spring? break.

FINALLY! i am back to a world with wifi... it's been a long, long end of the week/weekend/beginning of the week. we have been out of routine, in some ways good and some ways bad. it's been sometimes easy and sometimes hard, as my two-day migraine can attest. i will apologize in advance for how long this is going to be, but there has been quite a bit happening. i won't hold it against any of you for skipping most of the text, scanning the pictures, and then still being overwhelmed. :)

thursday and friday were out of the picture for blogging because of midterms. this week is spring break, though the weather unfortunately forgot this fact. thursday was my rock documentaries class, for which i had to spend the morning (while jude was napping, at least) finishing my take-home portion of the test while re-watching a few of the docs that were going to be on the in-class exam.

i actually bought most of the docs we've watched thus far, just because they were so insanely awesome. the bob dylan doc is probably my favorite, though i do believe the u.s. vs. john lennon has changed my life. i did manage to capture a few pictures of jude in my mom's playpen, yes it is over forty years old so i watched him closely while he was in it.





friday was the due date for my online poetry explication so, of course, i spent that morning fine-tuning my rough draft. why on earth i can't get anything done ahead of time is beyond me. life is so much more hectic with a little one, but it's not like he doesn't go to sleep at 9pm. i guess i just feel that after bedtime is MY only time to myself and so i don't use the time very "wisely". oh well. after i submitted my draft, i breathed a sigh of relief and went downstairs to play with my "spring break". his nana has found one of those horse-on-a-stick toys she had bought for a halloween costume (i think?) and was galloping him around on it when i walked in. he loves this thing.

it neighs and makes the clip-clop sounds of hooves, so therefore jude is now obsessed with it. it has to be put away if you want his attention anywhere else. or if you want a break. galloping a 25lb boy around while trying to hold him on the horse-stick is no easy feat. at least it wears him out to a certain extent, too. in fact, all of his exhaustion warranted him two small afternoon snacks. first, some blueberry frozen yogurt (sugar-free and homemade) and an hour or two later an apple chunk. both of which were served in the fresh food feeder.

the blueberry yogurt was a huge mess as well as a huge hit, while the apple was much less messy and received mixed reviews and the following face.

of course i gave him a non-organic apple and after later consulting the "dirty dozen" list felt really badly about doing so. here's a link if anyone is interested, and the iphone "has an app for that!" as well.
http://www.foodnews.org/fulllist.php
i am normally very careful about what i give him that isn't organic, but i thought "what the heck" we were eating apples and he didn't want to be left out. it had been a few weeks since i'd looked at the list and didn't remember apples being #2!!!! grr. but i guess you live, you learn. i would much rather be the one who messes up though. what really grates my nerves is when someone else gets it wrong. i am very strict when it comes to jude's food as i'm sure most people are aware, so if you see us out and about, please don't feed the jude. i may start hanging a sign around his neck, because i am no good at telling people myself. i'm too timid and too afraid of hurting anyone's feelings. i almost had a stroke when my step-aunt stuck her finger in a cheesecake and gave him a big taste. it raises my blood pressure even thinking about it! i just wish people would ASK before taking it upon themselves to give him tastes of anything!!! my response will still generally be "no, please" but at least then they save us from the awkwardness and me from the secret anxiety.

because i am so specific about jude's routine, i hate having to take him anywhere. my home and my mom's home where we stay most of time are both baby-proofed (well, mine is undergoing an overhaul at the moment so that's not entirely true) and so i know he's not going to severely injure himself. plus we mop the floors all the time, have a hypoallergenic dog, and keep everything picked up, so i know it's clean. i realize completely that he is eventually going to have to work on an immunity to dirt and grime, but that can wait for several more months. right now if anything were to happen to him or if he caught any sort of a bug, it could be detrimental to his fragile little life. i don't honestly give a damn what anyone thinks of the way i do things, either. call me crazy, call me overprotective, call me whatever you please. but in the end i am the one who carried him around inside my body for the better part of a year and i am the one who gave birth to him as well as the one who will spend 24 hours a day taking care of him for the duration of his childhood. so that leaves it up to his daddy and mommy to have the ultimate say. whew. i had a moment there. sorry. it's really just pent up frustration and insecurities from not actually being able to say what i feel in real life.

on to friday evening! for dinner, he got to try cinnamon for the first time! i added a dash to his applesauce, and it was gone in a snap. he loved it.

this was his "please shovel as much as possible in my mouth at one time" face...

after dinner, i let him burn off his calories doing a little stair-climbing...

and he even took a picture of mommy climbing the stairs...

and then daddy came home and it was nearly bedtime.


