When we told people we were applying to become foster carers, most of them had some words of wisdom for us, especially those who were parents already. "Ahhh, babies," they said with a knowing smile. "Get some sleep now while you can. And they don't half create a lot of laundry!"
The sleep thing - yes. The laundry thing - Esmeralda and I spoke about this beforehand, bought a giant airer from IKEA and smugly considered ourselves prepared for the extra washing and drying that a small person would require. Small people's clothing is small, we reasoned, so two full loads would fit nicely on our new giant airer. Being small, it would also dry quickly - like socks.
Here's where we went wrong: the small person's clothing is indeed small, and does dry relatively quickly, as do the flannels, muslins, tiny cot sheets etc. However we had failed to appreciate that the majority (volume wise) of the extra laundry would be our own!
By 1pm today my entire outfit (jogging bottoms and an old zip-up sweatshirt - it was a long night) was covered in a layer of milk formula, petit filou, mashed banana, caked-in breadstick crumbs, "grandma's" roast chicken dinner (puree), margarine, strawberry smoothie, dribble, baby sick and a vaguely warm patch of what I can only assume was wee (I changed clothes very shortly after noticing this one without doing the sniff test...)
Having lived with us over a week now, Jack-Jack already has a larger wardrobe than either of us, and if things carry on the way they've been going I think we might have to start borrowing his clothes!
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