Thursday 29 September 2011

Baby and Body Paint

If you know me, you are aware of my love for body art. If you are just getting to know me through the blog, well, let's just say my body has a wonderful relationship with clothing. And with tattoos, jewellery - pierced and worn, costuming, masks and my favorite, body paint. Which you may have seen while I was pregnant. 
I love being transformed by Shelley! (you-name-it) She's been painting me for 5 years now.
So, can you imagine how excited I was when she asked if I was still interested in learning some techniques. Me, a paint brush, sponge and pallet of colors? Yes please! I had forgotten how much fun it was to be behind the scenes, instead of just modelling! 
Of course during our amazing afternoon of painting and hanging out, we realized that Lady P needed a little more color...


Penelope hit her two month mark and I still hadn't inked her feet. So we broke out the teal, to match the nursery of course ;) and set to painting her tootsies.


It went about how you would expect it to: paint on sponge, sponge on feet, squirm, cry, kick the excess paint off onto Mama's face, press foot into paper, and repeat.


But we got it. You know what they say, "better late than never".

We were feeling so good about how they turned out that we decided to try for the hands.

Let's just say that unless I creep in and sneakily paint her hands while she sleeps, Penelope won't have prints of her hands to match. She totally won that battle, hands down. (sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Tuesday 20 September 2011

my lovely lady humps...

Yup, this is a post about my boobs. (I apologize to Penelope's grandparents in advance)

After you give birth you're told to give it 6 weeks before you get back into an exercise routine, so I waited and waited... and finally the big day arrived. I had served my time. Swimsuit and towel packed, I was pumped to go back to aquafit. 

Sign on the door: 
"We're sorry, Artillery Park is closed for maintenance from September 4-18."

sigh.

So this week, I finally got my body back in the pool. Which meant my first long period of time away from Penelope, Jared's first time attempting to cup feed her (based on the amount of milk on the kitchen table and floor and how wet P's sleeper was when I got home, I'd say it went really well lol) and, therefore, my first pumping adventure.

Yes adventure... over high tides and through enchanted forests I fought robots in disguise, climbed the steepest mountains, and braved the hail and the wind, all for 4oz of milk. This is what having a babe one one boob and using a manual pump on the other at 3am feels like. Especially when it falls over, you lose two of your hard earned ounces, and so at 6am, you have to lather, rinse, repeat.

Nah, it wasn't so bad. I've always been a small chested woman, and even after giving birth and nursing for 2 months I still receive the "wow, you almost have boobs now!" comments. It's okay. I came to terms with my resemblance to a 12 year old boy years ago. But damnit if the girls don't produce one hell of a lot of milk.

Case in point: Even after pumping, I could feel the let down when I started jumping around in the pool. And may I just say what an odd sensation it is to have boobs that bounce! I don't envy you larger chested ladies at all! It felt... weird. 

Anyway... on with my odd little tale...

Towards the end of class women and their babes showed up for swimming lessons. A dozen 4m olds not only caused me to crave to have Penelope back in my arms, even as I did the running man underwater, but once I passed them on my way to the showers I knew a second let down was coming. What the hell boobs? Really?

It was in the shower that I then realized I don't just leak milk, I spray it.

My breasts had turned into high powered water guns.

I kid you not. It was like two milk lasers decided to open fire.


Lesson learned? Other people's babies WILL bring out the mama in you, whether you like it or not.



Monday 19 September 2011

Baby? and Me Yoga

Meet Cat and Melissa. Two amazing women from my prenatal yoga class, who also happen to be kick ass derby girls in the league Jared refs for. AKA: my new friends, and Penelope's soon to be - their spawn - Emily and Gavin, respectively. Emily was born two weeks before Penelope. Gavin, two weeks after. 

I don't know about Cat and Melissa but I thought I'd have all this time to do stuff while I was on maternity leave... (cue laugh track) yeah I know... 

Welcome to motherhood.

Bite me.

While I'm willing to sew, paint, do photography, and write little bits at a time, I refuse to renege on my promise to myself to stay active after baby. Hey, gotta counteract that extra dessert somehow right? Well, all three of us have managed to find an hour (or three if you count that extra dessert - crepes and waffles after class) every Wednesday to get together for for Baby and Me Yoga at Samatva

First yoga class - P feeling very "zen"

Problem is my babe naps around 10am. I know, you're thinking "problem? You have a baby that naps around the same time EVERY DAY?"

