32 Weeks Tomorrow

Tomorrow I will be 32 weeks pregnant with my little guy.  I’m in that stage of being confused by whether I want time to speed up or slow down.  My body wants to be done, but my mind is all like “you want to have two kids to take care of right now? Huh? HUH?!”  The majority of the time, my mind is still winning and my body is staying silent… ish.

So far we’ve got most of his room done.  I find myself wanting to mimic our daughters room in a way.  I don’t want him to have more things than her, or less things than her.  I want them to both feel that their spaces are happy and have had a lot of love put into them.  I made my daughter most of her decorations.  I painted three animal paintings, painted letters spelling out her first name for her wall, and painted a three picture frame to hang her ultrasound pictures on the wall.  So far, for our little guy, I’ve got one animal picture painting done and his name craft done, which we have to hide until he’s born because it’s a secret. Shhhhhh….  Anyway, I’m getting closer, but my body is revolting in my free time and making me sleep instead of craft.  Maybe I’ll have all his crafts done by the time he starts kindergarten!

I’m still freaking out a little.  Especially since my daughter is currently fighting naps.  *sob sob sob*  She’s 2.5, and not taking it well at all.  She still needs naps, but for some reason she just isn’t most days.  I feel like she knows something is about the change.  Something big….. (and not just my belly, which is huge).  I’m just hoping she goes back to napping more frequently so that I can nap more frequently too!  I’d pay her money, but she doesn’t understand bribes yet.  Too bad too… I’d definitely pay $50 for a nap.  She doesn’t know what she’s missing!

Non-Messy Craft Time – With A Toddler *Gasp*

I know, sounds crazy, right?  Well, it’s possible, and it’s possible to do something that you don’t have to just throw away.  Let me explain…

There is an activity floating around the mom-o-sphere that calls for taking a Ziplock, filling it with paint, taping it to the table, and letting your kids push the paint around in the bag. It’s good for, uh, something? Hand eye coordination?  Texture play?  I don’t know the important parenting playtime names (I’ll work on it).  It looks like this…

Image from The Hippie Housewife

If you’d like to see how they did this, go here.  basically they taped a bag to the table with a white piece of paper underneath so the kids could draw in the paint.  It’s a very cool idea, and they even keep the bags around so they can pop them out whenever and keep playing.  That’s a nice way to pull out something quick when you need to throw dinner on the stove.  I love it!

My problem was that I wanted to keep what my daughter made.  I’m a wee bit artsy, so I think it’s super important for her to also love art.  Mainly so I can have a buddy who is always ready to paint, draw, make something out of clay, or crochet.  (Hey, a mom can dream, right?)  So, here was my idea.  I decided to put a small canvas in a large ziplock, have E pick a few colors, and have her go to town.  It looked a bit like this…

Put canvas into ziplock

Add paints!!

Smoooooosh the paints around.

Wha-la!

Realize you need work on removing from bag, smile because it’s still awesome.

So, the final product got a little smeared as I was taking it out of the bag, but at least half of it is still intact, plus it still looks pretty cool.  I’ll just tell her it was a collaboration effort from the both of us.

Once it was dry, I wrote her name and the date on the back and hung it up in the hallway. I now have a piece of E’s art that I can keep forever, and absolutely ZERO mess on her, my table, my walls, the dogs, or the couches.  I’m calling it a win win win win win!

Hope you all enjoyed!  If you decide to do this with your littles, I’d love to see the final product!

-E