Cravings
They always tell you when you get pregnant that you will probably crave different foods than you might normally enjoy eating. “You should write them down because kids love to know what weird things you ate when you were pregnant,” I’ve been told. And as far as foods go, I really haven’t experienced what I would consider weird cravings. With Gary I couldn’t get enough pickles. I didn’t want them with anything strange; no peanut butter and pickle sandwiches here! But I constantly wanted pickles and went through jars of them. And with this baby, I’ve wanted cookies. They can’t be store-bought cookies either. They have to be homemade cookies. And I don’t just want to eat them, I want to make them. All day as I try to get done the things that I actually need to do, I keep thinking, “I’d love to bake some cookies right now. Cookies sound so good! Wouldn’t the house smell so much better if some cookies were baking?”
What they don’t tell you when you get pregnant is that cravings do not just apply to the foods you eat. They also apply to your activities. And it’s not the regular procrastination where you choose to do something while thinking, “I really ought to be doing x.” As I’ve stated, I spend a good part of each day contemplating baking cookies right now. My son and husband think this is a great craving for me to have, since it means they get cookies to enjoy at lunchtime and for snacks. But I also find myself craving other activities. As I’m trying to catch up to my word goal so that my books can get finished well in time for the holiday shopping season, I find myself staring at my open Word document thinking of other things I’d like to do. “Hmmm, I’d like to do some scrapbooking right now.” Last week I spent quite a bit of time putting together pictures of my son onto cardstock and patterned paper for a “clothesline of memories” to put in his room. It’s an idea I’ve toyed with for a while since I can’t stand white walls. Every time I’d sit down to write last week, the idea would become clearer and more persistent. Now, twenty pictures later, he’s got three layers of twine wrapped back and forth on one wall with pictures hanging from it by clothespins. For now, my scrapbooking has been satisfied; though I do keep looking at my wedding album and thinking, “I could just do a couple of pages. After all, if I’m ever going to get it finished I have to work on it.”
Other times I find myself looking at the space saver in our bedroom that I painted while in college. It doesn’t match our décor at all. It did at the time I painted it since I had a kind of seascape theme for my room. But when I got married, we had totally different décor and I decided to make a denim quilt for our bed. I let my husband pick out the fabrics, since I really didn’t want him to feel like he was stuck in a girly room. (If you know me personally and are giggling at the idea that I would pick something overly feminine, stop it. My favorite colors are purple and green, and purple rarely comes in masculine prints!) so my sweet husband went with me to the store and he picked out beautiful fabrics; a sunflower print that we both fell in love with, a bold green, and a rich brown. Because my math skills are nonexistent, we ended up short for the quilt, but luckily I had some bright yellow that I’d gotten for a different project that never quite saw fruition. The quilt is gorgeous, but it’s certainly not seascape. I look at the space saver and think, “I really need to repaint that. It clashes with our quilt.” Then I remind myself that I’ve got two books to write, a baby to prepare for and an apartment to keep clean. So I walk away from it and start writing or working on chores. But in the back of my mind I hear that nagging, “But it doesn’t match. It really should be repainted. I haven’t painted anything in a long time. I’d like to paint something. The space saver needs painted.”
If someone knows a good way to shut off the cravings voice, without giving in to whatever it is it’s telling you to do, I could sure use the advice! Because that space saver becomes more and more mismatched every time I see it. And now my fingers are itching to hold a paintbrush…
What they don’t tell you when you get pregnant is that cravings do not just apply to the foods you eat. They also apply to your activities. And it’s not the regular procrastination where you choose to do something while thinking, “I really ought to be doing x.” As I’ve stated, I spend a good part of each day contemplating baking cookies right now. My son and husband think this is a great craving for me to have, since it means they get cookies to enjoy at lunchtime and for snacks. But I also find myself craving other activities. As I’m trying to catch up to my word goal so that my books can get finished well in time for the holiday shopping season, I find myself staring at my open Word document thinking of other things I’d like to do. “Hmmm, I’d like to do some scrapbooking right now.” Last week I spent quite a bit of time putting together pictures of my son onto cardstock and patterned paper for a “clothesline of memories” to put in his room. It’s an idea I’ve toyed with for a while since I can’t stand white walls. Every time I’d sit down to write last week, the idea would become clearer and more persistent. Now, twenty pictures later, he’s got three layers of twine wrapped back and forth on one wall with pictures hanging from it by clothespins. For now, my scrapbooking has been satisfied; though I do keep looking at my wedding album and thinking, “I could just do a couple of pages. After all, if I’m ever going to get it finished I have to work on it.”
Other times I find myself looking at the space saver in our bedroom that I painted while in college. It doesn’t match our décor at all. It did at the time I painted it since I had a kind of seascape theme for my room. But when I got married, we had totally different décor and I decided to make a denim quilt for our bed. I let my husband pick out the fabrics, since I really didn’t want him to feel like he was stuck in a girly room. (If you know me personally and are giggling at the idea that I would pick something overly feminine, stop it. My favorite colors are purple and green, and purple rarely comes in masculine prints!) so my sweet husband went with me to the store and he picked out beautiful fabrics; a sunflower print that we both fell in love with, a bold green, and a rich brown. Because my math skills are nonexistent, we ended up short for the quilt, but luckily I had some bright yellow that I’d gotten for a different project that never quite saw fruition. The quilt is gorgeous, but it’s certainly not seascape. I look at the space saver and think, “I really need to repaint that. It clashes with our quilt.” Then I remind myself that I’ve got two books to write, a baby to prepare for and an apartment to keep clean. So I walk away from it and start writing or working on chores. But in the back of my mind I hear that nagging, “But it doesn’t match. It really should be repainted. I haven’t painted anything in a long time. I’d like to paint something. The space saver needs painted.”
If someone knows a good way to shut off the cravings voice, without giving in to whatever it is it’s telling you to do, I could sure use the advice! Because that space saver becomes more and more mismatched every time I see it. And now my fingers are itching to hold a paintbrush…
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Thanks, Rachelle. Pregnancy in and of itself is a pretty funny thing. :) I'll be looking forward to meeting this new little one in November.
Anyway, congratulations on your pregnancy. :)