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.)

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.

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.