Transition

This week marks a transition for our family. Our nanny, K., is moving back home to her town near Peoria to be closer to her family, friends and boyfriend. Her last day was Friday. My last day at work before starting maternity leave was also Friday. Beginning this week, I am home full-time for five months with AJ and his new brother or sister. I am looking forward to it. I like being the person who knows the most about AJ--what he ate for lunch, how long he napped, whether he is having a good day. I want to see the little day-to-day developments that are easy to miss when I only see him for three hours a day.

That said, it is intimidating. Now when I am with him three hours a day and on the weekends, I am focused on being with him and have more energy to focus on mothering. When I was home with AJ before, there were moments when I felt overwhelmed by having one child. Now there will be two! I am reminding myself of the things that I learned last time around--to focus on the things that absolutely need to get done, to sleep when I can, to make food for the next day the night before after the baby has gone to bed, etc. I was talking with my mother-in-law tonight and mentioned that I am ready to have this baby today. She encouraged me to enjoy the relative calm before the storm and let the baby takes its time because once it arrives, you have moments when you wish it was back in the womb again when your body just took care the baby's needs automatically without any crying or fussing. Spoken like a woman who had four children! I distinctly remember thinking that same thought several times after AJ was born and wishing that I could turn back the clock to when I was pregnant so that I could go to the bookstore and browse the aisles or go out to dinner with Joe.

Coins!

Give the little guy a container of change and a cheap plastic piggy bank that they were handing out for free at the grocery store and you get this:


Enough free time to actually get some holiday baking done! AJ was fascinated this weekend by putting coins into the free piggy bank he received at the grocery store, so I sat him down on the kitchen floor with a bucket of Joe's change and let AJ drop in quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies to his hearts content, which actually gave me a good 45 minutes to get in some holiday baking. As excited as I am about the upcoming arrival of the new baby, I have to admit that I am a little wistful about leaving behind the new phase that AJ is in where he can amuse himself for short periods of time to return to the land of much more time-intensive newborns. In retrospect, I think that AJ was particularly time-intensive as a baby because he never napped for more than 20 minutes until he was somewhere around at least 10 months old. I have a good friend whose first baby was similar to AJ in his sleep patterns and whose second baby is now 4 months old and has always been much easier to handle than her first. She said it is like a different world. I am hoping that we will be similarly blessed with a laid-back second child.

Muh-Mee

AJ has grown quite fond recently of his "muh-mee", which is his word for monkey. This is a Curious George stuffed animal that his godmother brought him a couple of months ago. It sat in the corner for weeks and AJ showed no interested in it until poof one day he woke up and decided that muh-mee was the most fascinating creature he had ever laid eyes on. Now muh-mee gets special treatment at our house, including the privilege of sitting in AJ's highchair or booster seat whenever AJ eats, going for car rides and getting food treats and kisses from AJ. Last weekend muh-mee got to try his first raspberries, so his lips are now stained a bit pink and he looks a little like a cross-dressing muh-mee.

The Bear Hat

In an attempt to address the issue of AJ's reluctance to wear a hat, coat and anything else that would make sense in a Chicago winter, I recently acquired a new hat to add to his collection in the hopes that it would entice him to want to wear one. This hat has the added attraction of having bear ears on the top. So far, AJ seems somewhat interested in this hat. The only drawback is that it doesn't have the earflaps that are great for those windy Chicago days, but I guess a hat with no earflaps on the head is better than a hat with earflaps that mama is constantly trying to jam on his head.

Fuh-nee

AJ's sense of humor is becoming more silly lately as he gets a sense of how to do things backwards or in a different way than the "normal" way to make it funny. For example, the other night at dinner he got that it would be funny if he put the foil pan on his head and pretended that it was a hat. Or as AJ says it, fuh-nee. He is also expanding his vocabulary a little bit from the usual nouns (his latest favorite noun is garbage truck) to a couple of somewhat abstract concepts like being able to name the idea of being funny or silly.

