coincided with Lily sleeping through 7 hours one night. Every silver lining has a cloud I guess. Honestly, breast feeding is not my idea of a good time. I promised myself I wouldn’t suffer through it again if it was horrible, but here I am thinking “I must keep going”. Obviously it’s early days so of course I will keep going but that doesn’t mean I’m having fun!

These days I live for evening TV. We are currently immersed in Bleak House, Project Runway, Rockstar Supernova (sad but true), The House of Elliot and Scrubs. I spend a good part of the day waiting for night fall so I can flick on the box. I taped The First Tuesday Book Club the other night and as a result I am now reading The Shadow of the Wind ready for next month’s show. It’s kind of trashy and over written but I find that it’s a good way to kill the time when feeding. Anyone else taking part?

We’ve had two days of sensational weather – we even managed to get out yesterday and enjoy the sun. We sat by the river and sipped coffees and baby cinos while geese honked and splashed aggressively nearby.

For those of you who don’t live in Melbourne, you can see the colour of the majestic Yarra over on the right. Lovely eh?

Christina bought me back some beautiful fabric from Japan and now my mind is clicking back into gear – I want to make Lily a doll or some other kind of softie for Christmas and of course, I have another Christmas stocking (or ugg boot) to stitch.

Speaking of fabric, stitching and softies, check out this cuteness. (via Christina and My Little Mochi).

My brain is fuzzy but I managed to string that all out! Time to go.