Of course, you’d expect wine to be in a wine rack wouldn’t you? Or if it’s a house with a lot of young children and a very tired mother – a lot of gin. But no, in my wine rack there is no wine. When we were planning our kitchen, many years ago before we had children, or even thought about children, a wine rack was, of course, a place for keeping wine. It looked very pretty on the bottom layer of cupboards, close to the ground, filled with different bottles. Those of a parental disposition will notice the problem in the previous sentence. Close to the ground.
What idiot in their right mind would put a fragile, breakable potentially lethal object right at eye level for curious little hands to grasp? Well of course in the land before children I had no idea a child would think a wine bottle looked like an amusing toy. The wine stayed there very happily for about 6 or seven months even after my first child was born. She was playing happily at my feet while I was making some tea when I saw her reach for a bottle. “There’s no way she’d be strong enough to pull a bottle out of the wine rack,” I thought to myself. Of course, she could. Babies have a superhuman strength which means they can lift twice their own body weight if they realise it’s something they aren’t supposed to be doing.
So now there is no wine in my wine rack. This is what’s there instead. I try desperately hard to find activities for the girls to occupy them while I’m busy making dinner. These work for a few minutes before they go back to biting each other or making a grab for the hot pans. They are sensory bottles. These ones are themed around the seasons.
To make them I used:
- 4 bottles
- pom poms
- glitter
- gems
- feathers
So yes, my wine rack is now always full. And yes I can’t wait for a time, a long time from now when it will actually be full of wine.