Taking the Scenic Route

I said something a few days ago about Zane figuring out how to help with laundry.  Today he added another skill…hanging up clothes.  He was so excited that every time he got something on a hanger, he would jump up and down on the bed.  He also wanted me to lift him so he could hang it up himself.  After about 2 pieces of clothes my back went out.  I about cried.  I was so happy with how enthusiastic and proud of himself he was and he was so upset when I couldn’t lift him to help hang the clothes up.  I might have to drag a chair in there so he can use it to climb up and hang clothes, but I will have to have Zach do it because I can hardly move.

*kicking myself*  I really wanted to get all the laundry done.  I am so ticked.  I can’t even lift the laundry basket any more.  I also wanted to finish the dishes.  I am so tired of hurting.  Why could this have been with Zane’s pregnancy instead of this one…I didn’t have a child depending on me then, just cats.  Now I have to wait for Zach to get home to get food because I know I can’t stand in front of the stove, much less lift the pan.  It just isn’t safe. 

We got out our antique (ok, so they aren’t actually antique, but they are easily 10 years old) 3-D glasses out tonight in anticipation of the episode of Medium tonight.  We ended up not really watching it because Zane wouldn’t go play in his room (show content too much for him), but had a lot of fun watching Zane look at the world through them.  Better than TV anyway.

Zane’s favorite things these days (in no particular order):

• Memory Game – either with his Blue’s Clues Memory Game or some Thomas the Tank Engine cards.  We started him out on doing half of the Memory set, but quickly discovered that was too easy, so he plays with all 72 tiles now.  (36 pairs).  He does a great job of waiting his turn.  He has no poker face yet.  When he sees you flip over something and he knows where it matches he jumps up and can barely contain himself waiting for his turn.  lol.  He claps when anybody makes a match.  He will play over and over again, for well over an hour straight.
• Music - He still loves music.  Zach & I can be sitting in the living room and he will start bringing us instruments to play and enthusiastically join us.  His main ‘instruments of choice’ are a kazoo and various percussion instruments.  He is occasionally attempting to move his fingers around on the recorder, but usually just hands it to me to play for him.  He also spends a lot of time either playing his instruments while Zach is on the keyboard, trying to play along with Zach on the keyboard, or playing the keyboard himself.  Same thing when Zach plays the guitar.  It is a lot of rowdy fun when we get all the noisy instruments going around here, especially when Zach and Zane dance around the room as they are playing.  So much fun!
• Computer – He has a number of ‘kindergarten’ educational games he loves, along with a Dora the Explorer educational game (which is probably where he learned to count so high in Spanish…there is a section where they count the stars they collect in Spanish, and it goes higher than the typical 10-20 that other types of media usually go to).  Besides the educational fare he plays with, there is also a Tonka Construction game where he builds roads and houses, and then blows them up or generally destroys them.  He loves it.  He and Daddy also spend time playing pac-man together.  I think Zane could beat me at pac-man at this point.  (I only rarely get past the first screen).  Once in a while he will play around with Adobe Photoshop, but he doesn’t get that very well yet.  He has some kid paint programs he likes playing with though.
• Imaginary Play – lots of adventures with his hot wheels cars and Little People.  He makes these elaborate set-ups with his blocks, train extras, dominoes, and various other toys and walks and drives his cars and people through them while telling stories about them.  It reminds me a lot of how I used to play.  He is also finally starting to do ‘dress up’ type playing.  He especially loves hats, and is starting to use towels and other various things as props.  That sort of playing isn’t as developed yet, but it is certainly getting more pronounced these days.
• Books – The child I used to follow around from room to room in my determination to read to him is now wanting to be read to all the time.  The last few days Zach and I have taken turns reading book after book, for more than an hour straight each time.  Such relief.  Zach and I both love reading and have read to him a lot, and he started enjoying it a while ago.  It has now moved from ‘interested in’ to a much more prominent place in our day. 
• Helping around the house – He finally ‘gets’ that wet clothes go into the dryer, the dry clothes in the dryer go into the basket to be folded/hung up/put away, and how to pick out the dirty clothes and put them in the washer if I say ‘let’s wash all the red things’.  He also knows how to pour the laundry soap in (the soap itself is out of reach, so I measure it for him) and put only 1 dryer sheet in the dryer and close the door.  He still is too excited to play in the warm dry clothes to be particularly helpful with folding & putting away, but sometimes is able to do towels.  When he is thirsty, he often takes his glass to the bathroom sink (has a step stool) and gets his own water.  Along the same lines, if his hands get messy, he will go wash them (and dry them) on his own initiative.  He is also starting to pick up his blocks and other toys when I start to clean in his room, occasionally without me telling him directly.  He is consistently able to put away toys that I hand him into the proper place.  Now, if I could get him to STOP DUMPING THEM ALL OVER THE FLOOR IN THE FIRST PLACE we would be set.  
• Talking - wasn’t I saying something earlier about how much I wish he would talk more.  Can I take that back?  lol.  There are days when my ears are literally hurting by the end of the day because he won’t stop talking.  His actual skills are probably not quite on par with his peers yet, but he is certainly practicing more and I am quite sure he will catch up in no time at the rate he is going.