we woke up early on saturday and actually made it on time to our first kindermusic class. it was so exciting. in his class are a 2&3 yr old brother and sister, a 10 month old little girl, a 4 month old & 3yr old brother and sister, and the instructor's daughters who are i think, 5 and 11. we danced and sang, ran and walked, trotted and galloped, rocked and rolled. it was a blast! and although he was tired through most of the class, he woke up at the end and had a ball. we had to keep his paci in his mouth most of the time, as he kept trying to eat all the music-makers, but it was a great time, nonetheless. here are a few of the pictures i had time to capture that weren't a blur of movement...



after class, on our way to zach's mom's, we made a pit-stop for some delicious italian food at...







then we spent the rest of our saturday and that night with zach's family. unlike belle, junie would stay still and let jude pull on her, so he loved her though i'm not sure he didn't have a mild reaction (sneezing fit) to her hair and dander...

he took pictures with his tiny aunts...

and slept about as well as i expected him to. he had been restless at night for the past couple of days, so i am just overjoyed that he slept at all in a new place. it's hard getting them out of a routine they are so used to, but he actually went right to sleep cuddling with me so it wasn't too bad. i was just worried to leave him on the bed after he fell asleep because now that he tosses and turns at night, i feared that he would fall off. and i don't trust those netted bed rails, because he scoots around and could probably scoot right past them and fall in the floor. he also has a habit of waking up silently and unexpectedly and trying to crawl off of beds/couches. he scared me to death early last week when i walked in to check on him during a nap and he was wide awake and making for the edge of the bed. so now he doesn't get left alone anywhere.

sunday morning, we jetted back home so that mommy could do some work and that afternoon, we went to stay the night with christine and holden and keep them company while holden's daddy was away. i was glad jude had already been out of routine for a night because one more night didn't seem to bother him at all. and he absolutely loved christine. he wasn't sure about the tiny baby holden, but he did give him a cordial taste...

holden is such a sweet, adorable little thing...


even so, zachary's expression says it all when it comes to us thinking about having another...

if we ever do, it will be quite some time, haha. jude wasn't too thrilled, either, when i had to watch holden while christine ran out for a minute and he had to play in his frog seat while i fed holden a bottle. when i let him sit on the couch with me and the baby, he kept trying to crawl in my lap on top of holden. then he got down and commenced trying to retrieve holden's bottle from the coffee table. i think he was a little jealous. and i think i knew he would be. before we even got to deenie's, i stopped at walmart to buy an air mattress for jude and myself to sleep on and also got him some new toys to keep him occupied.


then when i met with a friend for coffee at barnes&noble, i couldn't resist buying him this shiny-finned fish that he absolutely loved...

the lion walker i got for $10! it was originally almost $50, but i guess since walmart was revamping they were trying to get rid of extra merchandise. so, yay! and he thought it was the most interesting thing ever. we moved christine's gigantic coffee table to create a barricade on the rug in front of the sectional, and jude had a wonderful time pushing it around. and then as jude proceeded to pull dvds off the floor shelves and cords and everything within reach, i laughed and told christine that at least she was getting a preview of everything they would need to baby proof in the next few months. it's amazing how drastically your life changes. and how dramatic "the little things" become. i had no idea that half of my beloved furniture and home decor would be replaced with brightly colored (and un-matching!) baby toys. and thank goodness for us being able to stay with my mom right now because i think being cooped up in a duplex while going through this transitional (crawling/walking) phase would be madness. the toys i can deal with, even the clutter to a certain extent, but here we have all the room we need to move around and to keep jude occupied. i do really miss my small space, however. by the time late spring/early summer rolls around, we would like to have moved back into our place almost 100%. being able to open doors and windows makes that duplex seem much roomier and also much more like home. plus, i won't be in school after the first week of may, so i will be able to devote my full attention to little jude.

i CANNOT wait for summer break. i look forward to stroller walks around the neighborhood, taking him to visit my dad's garden on his little farm, CAMPING at the gorge & doing some hiking and climbing, going to my grandparent's biiiiig farm and showing him around those hundreds of acres (can't wait to see what he thinks about cows, lol), and just all the trips to parks. basically, summer fun in general. hopefully he loves the swimming pool as much as he loves the bath. and hopefully he's easy to take on camping trips. we'll see!

