Affection To The Baby: Sakura Bloom Triathlon

Showing posts with label Sakura Bloom Triathlon. Show all posts

Thursday, December 10, 2009

OMG, YAY!

I am jumping up and down, so giddy and excited! It was just announced that the Grand Prize winner of the Sakura Bloom Triathlon is...

A TIE!!!

Between me and Sara Sophia!

I loved all of Sara Sophia's entries so much, I was sure she had the win all sealed up :) I am honored beyond belief to be sharing the win with her.

Thank you thank you thank you to everyone for your help and support!!!

AND, I am excited to let you know that Sakura Bloom has just opened up a special Sample Sale to celebrate the end of the Triathlon! There are some beautiful slings available at amazing discounts, so GO!!!

Happy babywearing :)

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Behind the Scenes of "Baby Mamas"

My friend, Stephanie Marshall, recording the vocals for the "Baby Mamas" video while her son Makai snoozes in their Ergo.

Wow, I am just incredibly amazed, thrilled, and humbled by the response to my Round Three entry to the Sakura Bloom Triathlon! Thank you for all the enthusiastic and lovely comments, and for spreading this video around by sharing it with your friends. I am so excited that it is resonating so much with baby mamas (and daddies!) everywhere. And of course a huge thank you to the Triathlon judges for selecting Baby Mamas for the round three win :)

I also want to publicly thank the incredibly talented and creative people who helped me to put the video together at the eleventh hour (we shot the whole thing on my Flip camera on this past Saturday and Sunday, and edited in the wee hours of Monday morning!): Stephanie Marshall, Shirley Rumierk, Naudia Jones, Taro Alexander, Everett Bradley, and Liz Rubincam.

Several people have asked for the lyrics, so I wanted to share those here. They were written by my amazing husband, with a tiny little bit of input and tweaking from me ;) Here they are, for your singing (and slinging) pleasure:

All the baby mamas (all the baby mamas)

All the baby mamas

Now get your slings out

Up in the house

We just woke up

I'm lookin' at your pretty face

Figurin' out

Which nice sling

To put you in today

You're up on me

Get you comfy

I know this will make you happy

No more tears

When you're in here

A sling’s good for you and me

‘Cause if you love 'em then you should put a sling on 'em

If you love 'em then you should put a sling on 'em

Wha-oh-oh-oh-oh-ooh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

If you love 'em then you should put a sling on 'em

The Kangaroo carry

Or a baby on my hip

We're ready to rock the playground

We laugh and play

Have fun every day

So safe and cozy you’ll stay

I need no stroller

To take him or her

Anywhere we want to go

Just pop ‘em in the sling

A ring a ding-ding

Let me hear all the baby mamas sing

If you love 'em then you should put a sling on 'em

Wha-oh-oh-oh-oh-ooh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

If you love 'em then you should put a sling on 'em

Wha-oh-oh-oh-oh-ooh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Sakura Bloom Triathlon, Round Two: The Joy of Babywearing

For Round Two of the Sakura Bloom Triathlon, the participants have been asked to submit photographs that capture the joy of wearing their babies.

And here is my entry...

My husband took this picture while we were out enjoying New York City a couple of weekends ago. I was nursing my baby on the Brooklyn Bridge, enjoying the incredible scenery of the Manhattan skyline, the Statue of Liberty, the golden, late-afternoon Autumn sunlight. It was a gorgeous day and there were hoards of people coursing over the bridge traveling in both directions on foot, by car, and on bicycle. It was as frenetic a setting in as epic a location as I can imagine, and then there was this:

Within the protective embrace of my arms, cocooned supportively within the sling, my infant cozily breastfed. In that moment, as mama and baby, we might as well have been the only two people on the planet.

And that, to me, is the essence of babywearing and what makes it so beautiful. No matter what else is going on around me, no matter where in the world we may go, there is an intimacy and connection that comes from wearing my baby that is absolutely priceless.

I wouldn't trade the experience of being a babywearing mama for anything.

Photos by my husband, Taro Alexander. The sling is from the Sakura Bloom Linen Essential Collection.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Sakura Bloom Triathlon: Interview Question 3

If you could spend a year traveling with your family, where would you go and why?

Even though my oldest son is not yet two and a half years old, he is already rather well-traveled. Together, we have crisscrossed the U.S. visiting family and friends, and last year we even went to Paris! While there, we hiked all over the city, climbed up inside dizzying cathedral spires, took a moonlit cruise on the Seine, and spent untold hours in museums -- and everything was as easy and exciting as could be. Traveling with a toddler was made infinitely more enjoyable thanks to babywearing.

Not only do I dream of traveling far and wide with my family for fun (and the ultimate unschooling experience!) I actually have often envisioned taking them on a worldwide babywearing tour.

My idea began with a more locally-inspired concept: I planned to start a street style blog (in the spirit of blogs like The Sartorialist, or Face Hunter) focused exclusively on the colorful, beautiful, stylish babywearing I see around me all the time in New York. However, my vision soon expanded: Why not travel the world seeking such images? One day I hope to meet and document women all over the world going about their lives, wearing their children, and being fabulous.

Over the course of one year, I would love to visit cultures that still predominantly wear their youngsters. As my family and I circle the globe, we would research more about local customs and traditions of babywearing by observing, interviewing, and getting to know people who babywear. I want to learn firsthand about the many forms of baby carriers that are out there and how they are made and worn. I would, of course, document the entire experience on my blog in photos, video, and words, and at the end of the journey I would turn it all into a book celebrating the gorgeous, proud and vibrant art of babywearing.

