A few years and pregnancies ago, a friend gifted me a copy of The Belly Art Project book - signed and personalized, no less! It’s full of super cool pictures of women with their pregnant bellies painted with all sorts of creative ideas. It’s super cute, and something I always wanted to do, but a few things were holding me back.
First, I wasn’t sure who would do it. Could I paint my own belly? Talk a friend into it? And then if I did, I wasn’t sure what I should paint. So many of the ones in the book are either super personalized or very clever, and I was having a hard time coming up with something that wouldn’t be completely random.
So indecision pushed it off and I never got it done.
But as you know, I currently find myself pregnant again. And lately as much as I hate being pregnant, I think that my bump looks pretty cute. It’s gotten very round, which I swear never happened with G’s pregnancy. He was all up in my ribs and poking out at all angles.
And then recently I came up with an idea, and it kept bouncing around in my head. So when we had a free afternoon and it was 80 degrees out, I decided to try it out. I pulled out the book and showed it to E and G. We read through the whole thing and looked at all the pictures, and then asked them if they wanted to paint my belly.
They weren’t immediately sold - I’m not sure if they didn’t believe me, or weren’t really sure what I was offering, so it took a bit of convincing to even get them outside. Usually we paint the rocks in the back yard, and they kept saying they wanted to do that instead (something we will do this summer). But once I sat down and handed them a paint brush, they dove right in.
They started on the belly (with G extra focused on painting my bellybutton ha!) but things escalated pretty quickly. Before I knew it my arms and legs were painted and they were moving on to giving me a pedicure. It wasn’t as planned or perfect as the photos in the book, but it was so much fun. Every time they asked if they could paint another area, I couldn’t say no because they were laughing so much and jumping up and down.
G was giggling non stop and saying “Mama! You all rainbow!!”
I didn’t think they could have any more fun, but then I told them that someone needed to hose me off after. E’s whole face lit up at the idea of turning the hose on me. We spend a lot of time outside going over rules and how no one is allowed to spray or splash anyone but themselves. So this was a rare rule breaking, which made it even more fun. They took turns spraying me and laughing as I screamed at how cold the water was.
Even hours later, when we were all cleaned up, they kept coming up to me: “Mama, remember when we made you all rainbow!?” “Mama I painted you all over!”
At this point I think I’m game for almost anything to pass the time until the baby gets here.