Big Brother Prep

Several people have asked me lately how AJ is taking the news that he will be a big brother. To be honest, I haven't tried to explain it to him, because it seems like such an abstract concept to explain to an 18 month old. Plus, the time period of even a few weeks is so incredibly long to a kid at this age that I feel like for me to tell him that a new baby will be joining our family in two or three weeks is like telling him he will be going to college in 16.5 years. We did get him a baby and a baby stroller as mentioned in a previous post, and he enjoys trying to feed the baby and pushing the baby around the house every now and then, although these little jaunts frequently end with AJ dumping the baby out of the stroller head first onto the floor so that he can turn the stroller over and "fix" the wheels with his screwdriver. My friend with a new baby did visit us a few weeks ago, so AJ had some first-hand exposure to a newborn. I got out our portable baby swing and set it up in the family room, and AJ was fascinated to watch the baby sleep in the swing. I left the swing up and put his toy monkey in it, and he will point at the swing every few days and say "beb-ee!" to let me know he remembers that is where the baby slept.

It also seems too abstract to me to try to explain to AJ that there is a baby in mommy's tummy. I am worried that he will wonder how it got there and think I ate it, since we often talk about that yummy whatever he just ate being in his tummy. ("Mmmm...was that muffin yummy? Is it in your tummy?") AJ has been noticing my growing belly, though, and seems to regard it as just a part of mom. A few times when I have been sitting in the rocker with him reading bedtime stories, he will pat my tummy affectionately and say "mama", as in "I love my mama and her big, fat belly." It made me realize that he has not yet been conditioned by the media to think thin is good and fat is bad. There's nothing like having an 18 month old try to stretch his arms around your huge belly and give a little happy sigh.

The pictures are of Joe and AJ working together to assemble a new swing for the baby.

Snow Patrol

We've had a couple of inches of snow a few times over the past week that has accumulated into enough that we thought AJ would be interested in checking it out. The first day that it snowed, I realized that we did not have the boots, mittens and heavy coat that are required for a toddler to be out in the thick of it, so I went online and put in an order that I was anxiously watching the mail for all week. My brother told me that he remembers loving bright colors at a little boy, which led me to go for the bright orange coat in the hopes that it would entice AJ to want to wear it and get over his recent fits about putting on his coat. My sister also suggested letting AJ pick out a hat and mittens himself at the store since part of his fits are about him becoming independent. I couldn't bring myself to brave the mall at 9 months pregnant during the holidays with a toddler in tow, so we just ordered them online and then made a big show of opening the box when it arrived, taking the things out, trying on the boots, etc., etc. to get him sufficiently revved up to want to gear up for an outside adventure. I also let him pick between his new hat and his old hat, although he didn't seem to get the idea yet of making a choice to have only one of two items. We'll keep working on it.

As far as the snow goes, AJ was definitely interested but a little frustrated about all of the gear that was in his way. He wanted to take his mittens off so that he could better maneuver his hands, and Joe said that he had a hard time walking in his snow boots. I think I might invest in a pair of the mittens that my sister said were all the rage at her former preschool in Colorado--they go up to the kids' elbows so that they can't get them off once the coat is on over the mittens. Those Coloradans certainly know their cold weather gear, so it is probably a brilliant invention. Other than that, we'll have to keep at it and see if AJ just gets used to the gear. His first outing lasted a good 10 to 15 minutes, which was about 10 minutes longer than I had expected. At least he is still wearing diapers, so we don't have the situation where we put the whole getup on only to get a request to use the bathroom.

The Guys

I seem to be limited to about 4 or 5 pictures per post by the blogger template, so my Thanksgiving post did not include a couple of great shots of the guys in the family on Thanksgiving that I want to add here. AJ spent some quality time hanging with his Uh-CLES! on Thanksgiving and was happy to be indoctrinated into the American tradition of tossing the football around on a Thanksgiving with decent weather. Joe made a special trip on Wednesday after getting home from work to buy both a regulation size and AJ-size footballs to have on hand. The top photo is of Uncle Roger, Uncle Will, Uncle Dave, Dada, AJ, Papa and Uncle Andy. The bottom photo is of AJ sharing a couple of animals from Noah's Ark with his Great-Uncle Roger.