I am, as you can tell, a little in awe of how this process has somehow, mysteriously happened even with me watching every day. But it was bound to happen, wasn't it. And really the timing is right. There are so many changes coming up in Jack's life that he'd better be changing a bit himself, to keep up.
First and foremost, I suppose it is about time to officially introduce Jack's little sister, who will make her arrival somewhere around May 9th. Here's her most recent "head shot", taken at 20 weeks. All continues to go smoothly with the pregnancy and we are looking forward to this little girl being a WONDERFUL sleeper (we deserve it, right?) and I am looking forward very much to the purchasing of many flowery, embroidered outfits at the baby resales this spring. This unassuming little fetus is the reason for the other impending changes in Jack's life, but the loss of "only child" status may be the hardest hit of all for him. We are certainly hoping that in the long run, having a sibling will add joy and richness to his life. But I am preparing myself for many many moments in the interim where we wonder why in the world we had to go and mess with our perfect family of 3!
The first change for Jack with this pregnancy was the loss of my milk supply when I was about 10 weeks along. Jack had already been toying with weaning himself from nursing; after about a month of somewhat painful, rather fruitless nursing sessions 1-2 times a day, Jack decided to let go of the "numahs" habit, at about 26 months of age. Very bittersweet for me. I have always been committed to letting him self-wean but I have to admit that with the onset of pregnancy and less-than-comfortable nursing, I did help it along a bit, with a few pointed talks about "being a big boy" and "numahs are empty right now". And it's true, he IS a big boy. It's a perfectly fine time for him to move on from nursing. BUT, this meant my little baby really was grown up. That tiny little dependent nursling really is all gone now. Sigh. It is nice, though, to have a few months off before welcoming the next one...
The other changes are still "en route"-- we have our work cut out for us this spring.
We have been busy since Christmas with readying Jack's big boy room upstairs, as well as rehabbing and cleaning up the upstairs bathroom for his future use. The bedroom's been a snap-- we chose a color we adore with relative ease, got a cute toddler bed, Nat is working on built in bookshelves. Coming along nicely. The bathroom-- well, it was not a very nice bathroom to begin with and it has suffered from a few years of neglect on my part as it was used by our bachelor boarders. After working on the bathroom for a few days I now feel really, really bad about subjecting those poor gentlemen to such a horrid place for hygiene. A few coats of paint and some bleach spray later and the bathroom is no longer nearly such a blight on the house. But there is a long way to go before my son gets to use this for his daily ablutions.
That may be beside the point as it may also be a while before Jack is actually using his new room as anything more than a play space. He loves his room and loves his bed and happily pretends to sleep on it, but we are really clueless with how to get him to actually sleep there. I would really like for it to be his decision, for it to come very naturally and easily and have him just make his decision, march up there, and sleep through the night. And I am definitely NOT wanting to push him towards it at the risk of disturbing the precious balance by which we are actually getting a full night's sleep 3/5 nights recently. Any advice? We are biding our time right now, finishing bookshelves and bathrooms and waiting for the magic solution to appear. Sometime before May, please. Worse come to worse we'll move his crib upstairs for him. Baby sister can have a pack'n'play, or a moses basket, or a cardboard box or something. Poor second child. Sidelined already.
Thinking of that tangent on bathrooms... the other change that is coming, whether Jack knows it or not, is potty training. I think it would be really nice to only have one in diapers and so I spend a lot of time telepathically encouraging Jack to decide to use the potty sometime before May. But again, we don't want to push him, want it to be his decision. So that means we get to be really impatient and worry a lot about whether we are doing the right thing, whether he actually is ready, etc. He will sit on the potty more often these days, and has had a few successes, wherein he has managed to squeeze and squeeze and produce a raisin-sized poop so that he can flush the toilet. His desire to use the potty also coincides most often with bedtime-- as in, another excuse to not go to bed. About to lay him down and then: "Can I go poop on the potty???" How does the parent of a toddler in potty-training-age range say no to that? With great difficulty, as it turns out. He has no real desire to use the toilet 90% of the time and we have no desire to fall for his stalling tactics. Hopefully we're not ruining our shot at potty training. Especially as he has a real deadline now-- as of today the boy is officially enrolled in a preschool! He will start in the fall, 2 days per week in the "Young 3's" class at a local co-op preschool, and he needs to be potty trained to attend. Perhaps we'll end up trying that "run around naked" technique this summer. In the meantime we'll continue to let him unproductively sit on the potty looking at catalogs, and hope he gets the idea on his own
.
No comments:
Post a Comment