Hibiscus's Wrapping Day

Hibiscus's Wrapping Day

The kids had the day off school, so we just stayed around the house and I didn't spend that much time wearing them.  But you know who had a really intense day of wrapping?  Hibiscus.

With the wraps that finally made it to the house yesterday, there were included little instruction manuals with lots of pictures of how to do some basic carries.  That might have been handy for me with my actual first wraps (bought used) but not so much anymore, but all the kids loved loved LOVED looking at them, especially the girls.  All the booklets and pictures were scattered all over the living room along with the wraps within minutes of the package opening.  I put them all away last night, but they were spread all over the room again immediately this morning. Buttercup loves looking at the pictures, and maybe she thinks it's a story about one of her favorite activities, with lots of other friendly babies.  Hibiscus was seriously studying the pictures, then added her frog "baby," and my Zara.  She was really concentrating for a long time, and I was proud of her ability to choose something and focus on it.  Not to mention, I hadn't even talked about what the book was, she figured out that it was instructions for what I do all the time, and set her own self to de-code it.

Here she is, very proud of the result.

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Hm, it looks like she was working on a hip carry!  I never do those, so that was all from the pictures!

She wore her frog the entire morning, through whatever other chores or play she was doing, in several different wrap jobs.  Then Buttercup brought me the Pao ring sling and wanted to go up in it, and Hibiscus got really excited because SHE was wearing HER baby in a ring sling, TOO.  So here we are, with our babies in our ring slings!

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Then we moved on to sister wrapping.  I have more mixed feelings about this.  Little kids carry their young siblings all the time in this country, but just with their hands under their bottoms and the little one holding on, so if they fell, they would fall apart and fall independently.  I feel like a wrapped-in fall could be much worse, especially with all the crazy stairs we have around here, and the grown-up length tails dragging on the ground.  I do teach her and help her with the ring sling, which I feel like is a reasonable compromise, but only in the house please!

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After quite a bit of staggering around like that, it was only logical to put Sister in the REAL wrap.  This I am not going to facilitate because I think it could get dangerous, so I just watched quietly.  Buttercup was really happy with the game and lay there pleasantly for a long time.  Hibiscus is not only able to learn from pictures, she is incredibly observant and an amazing imitator.  This is a rebozo pass, which goes over one shoulder and under the other, holding baby's bottom in the middle.  When manipulating a wrap, it is natural to put both side either under the shoulders or over the shoulders, so clearly Hibiscus knows exactly how I do it.

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And then she's "tightening strand by strand."  At least, she knows what the gesture looks like, but she doesn't know what she is supposed to be doing, so it ends up so loose she's just holding Buttercup under the bottom, in the traditional African way.  They sat on the couch together and rocked, because Hibiscus could not actually carry Buttercup around.  That and maybe she was worn out from all the ring-sling-ing and balanced-on-back part!

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Then I insisted on getting Buttercup back and putting her in the REAL wrap for her nap.  Ugh, that was a disaster!  Hibiscus did not want to stay in her bed, and she kept calling me or grabbing something exciting, thus rousing Buttercup.  And if Buttercup does not START her nap, she cannot FINISH her nap.  I ended up wearing her for her "nap" for almost three hours, about half of which was asleep.

Then Hibiscus started thinking about HER "rainbow wrap" which had arrived.  Because the cloth for wraps is so strong, when they are brand new they are often stiff and crunchy feeling, and the more they are used the softer they become.  A stiff wrap is not only not very pleasant on the skin, it's really difficult to get a good wrap job, because getting everything pleasantly snug is so important.  You can just wear them until they get soft, but I don't want to wear an even slightly uncomfortable wrap!  So today, we needed to work on "breaking in" the new wraps.  

The rainbow Storch Inka is a brand that is famous for being very stiff at the beginning, and eventually becoming incredibly soft and supportive.  At this point, the darn thing actually could stand up on its own!

The more the fabric is manipulated, the softer it will become.  We found some bars, wound it in and out, and pulling back and forth like a see-saw!  Actually, the wrap is over 5 meters long, so it's more like a "my first train" going back and forth on its little track!  The picture shows Buttercup and Hibiscus on opposite ends, but Buttercup didn't really understand the game, she just liked to pull.  It actually worked when Hibiscus and I were at opposite ends.  

After we had been going for a while, I thought about adoption-bonding suggestions of doing something back and forth where your bodies affected each other, like feet together, holding hands and rocking while singing "Row Row Row Your Boat."  I think this is a good school-aged substitution!  A 6-year-old likes that there is a productive result and she can come up with variations, and it really involved her whole body and used her endless, overwhelming energy.  The next day, after a while she tied the wrap around her waist and dragged it like that, and then she dove down and started running like a monkey.  There was also a lot of collapsing on the grass as the pressure became greater or less, and lots of laughter.  I'll call that bonding!

After a day of working so hard on wrapping, obviously she needed to be the wrappee for a while!  She wanted to go up while I made dinner.  At first that sounded too exhausting, but then I agreed.  And of course she brings over our carpet!  It was a little better, but it still felt more like something I would pull up the mast of my husband's boat than use to cuddle my baby.  Are you sure you don't want one of the nice soft ones in our pile?  Oh well, okay.

I tried a carry that I haven't used with the big kids, and it worked very well and I got the most comfortable carry yet for my giant "baby."  I managed to make most of dinner without getting worn out, even leaning over to get things out of the fridge.  (Squatting, not leaning, that is!)

I take a lot of pictures of wrapping, because first of all, that way I can see what I'm doing, and secondly, I share them in on-line conversations with other wrappers, and third of all, I've realized that if I take a picture when I'm wrapping, I end up with a pretty good account of our days, and lots of pictures of the kids as they grow.  When the bigger kids are home, I let them take some pictures, and my son is becoming quite the photojournalist.  He likes the action shots, and he thinks of the whole story.  "No, keep cutting things, I need one with you cutting," he tells me.  "And then one at the sink, and one in the fridge.  ....You haven't gone to the sink yet, we need one at the sink."

After all this planning, I later went through the pictures, and not only were they blurry, apparently he was experimenting with the artistic effect of holding the camera low (as though he weren't already low enough!), which involved a lot of artistry of my derriere.

Then Hibiscus needed to get down and do her dinner chores, and Buttercup needed to go up so she didn't un-do them.  I switched to a different wrap, because I thought Inka needed about 50 pounds to hold her down!  And now Hibiscus needed to take pictures, because Emerson just got a turn.  However, she found the indoor lighting insufficient.  She is not a photojournalist, she is a portrait artist.  The traditional kind.  She wants everyone to look at her and smile, and then she stands there for minutes and minutes on end while decided whether or how or when to push the button, until Buttercup gets distracted and starts doing something else, and then Hibiscus needs to yell at her to smile and start all over again.  A lot of her pictures, my mouth looks funny because I'm saying "push the button now, you need to just take the picture!"

And then the kids threw a giant fit about cleaning up before dinner, and we won't get into that because we are talking about Hibiscus's wrapping day, not her grumpy day.  But all the fits precluded any more wrapping until...

Within minutes of getting out of bed, all three children had their babies up in their wraps!  Buttercup and Emerson came over to me for help, and got adorable little matching carries with their little scarves.  But Hibiscus spent a while by herself with the instruction booklet, and eventually emerged with Froggy in a recognizable ruck.  Good morning!