Well when you put it that way, no. But it did suck a little that a lot of the postures for the first half of the class involved baby (hence the name of the class). While most mamas were doing postures with their babe, mine was sleeping soundly at the foot of my mat. So my session went a little like this:

Downward facing dog - over my invisible baby...
Standing forward bend - tickling my invisible baby... 
Bridge, lifting my invisible baby over my head... 
Baddha Konasana - placing my invisible baby's head on my feet for the massage portion of class- yup you guessed it... massaging invisible baby's hands, feet and limbs... helping my invisible baby stand, roll and stretch her arms... 

You get the idea. 

But, because I wanted to really learn how to do this stuff with Penelope at home, I really was doing the postures - and acting out the baby parts. I was starting to feel a little "Donnie Darko" (looks nervously around for Frank). We'll just call it the baby version of Drop Dead Fred...

Gil, our instructor (who is amazing) tells us since that babes are chilled out, it's time for mama's solo postures. Most women lay their babies aside, and who wakes up? Penelope of course. So I sit in a lotus position, nurse her a little bit while I wait until it's time for my baby and me to do some postures together. After 45 minutes we FINALLY get to do a couple poses together while she is totally boob drunk...

... and then it's time for corpse pose.

Class over.

**pout**

Here's hoping she's a little more awake (and well behaved) this week or I'm going to have to borrow a kid for class.

Namaste.

Sunday 11 September 2011

The Nikon's favorite subject...

In my previous post I mentioned we got a fancy new camera (Nikon 5100). I swear it does everything but make my coffee in the morning.

I know, right?

It's more than a little intimidating but I'm having a lot of fun learning. Photography has always been one of those things I said I always wanted to do, but never did. So, here I am... doing it. 

Having an incredibly cute subject to practice on doesn't hurt :) 

So for all of you who have been bitching at me to post more photos, I give you the Nikon's favorite subject (okay okay, it's ours):

Lady Penelope

The first picture I took had to be of her...
 Apparently J and I both like to ignore the headroom rule...

 love love love these shots... playing with color effects

 Penelope's first game of peek-a-boo
 Sleep with one eye open...
 Lovin' the sheepskin...
 And I leave you with classic Penelope... such a monkey!


Screech Fest 2011

Well it finally happened. That moment where I realized I'm not impervious to the screech.
No, I'm not talking about that tasty little beverage from Newfoundland. 

I'm talking about my daughter shifting into a banshee. I guess it makes sense; we have a faerie shrine in the garden, and we have Irish heritage. Although, I don't think anyone keeled over... oh gods, I hope my daughter isn't a death omen...

... sorry, tangent. Let me rewind.

Penelope is an amazing baby. She has fussy time almost every day (usually around dinner time when we're trying to eat) but other than that, and the odd scream-into-the-pillow-night when she wont sleep, she's awesome to hang out with. This is her normal cry:



(Before you judge us for having video and photos of our darling babe crying, you should know we were coincidentally testing out our fancy new camera when she started... oh screw it ~ judge away. Her cry is adorable.)
Friday evening she was not awesome to be around. I finally got that I am not immune to the hair pulling, tear shedding, 1-2-3 counting, putting her in her crib and walking away moment. 

September 9th, 2011 will forever be known to me as Screech Fest 2011. I know it won't be the last, but it was my first. My first for closing my eyes tightly, breathing deeply and exclaiming far more loudly than I should have, "WHY WON'T YOU STOP CRYING?"


It was the first time I've walked away from her. It was the first time I felt the incredible guilt that comes with walking away from your babe. And it was the first time I thought, "What the hell was I thinking? I can't do this!" Of course, that lead to the second moment of feeling incredibly guilty. 

But you know what happened? 

After bouncing, walking, nursing, changing, rocking, singing, swinging and dancing?

She pooped. She stopped crying. She went back to being my awesome little noodle.

And I realized I had gotten back in a patient and loving head space while trying to find the source of her discomfort. I did it. I got through two and a half hours of screeching and a half hour of crying. (Half of that being mine)

I got through it all by myself. And it was because I took 3 minutes to walk away.
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