someday, when she bothers to read this blog, i hope that she will remember that sunny april afternoon when her auntie made her a kitchen set from scratch — empty nappy boxes covered with aluminium contact paper from kmart, colored pencils for door handles, and baby food bottle lids for stove dials — proving that a little bit of creativity and a whole lot of cost cutting goes a long, long way.

but i know she won’t remember any of it, if at all. the way she climbed and danced on top of the box, or how she got so fascinated by the thousand silver lights reflected off the disco ball sitting on the floor, her face beaming as bright as the sunlight cascading through the windows.

sometimes i wonder if i’m maintaining this blog for her, or for myself. there have been a lot of times when i just wanted to abandon this endeavour altogether but somehow i keep coming back. the memories are too beautiful to be forgotten. the pictures and videos too precious to be left just sitting on my hard drive while their stories slowly fade into oblivion.

maybe i’m writing this blog for both of us when we’re older so we can look back and cherish these moments. either way, i hope that someday when she reads this, she knows that she was, and always will be, so well-loved by the people around her.

on a side note, i’m really happy with this hardwood elephant kiddie table set. my first ever gumtree purchase i got secondhand for about $50 while i was still pregnant with raven. i bought this before i even thought about cribs or strollers and such. i didn’t know what i was thinking. or why the pressing need to have jeff drive me all the way to footscray to grab it. but seeing how much mileage raven’s getting out of it now, i have come to realize that i am capable of making okay decisions, after all.

maybe i can even keep it as an heirloom for my future grandchildren together with her combi urban walker stroller and fisher-price luv u zoo high chair. all gumtree purchases, if i might add. meaning, i never paid full price for these quality items. but that doesn’t mean that i didn’t do my research because google knows how many websites and reviews i went through before i zeroed in on them. i even had to wait for weeks until somebody advertised them on gumtree because i wanted to make sure that they weren’t heavily used and that they were practically brand new. well, in a manner of speaking. i was lucky to find the said items and even luckier that they met my standards. i have no regrets.

because, really, having a baby isn’t cheap and oftentimes you gotta be smart in buying things that they’re gonna outgrow in a couple of years anyway. but that’s just me, though. the only things we ever bought brand new were her car seat, her cot, and her cot mattress.

which is why i’m not really keen on buying her a proper play kitchen set. the house is already messy enough as it is with her toys. thank god my sister is good with DIY projects and made her that play stove and oven from cardboard. at least when she’s done with it, we can just chuck it in the bin and call it a day.

*raven at 1 year and 11 months old