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Toddler Batteries
Today was a really good day. You know why? Because I painted for three hours straight. It was dreamy. I love our new one-long-nap-a-day routine. It’s not like I’ve got Baby Bug on a rigid schedule, it’s more like I’ve got my expectations in line with her inner schedule. It took me a while to get here (and I’m sure I’m jinxing it by writing about it) but it sure is nice.
The trick to this new routine is to read Baby Bug’s low battery symbol correctly. When she starts getting cranky, her battery symbol is blinking. It’s a warning. But it doesn’t mean to put her down right that minute. It means I have about an hour left to go.
Toby hates this low battery stage. Baby Bug is cranky and cries at every little bump and scuff. If you take a crayon away from her, while she’s coloring a masterpiece on the wall, all hell will break lose. She’s just generally a crank to be around. But it isn’t worth putting her down yet because she will fight a nap like getting a tooth pulled. She’s just tired enough to be cranky and sour but not tired enough to think of sleep as something that will probably feel good.
Toby always asks me, “What’s wrong with her?” (as if I have some great motherly wisdom that knows all). I try to explain to him that her mood is directly related to where she is in her nap schedule. This is where I break out the graphs and charts…
When she first wakes up she’s a little grumpy because she wakes up slow. About half an hour later she’s the sweetest baby ever. She laughs and plays and smiles at everything. This happy fun stage lasts for about two to three hours. Around that fourth hour, she starts to be a pessimist.
Putting flash cards in a box suddenly become incredibly frustrating and the baby that used to “try, try again” now wails and throws the cards on the floor in disgust. She doesn’t want apple juice or orange juice and when you tell her that it is NOT cookie time, she’ll throw herself on the floor and bemoan the weight of the world. The fourth hour toddler is not a fun toddler. She’s a pain in the neck.
However, if you can wait out that fourth hour, the fifth hour is divine. She wants to cuddle. She wants to read stories and sit in your lap. She wants to sing and before I know it she’ll start fingering her pacifier and rolling around on her bed (she takes her nap on the futon—the crib days are gone). Two minutes later her eyes are closed and she’s fast asleep without a whimper of resistance. I can put up with an hour of pessimist baby for this.
Not every day but lately she’s been taking longer and longer naps. The other day she slept for four hours straight! I think she’s growing. Sometimes, I swear she’ll wake up looking taller. She’s getting to be such a big girl.
This picture was taken half an hour after a two hour nap. You can almost see the fully charged green battery symbol on her forehead.
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Dog Days of Summer
My mom says, after I pretty much begged her to tell me the truth, “Blogging about painting all the time is a little bit boring. I like it when you tell stories better.”
So that’s me reaching for a story… about my mom and painting! Ha ha ha and you thought I was going to tell you a story about Baby Bug and something else besides painting. Sorry. I’ll try to throw in a few more details here and there around the talking about painting.
I write about painting because that’s all I do these days. Paint paint paint. I am ruining all my clothes. Paint in my hair, paint on my toes, paint under my fingernails. I am disgusting. I think I need to be sent away to a spa for a weekend and forced to be turned back into a respectful girly girl again.
Speaking of girly girly girls, look it’s Baby Bug driving in her “car car”. She’s been on repeat mode lately, saying everything twice over and over and over and over. “Mommy Mommy. Paint! Paint!” “Mommy Mommy! Color! Color! Coloring! Coloring! Telwy-tubbies! Telwy-tubbies!” It gets old really really fast fast.
Sometimes I just want to find a switch on her somewhere that I can flip back and forth and stop all the skipping and replaying. Like maybe she has too many scratches on her cd rom or something.
It could be that I’m always painting and not listening. It’s probably my fault. Can’t you just see the headline, “Poor child neglected by mother obsessed with painting”. That’s almost as bad as those parents who got turned in because they forgot to feed their kids because they were playing video games. OMSH has that link somewhere.
Baby Bug has been fine though. A little wound up and off her nap schedule but happy and fine. She loves the sticks. There’s Doggies! Doggies! and Papa! Papa! and Corn! Corn! and “Dog Wahwoo! Dog Wahwoo!” (translated: icky dog water ick! ick!) and all kinds of other things that can be exclaimed about in duplicate.
While Baby Bug was walking around playing with the dogs and exclaiming, I started up a little neighborhood art class. I didn’t mean to. At first it was just my nosy nieces (who are a handful on their own, believe me) and then the neighborhood girl came over and next thing I knew I was mixing paint for them and teaching them how to wash brushes and trying to keep paint off my mom’s living room floor.
If it wasn’t so hot here, and I wasn’t so distracted and obsessed with my own painting, I could start up an art class out here easily. I could set up some tables out in my mom’s yard and charge bucks. Before I’d know it, I’d have to have some kind of permit and take early childhood development classes or something. Kids are so bored toward the end of summer and painting is all kinds of fun.
I’m not trying to pat myself on the back or anything but kids really love painting. They don’t even care what they paint. I couldn’t spare any canvasses so I sent them out into the yard to find spare pieces of scrap wood. They came back with all sorts of odds and ends. Little one inch square blocks, some plywood triangles with a nail stuck in one end, a chair leg… they didn’t care. All they cared about was painting.
They didn’t want to stop either. It was very strange to me because where I am all about the end result and about amassing as many paintings as possible, they were more about the process. They could paint the same piece of wood over and over and over. First they painted it completely black and then completely pink and then completely blue.
No pictures or fancy designs… just covering the whole piece of wood with paint. I think they would have kept adding layers and layers all day long. But I had to put a stop to it. Paint is expensive and I’ve got more paintings to paint! I think I need to invest in some cheapy student paint. Or get them to paint the fence or something.
So I didn’t get a lot of my own paintings done today but I’ve made a serious dent. In fact, when I go home I think I will only have one canvas left to paint. Only one! I might go through withdrawals!
With lots of help from my mom and a living room full of hand-me-down toys to keep Baby Bug occupied, I’ve completed three paintings and two big ones are in the works.
Here are two of the completed three. I’ll try to take a picture of the other one tomorrow. It has a story to go with it so I have to do some more picture taking in good light so you can get the whole gist.
And here is one in progress. It is going to be called “Surf Dog” in honor of the Surf Dog Market who are giving me this great opportunity.
I always sketch my paintings first. I’m way too intimidated by straight paint on canvas and unfortunately my sketches always turn out better than the actual painting. But I’m getting better. Painting is definitely something that you can watch yourself get better at.
