SQTF 78: Glasses, Lent, and Toddler Adventures

I

After spending most of Sunday curled up in a dark room with pillows over my head, hiding from light and noise, I've been good and worn my glasses all week. It's so frustrating how they constantly slide down my nose and are always covered with sticky little toddler fingerprints no matter how often I clean them, not to mention how insanely cold it gets having strips of metal on your face at -27 degrees! But I've only had one headache this week, and it was nowhere near the scale of Sunday's migraine, so I guess it balances out.

II

We're going to be late for my meeting today. Little Bear was absolutely sure that he didn't want a nap this morning, despot my hours of effort, so I finally gave up and started getting ready to leave, figuring we could go to Mass, then the meeting, and then I'd just have an exhausted fussy monster when I got home. As I started collecting outdoor gear, Little Bear suddenly decided that it was nap time, right this minute Mama!, and melted down into a puddle of tears on the floor...and promptly fell asleep. This kid.

III

For the "Matt is a great dad" file: the other evening, Matt and Little Bear brought the bucket of duplos out to the living room. Little Bear's only really shown interest in taking apart things that we make up until this point, but he was so excited about this plane that Matt built him: he's spent a good chunk of every day since running around with it and making plane noises. And yesterday I saw him happily building a tower with duplos, so he's finally learned how to stick them together! I foresee many years of stepping on Legos scattered across the floor.

IV

We've finally started making a concerted effort to teach Little Bear to sleep on his own, and so far, it hasn't been too bad. Setting a regular, early bedtime and trying to encourage a nap in the same general part of the day every day has helped him get into a better sleep rhythm: he's been falling asleep for the night in a shorter amount of time, without as much wildness; he hasn't been waking up to nurse as frequently, and sometimes falls back to sleep on his own without nursing; and he has woken himself up consistently every morning this week between 7 and 7:15. He is still in our bed, and will be until he's doing better at falling back asleep without needing to nurse, but it's so nice to see progress.

V

It seems like sometimes kids latch on to the oddest words; for Little Bear, recently, it's been "nun." Every time he hears one of us say "none" or "nun," his head pops up from whatever he's doing, he gets a big grin on his face, and he runs off saying "nun, nun, nun," to find the little singing Benedictine nun figurine I got in college. There are a few friars in the same set, but the only one he wants to play with is the nun...and I keep finding her having adventures all over the place.

VI

Lent is coming, and I'm starting to think about our menu. We still need to sit down and decide just what we are doing in term of food, because while I'd like to do the strict, traditional fast (no meat, no dairy, etc.), Matt doesn't want to add back in all of the starches we cut out... And I am still nursing, so I do have to get enough for that. (And yes, I do know that nursing mothers are exempt from the strict fasting requirements.) We will see what we decide. If anyone has some good meatless, dairy-free, lower-starch meal ideas, though, I'm all ears!

VII

After six months of having his front eight teeth, and getting angry every other week pretending to be teething, Little Bear is finally sporting half a lower molar. As it and its twin have been breaking their way through his gums the past couple of days, we've been wondering where his incisors are... Aren't they supposed to come first? Maybe he's just going to get a whole bunch of teeth all at once? We can feel the other first molars getting ready to come through, and the places where the lower incisors should be have looked puffy for months, but there's been no sign of any incisors actually coming in.

Have a great weekend! Check out more Quick Takes at Conversion Diary!