The imperceptible invasion of primary colours...


When we bought our house 2 years ago it was a multi coloured feast for the eyes, I don’t mean a splash of mustard here and blue there, we are talking wall to wall (and floor) purple, turquoise walls with orange skirting in another room and an orange room with lime green alcove. I almost forgot to mention the hall, inspired by Rupert the bear, red carpet and yellow walls. We saw the house and fell in love with its period features, size and potential and for the next 18 months focussed on updating and neutralising, creating a calm and welcoming home that we love.

Fast forward to Summer 2016 and our beautiful daughter Rose arrived, not wearing a lot of pink myself the clothes I, and friends and family, bought for her were shades of yellow, grey, baby blue, with a smattering of pink and coral here and there. Her nursery is so far in neutral shades and I loved choosing calming toys and comforters that I thought would bring her joy - not deliberately, I was just walking around the shops choosing things that I liked and obviously my taste was that of a 33 year old woman not a newborn.

Then one day when Rose was about 3 months old I looked down at what she was playing with and realised everything was white, white Jellycat bunny, white elephant rattle, white Sophie the giraffe chew toy, etc etc and I felt unbelievably guilty! Surely I should introduce some colour to keep her entertained and awaken her senses!

On a side note the poor babe also had a white Snuzpod, white high chair and slept in our room which is almost entirely off-white, and I had bought a pale grey elephant playmat - calm yes, boring for a baby? probably!

So I went to the nursery and looked through all of the toys that had been wonderfully gifted, I showed her a cerise Jellycat horse bought for her by her cousins and she loved it! I found some lamaze baby toys my mum had bought and she loved them! Liam came home with some teething toys and she loved them! The biggest hit of all was a chime ball with multicoloured animals on that she would try and chat to for ages, making lovely little gurgle noises. Rose was thrilled toys had finally arrived!

When I bought her a new Gro-bag I bought one in shades of purple instead of yellow and we bought her a Lamaze crunchy book that is still a massive hit today - I don’t think we could ever attempt a drive without it!

You can imagine that there was now a little more colour in Rose’s life and at a level we hadn’t really registered.

This week I looked around the house and could see much more had arrived without me noticing...the bath toys along the side of the bath, the fisher price seat in our bedroom, the Oopsy Daisy on the changing table and IKEA play mat in the lounge- as well as a host of other teddies and muslins and bumbos and bouncers around the place.

When I saw these items all over the house did I shudder and think 'what happened to my house?!'

No!

I smiled, and thought Rosie had left her stamp on it, we had created a blank canvas just waiting for her to make it a home, I love that she has made her mark on every room and she seems to love all of her toys and books and cuddly bunnies. I am looking at her now having a nap next to me and she is wearing a multicoloured striped top and some pink joggers and she looks wonderful.

My brilliant neighbour Claire arrived with a lovely bag of toys the other day and a lion in particular has been a big hit, with a crunchy mane and teethers attached.

It's also great to now have more toys on offer when friends visit with their babies, I've started thinking everyone must have thought I was so mean not having lots for Rose to play with. I promise it wasn't on purpose!

One side of the toy situation that I have 'Clairified' is I do tend to pick out toys that are easy for me to wash, I am trying to be as relaxed as I can be about Rose putting everything in her mouth and toys being on the floor and I hope this will get easier as time goes on, but for the time being I am comforted by being able to wash everything if I feel I need to. Liam's patience in this regard wares thin occasionally when he wants to find her current favourite toy and it is on the radiator but happy mummy = happy baby and I am doing my best! As I say, hopefully I will become much more relaxed about this as time goes on.

I know there is a jumperoo lurking in the loft, a bouncer arrived this week and she hasn’t properly discovered Peppa pig yet so I have no doubt I will read this back in 6 months time and laugh at my naive love of the slow arrival of primary colours and probably long for these days where I’m not stepping on lego and have a toy box in every room, but for now I am loving the splashes of colour Rose has brought to our home, a much welcomed injection of chaotic colour and fun!

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