For those that don’t normally browse my husband’s xanga, he has a post you might be interested in, especially if you are getting ready to have a baby in a hospital setting, or are against circumcision.

I am to that point in pregnancy that I realize, no matter how bad my sleep was the night before, it is likely the best night sleep I will have in a long time.  The time when there is a voice that starts saying “I can’t wait to have the baby so I can finally get comfortable and get some decent sleep again” and, then, the voice of experience (for us who have had babies before) laughs hysterically at the notion that we will sleep better when the baby actually arrives.

It is sort of an amazing phenomena.  Our bodies are getting our minds ready for the schedules of a newborn before birth, simply by decreasing the size of our bladders, and thus the hours of sleep we are able to achieve in one chunk.  Also, as pregnancy goes on, our sleep is lighter and lighter because we can’t get comfortable, but it makes us much more accustomed to function without the deep sleep before the baby is here.  It also gets us used to sleeping more lightly, which will continue for years after you have kids. 

Before Zane, I could sleep through anything.  I could not conceive how co-sleeping would work because I was so worried I would sleep too heavy and roll over on him (I had done it with my cats and had the scratches to prove it).  I also was worried I wouldn’t hear my child crying in a crib in the next room.  Um, that isn’t a problem.  After birth, the slightest whimper will arouse you on some level.  When you co-sleep, you get much better sleep, but still wake up if your child starts breathing funny (which happened with Zane on a few occasions).  I am convinced that Zane would not be here if we had him in a crib in the other room because of the number of times during the night, in those early months, I would reach out my hand to wiggle him and he startled into breathing more normally.  I can’t imagine that I could have slept through him crying in the next room, but that closeness allowed me to hear really subtle differences.  I also would have never been able to relax enough if he was in the next room and would have eventually ‘passed out’ instead of sleeping, which isn’t good either.

I am fortunate to have a husband who is generous enough to not give me crap for taking long naps in the middle of the afternoon when I need them.  I know it has to be sort of annoying to have your spouse sort of check out for a few hours every day, but he has been great about it.  I don’t remember needing this much sleep with Zane, but I also wasn’t chasing after Zane during my waking hours either. lol.

One last note, I don’t think pregnant woman are as much ‘hormonal’ as they are just flat out ‘tired’.  I am much crankier when I am tired, and I spend a lot more time tired as a pregnant woman than I do normally.  I also spend a lot more time in pain, which also doesn’t put me in a joyful mood. 

One good thing, your sleep does get slightly better after having the baby, just not right away.  First you have to heal from the birth (I know I won’t be sleeping half on my stomach, half on my side for quite a while).  Then, it takes a few months for the baby to sleep more than 2 hours at a time.  It is NORMAL for a baby to do that.  You don’t want them to sleep longer than that because it puts them at a higher risk for SIDs.  (I cringe when people brag about their kids sleeping through the night early…it isn’t healthy for the baby to do that).  By about 6 months, they are sleeping quite a few more hours, and you might get the official ’sleeping through the night’ status (which, by the way, is not 8-10 hours that it was considered before kids, it is around 5 hours…but it will feel like a long time when it hits.)  So, around a year from now, my sleep will be much better, although it will probably not be what it was before kids until they have been out of the house for a few years.  (and even with them out of the house, you are still going to have some restless nights worried about them). 