I love to collect beautiful images of babywearing, and the ones that I have seen from distant places always inspire me and make me determined to act on my idea of an international babywearing tour. Here are some of my favorite photos, along with the places they might one day take me (click on the name of the country to see the photo source)...

Sakura Bloom Triathlon: Interview Question 2

How is your personality reflected in your parenting style?

I am an intensely inquisitive person. I love to read, research, and explore. I am in a constant state of Wanting To Gain Knowledge. When it comes to parenting, I have an even stronger sense of inquiry -- I devour books, articles, and blogs on pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, parenting, and education. I strive to constantly learn more about these topics for the benefit of my children, as well as to understand myself on a deeper level, and (hopefully!) become a better, wiser parent.

This trait also leads me not only to encourage my son's own sense of inquiry, but to relish being by their sides as they explore the world for themselves. I am inspired by watching my boys absorb new ideas and information, and I feel privileged to be able to facilitate that learning process each and every day.

Sakura Bloom Triathlon: Interview Question 1

What first interested you in babywearing?

Even before having children, I had very strong ideas about how I wanted to be a parent. I wanted to hold my children as much as possible. I wanted to breastfeed on demand. I wanted to respond to their cries. I wanted to practice co-sleeping. I was not interested in bottles or cribs or pacifiers or nannies. I wanted my children to be integrated into my life completely, and yet I somehow thought that a stroller would be an immediate necessity from birth on!

When I was pregnant with my first son, I had only a peripheral awareness of the concept of babywearing. I remember filling out my shower registry at Babies R Us and stopping in front of a giant kiosk devoted to the latest models of Baby Bjorn. My husband and I puzzled over the options -- did we want the simpler-looking standard model, or were we more in the market for the top-of-the-line-serious-looking carrier with lumbar support? Bright, happy faces of parents and babies shone out from the glossy fronts of the Bjorn boxes, encouraging us with their perky smiles. We knew we wanted to wear our baby, but still, we felt overwhelmed. Could this contraption really be comfortable and practical? And how would we ever learn to put it on? Most of all, where in heaven's name would we be carrying all the BABY STUFF we were in the process of registering for?!? I envisioned taking a jaunty (short) walk in the park with the baby in the carrier, my husband pushing the STUFF in our giant stroller. OF course, if I needed to DO anything, I could just put the baby in the stroller and carry on...

Little did I know that within months I would get rid of that precious stroller (and cumbersome Bjorn) and find myself gallivanting all over the place with my baby held close to my body in a wrap and the drastically edited stash of BABY STUFF handy at my hip in a compact little bag. It really took having my first son and experiencing life with him for a while for me to mend the disconnect that had led me to initially overlook the amazing array of baby carriers that are out there. My first conversation with an experienced babywearer caused an "ah ha!" moment and I immediately became obsessed with learning more about wearing my son. Becoming connected to the vast and exciting community of passionate babywearers helped even more to show me that this was going to be more than a handy parenting tool. It was going to become a lifestyle.

Carrying my little ones just makes so much practical sense -- I can continue to do all the things that I enjoy doing in life, with my babies along for the ride, hands-free! In a city like New York it has proved invaluable to be able to hop on and off the subway or bus unencumbered by a bulky stroller. I love not having to worry about finding a comfortable or discreet place to nurse because I can breastfeed so easily in a wrap or sling. Most of all, I love how much babywearing soothes my children and fosters an incredibly strong bond and better communication between us. It helps me to be the kind of parent I want and need to be for my children.

Often, people stop me on the street and ask questions about the carriers I use or remark that "we didn't have those back when I had babies." I always acknowledge how wonderful it is that babywearing is becoming increasingly popular with today's generation of parents, but I point out that it is in fact an ancient art.

I am mindful now of stories my grandmother told me when I was little of her own mother, who raised ten children in rural Mississippi during The Great Depression: my great-grandmother carried her tenth child, who was born prematurely, from the time she came into the world. Even as my great grandmother returned to picking cotton under the blazing southern sun, she wore the baby skin-to-skin. The better part of a century later, modern science has begun to show the beneficial power of skin-to-skin contact with infants, and although her daughter stood little chance of survival at birth, my great-grandmother's instinct to wear her might have been what made the difference and helped to save her baby's life all those years ago.

Now that I have two little boys, I am incredibly grateful to have inherited the ancient wisdom of babywearing, and I am proud to have translated it into my very modern everyday life.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Sakura Bloom Triathlon: The First Sling

Here it is! Sakura Bloom Pure Collection sling in Spice.

It arrived yesterday and I wore it for the first time today. Love!
Meet the other participants here, and read my first post about this experience here.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Wrapper's Delight

Over the last couple of years I have become a passionate devotee of the art of babywearing. I have worn my sons on boats, trains, planes, subways, buses, and ferris wheels, and in museums, cathedrals, sports arenas, skyscrapers, farmer's markets, flea markets, and department stores. I have gone to camp, to the beach, and sightseeing while wearing my boys. I have slung my babies while cooking, doing the dishes, blogging, and dancing. I have wrapped them while exercising, public speaking, playing the piano, volunteering, and voting. I have worn my babies while seven months pregnant and while two days postpartum. Babywearing has become an indispensable aspect of my life, and it has added immeasurably to the beautiful relationship I have with my children.

That is why I am beyond thrilled to have been chosen to be one of seven lucky participants in the first official Sakura Bloom Triathlon being hosted over at Adventures in Babywearing! Over the next couple of months I will have the honor of trying out a few of the gorgeous slings made by Sakura Bloom, and I will be blogging about the experience and the "modern art of babywearing" in words, pictures and video here on Marvelous Kiddo. So stay tuned for fun and fabulousity...

I created the photomosaic here, using photos from my set of personal babywearing photos on my Flickr photostream.