Monday 4 April 2011

Take That!

Well, as it turns out my baby sign antipathy has moved on a bit. As you will all recall (no doubt), I'm not a big fan of these signs, and complained a bit when someone gave us one when the No was born. Nonetheless, we dutifully hung it from our balcony (and never gave it another thought. We can't see it, after all. We will be taking it down next week when the No turns one, though. Next week! One! Already!).

The shoe was on the other foot when Reto became the godfather of someone, and we embraced our (his) duty to provide the geburtstafel and made (showing surprising drawing/sawing/painting skills we never knew we had) a completely excellent sign ourselves.

And now, such is our enthusiasm for all that DIY, that completely unbidden, without godparental duties or any sort of decent excuse, we made this completely fantastic sign for some friends who just had a baby. I think they might be baby-sign non-embracers too, but they did their best (hah!) to look pleased when we gave it to them, and now they really have no choice but to bung it in their front garden for all the world to see. And yes, we will be checking to make sure they do.


I must say, this is one gift that I'm really happy to be on the giving end of rather than the receiving end, but I really think that Reto and I did a great job with that dingo (it's a dingo, in case you couldn't tell. No, not really an animal that is associated with babies in a good way, but isn't it cute?). Any other baby-havers here in Switzerland who are friends of mine and unlikely to get a geburtstafel from anyone else .. watch out!

16 comments:

Global Librarian said...

You gave them a Dingo? As in "The dingo ate my baby!"

I'll be laughing ALL DAY!

rswb said...

yeah. I was joking when I suggested to Reto that we make a dingo one, but he thought it was a super idea. we actually wrote "that dingo brought your baby" on the back of it (because these baby signs often have pictures of storks bringing babies, and it seemed appropriate). I'm actually not sure that they will get the reference, but they did live in Australia for the last 5 years or so, so you never know...

Tina+Bastian said...

I only know about the case near Uluru where some baby disappeared and the mum said that she had seen a dingo taking her baby. Proper reference?

And yes, we have put the sign up.

rswb said...

Tina - yay (re. putting the sign up)!

And yep, you're right about the baby near Uluru. Her name was Azaria Chamberlain and she might or might not have been taken by dingoes. Her mother (Lindy) was sent to jail (because they didn't buy the dingo story), but then she was exonerated years later, and now ... I don't know what the official ending is, actually. We all blame the dingo, I think. And there was a film ("Evil Angels")where Meryl Streep was Lindy Chamberlain and at some point she said "that dingo stole my baby" in a bizarro Australian accent, and that line now lives on in pop culture (Elaine said it in Seinfeld once, I think).

Anonymous said...

Outside Australia and New Zealand the title of the movie was "Cry in the dark" and the proper quote is: "The dingo's got my baby!" While Elaine quote in Seinfeld is "Maybe the dingo ate your baby" when a woman was looking for her fiancee having lost the poor baby.

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Steph said...

Speaking of Take That, did you hear the Pettoes are supporting them on tour?

Dave R. said...

I enjoy your free spirit, keep it up and I invite you to GOOGLE FOLLOW my blog, I would like to increase the Euro traffic..take care.

_Dave (Dallas)

BloodRedSon said...

Firstly, lolz about the dingo :)

Secondly, I'm sure you've been asked this before but how did you get labels at the end of the post? Like on this post you've got baby minutiae and these switzies are crazy.

Thanks in advance for any help :)

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