Have you too been touched by his noodly appendage? 

If you are a knitter, you must see this fashionable hat that will proclaim your reverence to his power.  I think he will forgive you for forgoing the traditional pirate hat if you substitute it with this.  (or is that a sacrilege   ) 

link for those not familiar with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

A news story that summerizes what this is all about:  Evolution Debate spawns a Saucy Monster

and one of the funniest tongue-in-cheek religious discussion/debates I have heard in a long time at MDC:  Who Here Follows the Doctrine of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Appointment went well today.  My blood pressure is higher than my normal, but not to the scary level at this point.  From now on I will have appointments every two weeks. 

On the way home we stopped at the local yarn shop to pick up a few skeins of pink yarn.  I think they are destined to be a newborn LTK raglan.  I think there will be a bit of leftover I can make a hat with too.  I have some Bernat CottonTots in my stash that will be turned into a garter stitch jacket.  I am not sure if I have enough pink to do the entire jacket, but I have some variegated with pink in it that I can use.  We are watching some yarn on ebay to see if it stays at a decent price.  It is a spuce/teal heather type color that I would make a sweater for Zane, and possibly Zach (although I would need 3 more skeins to do both…but I might get something to make some stripes in each sweater if we do win that yarn)  I am glad I finally found a washable wool/acrylic blend I like that isn’t horribly expensive.  (Plymouth Encore) 

I should not complain about pregnancy.  I spent so much time waiting for it to happen that I feel guilty complaining about it, but I am going to anyway.

I am really, really tired of my hands hurting so bad.  It scares me.  I know with Zane it went away after the pregnancy, and I hope the same will occur this time, but I have a lot of arthritis in my family and know that there is a good chance that I will be facing this without the hope of it getting better in the future.  It is frightening when you go to pick something up and it is like your fingers didn’t get the message.  It is also a bit weird to try and stretch your hands and finding that you can barely stretch it past straight up and down, and making a fist is a struggle. 

I did some reading and discovered that knitting is actually very healthy for my hands because it helps them stay stronger and helps with flexibility.  However, you are not supposed to have those ‘marathon’ knitting sessions, and if it starts hurting too much, you are not supposed to push through it, but rather set it down and come back later.  It is putting a huge cramp (pardon the pun) in my knitting.  The mittens and hat, a project I could have put out in a day or two normally, took a lot longer.  I am wondering if I can even tackle a special ‘taking home’ outfit for the baby.  When you have to put down and pick up so often, you don’t want to be dealing with complicated instructions or stitch patterns.  I also can’t see knitting on anything smaller than I am now, and the outfit I want to knit would require much smaller needles.  It is frustrating.  I want to make an heirloom type outfit for her, but I am starting to be resigned to buying something so that I don’t make myself crazy over it.  I think I can still do at least a simple garter stitch jacket and hat or something though.  It is easier to put down and pick up something like that. 

After feeling the cold wind on my face yesterday, I realized I should probably make Zane a scarf too.  However, I see problems keeping an actual scarf on him, so I am just making a tube that he can wear around his neck and pull up over his nose.  I have some more of that light green yarn, so I am just doing a 2×2 rib in the same gauge as his hat and will keep knitting in circles until it seems long enough.  I hope it works.  It is pretty mindless work, that is for sure.  lol.

I am also missing my ergonomic computer keyboard.  It is so much easier on the hands and I can type so much faster on it.  Somehow a new keyboard isn’t making our priority list when there is a working keyboard though.  Go figure.

 It’s open! 

I finished Zane’s winter hat & mittens just in time.  It is really chilly out today!  If I feel like taking him outside, I hope to get some pictures of him sporting the new threads, but that would mean going out into the cold, which I don’t really feel like doing right this minute.

I put the pattern (and a larger picture) on this page

edited to add:  The hat is worn with the brim folded up.  If he has it folded up “perfect” there is an inch or so of dark green above the brim before the stripping.  (how many 3 year olds are going to take the time to do that, or let mama do that though. lol).  I just showed the picture this way so there was a better perspective for the knitters.  I plan to post pictures of him wearing the hat and putting them on the pattern page when I actually go outside with him and the camera at the same time.  He won’t keep them on in the house.