As artful as a pregnant lady grocery shopping in pajama pants

Noah started an art class at Fairmount Art Center this past Monday. He seemed to really enjoy it. The class is for two to three year olds and in the one hour period they do about four projects so the kids don’t get bored or lose focus. I was thrilled that the class was only five kids, including Noah and his friend Victor. I think more than that may have been a bit overwhelming. But since the kids are seated working on structured projects with parental assistance and teacher guidance it really is an ideal situation for him. He’s a great listener and student – unless there isn’t any structure and then he just clings. (At playgroup every week he sits on my lap during free play and isn’t happy or comfortable until we get to circle time for the song, story and craft.) Monday’s class focused on making dots – so they drew dots in their sketch books, painted a variety of different sized and colored dots on a large black paper dot, tapped dots in a little piece of copper, and then poked dots in a piece of clay that will be fired and painted during a later class. This was Noah’s first time working with clay that wasn’t Play Doh and he was really disturbed at the residue it was leaving on his hands. He spent half the time picking at the little bits around his fingernails while I reassured him we would clean them off when class was over. The class series itself is a bit costly for only six sessions, but it includes materials and will provide me with more ideas of art projects we can do at home – so in the end it’s worth the dough.

I’m horribly ashamed to admit that yesterday I went grocery shopping in pants I normally wear to bed. Unfortunately I’m in that horrible stage where my normal pants no longer fit and yet my maternity pants aren’t suitable either. Whenever I wear my maternity pants I spend half the damn time hiking them back up over my ass and well it’s hard to carry grocery bags while holding up your pants. Today I am once again in “house pants” but since I was babysitting Ella this morning we haven’t yet left the house. Hopefully I will have the wherewithal to don actual pants when we go to the library this evening. But likely not.

I still haven’t gotten my butt over to Whole Foods to get that Floradix iron supplement. But two things just made it a priority. After I read Missuz J’s comment that cream of wheat was an excellent source of iron I made myself the only two packets I found when I dug through the cabinets this morning. And this afternoon is the first one I can remember in a long time where I didn’t feel like I was going to collapse in utter exhaustion if I didn’t immediately take a nap. So it seems like iron might indeed help me out – which caused me to call the herbal store down the street to see if they carry Floradix so I don’t have to drive across town to Whole Foods. And indeed they do. (Oh and Lonna – it’s vegan safe so maybe you should check it out if you’re still having iron issues.) So if I start taking that liquid gold, or iron as it were, and eating insane amounts of cream of wheat I should be able to conquer the world. Or at least potty training.

Speaking of the evil deed, I haven’t really started potty training. He pees on the potty before bath time every night and again before we put on his pajamas, but that has been the extent of it. Last week I started putting Noah in Pull-ups and encouraging him to tell me when he needs to pee. Rather than doing that we’ve just been having a lot of leaks and rashiness – the pull-up are a bit big and cause a lot of chafing. He really doesn’t seem remotely ready or interested in being potty trained. And since I keep reading that children often regress to needing diapers after a sibling is born, I’m not really in a hurry. Why bother if I’m going to have to do it twice. Right? So I guess I’m going to get him back in diapers for awhile.

There are a few other big things that need tackling in the next few months. The naptime nursing behemoth which remains the same and doesn’t bear repeating, and our nighttime debacle. Noah goes to bed fairly easily every night. We read books, he kisses and hugs Daddy good night, he sits in the rocker with me for awhile, he lies down in the crib and paws at me sitting on the floor next to the crib until he nods off. Between lights out and sleep it typically takes about a half hour, and I’m pretty cool with that. The problem is that he also typically wakes up sometime in the early morning at which time I take him out of the crib and lay down with him on the twin mattress on his floor until morning. Obviously this has to change real soon as come August 1 I will be up at all hours of the night entertaining a newborn. Occasionally Noah will sleep all night in his crib, but the occasions are few and far between. After recently reading an article on sleep incentives I started offering him rewards for sleeping all night in his crib, and though he wants the rewards they don’t affect his behavior at 3 am when he wants to sleep with Mama. So I guess soon I’m going to have to lay down the wretched law and refuse to pick him up and lay down with him. And I feel just awful about this because as I’ve said to Mark “We don’t like to sleep alone but we expect him to want to.” Of course I need to make the change soon so he doesn’t blame the change in the sleeping arrangements on the baby. Ho hum. So much to do and yet it’s so much easier to just avoid it. And yet time ticks on. Only two more weeks until the ultrasound. I can not wait! However it's occurred to me that it will mark the halfway point in my pregnancy and GAH that is SO SOON. We won't ever be ready in time!