anyway, flashback to sunday... we had such a fantastic time keeping deenie company that night. she and ben are both clean freaks like me, so their condo was neat and tidy (even though she was convinced it was cluttered, psshh yeah right) so i let jude crawl and play pretty freely without worry. she made us one of the tastiest lasagnas i've ever had, and jude really wanted to try it but instead chowed down on his beets and squash. also, he's never been on an air mattress and so it was pretty hilarious to watch him roll and roll all over it. i bought him some new bath toys so he splashed around with those and had a good bath. these particular toys all have different textures and are brightly colored, so deenie and i told him which colors were which and watching him feel the textures. he's getting so much more interested in things like that. and christine has inspired me in many ways to start talking to him about things like that. she talks to holden constantly about colors, shapes, parts of the body, etc. and he really pays attention, even at 6 weeks old! so i have started to tell jude more and more about his toys and things. then on monday morning, christine made breakfast and i got to watch holden for awhile. both of the boys napped for around an hour and aside from jude acting out a little, it was pretty easy. i definitely couldn't have two small ones, though. not at all. haha. when christine came back, we loaded the boys up and ran some errands before having a little cajun lunch.

jude loved the brightly-colored paintings and lights and made a mess of his avocado and banana lunch. by the time we got back home that evening, jude was exhausted. he slept in the truck all the way home and for about ten minutes while i unloaded our things. then he had some dinner. honeydew melon (my hands were washed, i promise)...

avocado/honeydew (aka- MESS)...

and finally an egg yolk (for the first time)...


he loved it!

and we are glad to be home, finally! always there to gladly help a friend in need and happy to see family, but home is the best place in the world.

before i end this novel, i'll write a quick update on everything not covered in my ranting...

jude now understands a few simple words/phrases: "no", "where is...?", "bite bite", "one minute", and a couple of others i can't think of off the top of my head. he may not fully understand the meaning of all the above, but he understands what actions usually follow or what he is expected to do. his energy is becoming more boundless, though he still takes at least two thirty minute naps every day. a few times a week he sleeps for 2-3 hours at a time in the early afternoon. but when he's awake, he generally wants down on the floor to play, so we have to keep them swept and mopped at least every other day. he is also starting to actually play with toys more, exploring their buttons and switches, rolling toys that have wheels, etc. he still gums and chews on almost everything, but only after he's figured it out. and speaking of gumming, he now has his two bottom teeth completely through and you can see them more poking out further everyday. i try to keep my hands out of his mouth and try to remind everyone else that although his teeth are neat, they are after all just teeth and don't need to be touched. if i've washed my hands and got my nails clipped short i will try and pull his lip back enough to check them out every other day or so, but for the most part i would really prefer if people just not have their hands in his mouth. PLEASE!!! anyway, he is also learning lots of new tricks. he now folds his hands together and hits at his mouth with them to make a "wah wah wah" indian sound. he is starting to "dance" to music, but really just gets very excited upon hearing his toys make music and bobs up and down with enthusiasm. he will also "sing" or make loud tones in sync with tones i make to him. he is so much more vocal these days than ever and is a happier boy when around new people. he will talk to perfect strangers, laugh much more easily, and once he has inspected someone he will smile and strike up "conversation." he used to do these things only with myself, zach, mom, and kevin, but he is very friendly to most everyone nowadays. this might be due, in part, to the joy he feels at being so much more mobile. he started crawling only to abruptly quit and instead only shows interest in pulling up and standing. in the process of pulling up, if he gets stuck on his knees and can't find anything within reach to pull himself to his feet, will let go and balance on his knees for up to a minute. he has even unknowingly let go of things while standing and balanced for several seconds before falling or grabbing hold of something. at times, if i'm right next to him, he will purposefully let go just so i will catch him. he is in the beginning stages of cruising, having figured out how to step forward or to the side in order to move from one place to another or from one toy or piece of furniture to another. when i hold his hands, he is starting to really take steps though he is still wobbly and unsure in his footing. the lion toy i found at walmart is something he can hold onto and walk with, but unless i hold the front of it and follow his speed, it usually gets way ahead of him and he has to crawl on his knees to catch up. quite a few people have suggested walkers, but i am pretty against them. the Pediatrics Association warns against them as they can prevent a baby from walking for awhile because they satisfy the urge babies have to move across the floor and so they can delay development. not to mention they allow babies access to things like maybe the stove or tabletops that may pose as a hazard. plus, as with anything you can put the baby into, walkers can become a "babysitter" where parents can place them so that they don't have to spend time engaging them. finally, walkers (like bouncers, etc) also displace a baby's fragile hips and can cause problems when they do start to walk if they've spent more than 20-30mins in them a day. sorry guys, i just research everything like a mad woman. i'm sure many of your children have spent plenty of time in walkers and not had one problem, but i just don't want jude to be a part of that other percentage, no matter how teeny tiny his chances are.

i'll try to update more frequently this week so that this crazy long posting doesn't happen again too soon.