Every print tells a story

We are launching our Favourites Collection next month and it has made me reminisce about our prints over time and the stories behind them. I thought I would share some of the inspirations and stories behind the prints you love so much. Every print tells a story. Here is the story of Sloths.

My children are my biggest inspiration and my greatest teachers. They have taught me that I have bigger reserves of patience than I realised, how to survive on no sleep (for years), all the dinosaur names and how things you think are rubbish are like gold to them. Like a stick from the park. I could go on. But the biggest lesson I have learnt is how to go slow. 

I had two children under two for what felt like two years. I had started Baba+Boo too. The days were so long because I breed insomniacs. They were long and I wished them away. Couldn't wait for bedtime. I loved being with them but oh how I loved bedtime. For that precious sigh of relief that you take when you have your body and brain to yourself for a few hours. It was my time to work on Baba+Boo, my third baby and I worked into the night packing orders and getting my business off the ground. Usually until about the time when one of them woke for their first wake up. Of which there were many.

I was racing through the days and before I knew it, school was upon us. And I had time to work more. Being able to do the school run was the reason I started my own business. I wanted to be there for the drop offs and pick ups. One day, we were walking fast after school to get to the post office to post the orders and Seth said 'Why do we have to go so fast? Slow is better Mama, you see more'.

I stopped and time stood still. Children have the magical ability to stop you in your tracks with their words. 

I realised in that moment that I had set a goal of being able to do the school runs. When really I wanted to be at them. There is a huge difference between those two tiny words of 'be' and 'do'. Being meant that I appreciated their faces as they raced out of their classrooms showing me their latest masterpiece. To see them when they told me what they had done that day. 

That day brought with it, one of those epiphanies that come as you get to grips with every stage of parenting. That night at bedtime, it felt very serendipitous that my son was cuddling a sloth teddy. The slowest and cutest mammal. 

I adore designing our prints and each print always has a message or a story. I decided we had to have a sloth nappy. A little reminder to go glow. In fact, that day inspired a whole collection called Go Slow. You can watch the video here. We even had little storybooks made.

We live in a world that is too fast. Convenience products are designed to keep us going fast. So we can do more and spend more. Choosing to go slow is a gentle form of activism and that can start by using reusables. Whether that be nappies or a cup.

My son turns 14 on Monday. When you are a mum of a toddler, you think you will never ever have a teenager. But it happens. I am convinced that time is linked to their height, the taller they get, the faster the years fly around. But yet time still doesn't go fast for him. He is still as slow as a sloth.