come out, come out, wherever you are.

this will probably be short. i see it's been over two weeks since my last post and it makes me so sad! i was doing so well at documenting jude's day to day... but then the last few weeks of school came out of nowhere. suddenly i have an assignment due nearly everyday. don't get me wrong... i am SOOOOOOO ridiculously glad for the end of this semester. but i do not like how little time i've been able to spend playing with jude. not to mention the wonderful weather has got me feeling a little caged in. i am almost thankful for the grey days we've seen at the beginning of this week. but i feel oh so sorry for baby jude. all he wants to do is play. and he wants to play with ME. i'll listen longingly to him and my mom downstairs playing and when she brings him upstairs to me to nurse he literally jumps up and down on her hip and lunges at me giggling wildly. i know he misses mommy. mommy misses him, too. but thankfully i only have about two weeks left of school. by the end of next week i think i will be done with all but maybe one or two finals. YAY!

and then we will be busy bees moving. yes, moving! after a long and tiresome search we have found the PERFECT apartment. the original plan was to move into a 3-4BR house with my cousin tiffany and her bf justin (they are expecting on aug 7th!)... well, after much consideration on both parts we kind of realized that it wouldn't work. zach and i need to be close to UK and downtown and they need to be close to the interstate. opposite ends of lexington. so we did some separate searching and they decided on berea (to be close to family, which when you have a new baby is totally understandable) and we simultaneously stumbled on our perfect, new downtown home. it definitely seems like a Divine gift. i mean, this place literally fell into our laps. here we are wasting oodles of gas driving around town day after day, searching every available website, calling and calling and calling... ... ... and TA DA! we find this place by way of none of the above. oh, irony. so, my old roommate/best friend and his girlfriend just moved into this swanky downtown apartment that zach and i were suuuper jealous of. i mean, this place is HUGE. it's an entire upstairs of an old house plus a full attic. and the house/everything is in perfect condition. plus they have this awesome downstairs neighbor, melissa, who does henna and has a 4yr old daughter. out of the blue melissa decides to move in with her boyfriend. and we inherit an absolutely fantabulous apartment. i promise to post pics as soon as we start moving in! so anyway, i may not update for another couple of weeks depending upon how hectic this move is.

and now for jude's updates... not sure what i last posted but jude is now officially cruising all over the place. proficiently! he can squat, stand, squat, pick up a toy, stand, etc... he hasn't fallen in quite some time, either. his babbling has reached new heights as well. ans he understands so much! i can definitely tell that he understands more than he is capable of expressing. his range of emotions gives that away! he now has tantrums (not often... yet) when he doesn't get his way, acts shy and buries his face in my shoulder when he meets new people, laughs in a really humored way when i do something silly, does his best to make ME laugh whenever he can, and a whole variety of things i am forgetting about due to exhaustion. hmm... what else? he can "dunk" his basketball on his toy bball goal. he will hand things to me. for instance, tonight i was emptying the dishwasher and he was handing me spoons and lids. and he loves to pull clothes out of the dryer for me to fold. he is just getting to be so much fun! he is opening cabinets and drawers, trying to reach doorknobs, and pretty much standing against anything he can in order to attempt to reach out-of-the-way things. i emptied the bottom two shelves of my bookcase only for him to start pulling things down from the third. at least he's started taking three hour naps from 10ish-1ish so we both get some rest.

and now apparently my pecking on the keyboard has woken up my tiny bed fellow. goodnight, all.

kamut: pharaoh's grain.

yep, you read correctly. and yesterday jude tasted the food of ancient kings. lol, ok not so much. but kamut is rumored to have been a grain of those ancient egyptians. either way, it's tremendously tasty as well protein-packed. it's higher fatty acid content makes it a wonderful high-energy food and it is full of b vitamins, vitamin e, zinc, etc. it's considered an extra-special wonder grain since it has never been genetically modified (as wheat and such have). plus i'm sure you all know by now that i am a sucker for introducing exotic foods to my bouncing baby boy. it's all about variety.







and even though jude's new favorite mealtime activity is feeding himself cheerios (well, organic morning o's) he stopped to taste the kamut. and he seemed to like it. he ate it all up, anyway. :)

after the morning rain shower and our afternoon nap, we spent the rest of today outside (intermittently, so as not to get sunburned of course) and it was gorgeous!

inspire.

maybe it's because this weekend is easter... maybe it's because the Lord really, really got to me when i first found him... maybe it's because it all really IS the truth... or maybe it's some other reason on my long list... but tonight i find myself thinking of how i haven't given the Divine One the glory he deserves for blessing me with the sweetest little child i've ever laid eyes on. i realize i am so terrified of walking with Jesus because i don't want to be like nearly everyone else i know who does. i don't want jude growing up thinking that if he doesn't go to church or confess certain things that he is going to hell. i want him to feel the freedom to find his own way. i do want him to know that the bible is full of sweet, loving words of comfort and inspiration. but i want him to believe in what it is that speaks to HIM. i don't want him to grow up in one church all of his life... not that there is anything wrong with that... but i just want him to be an accepting person. more than anything else, i just want him to know Love. i just want him to figure it out on his own terms.

so, with that said, i will say now that i have really and truly found Love. i have seen it in many forms and fashions, felt it at both the most and the least opportune moments, and heard it's voice through many lips. sometimes it's apparent at a sidelong glance, other times i've had to delve deep within to draw it out, but it's always there. i find the Divine in an astonishingly green blade of spring grass, in the laugh of my son, and in the least likely of miniscule places. we breathe it in our air and feel it in the warmth of the sun. what we name it is up to us. i don't look down on anyone for how they choose to express it; i haven't that right. and neither do you. we should all just learn to love and appreciate that we are able to do so.

some force out there is holier than us... the details are as unique as each person who figures that out.




and now for some pictures of the past week...









































so, we have a second word... maybe... "mama"!!! i say maybe because the first time he has successfully said it was tonight and we were in the dark trying to go to sleep so i'm not sure if he was saying it to me or just babbling. "up" and "mama"... excellent first words. he says "up" ALL THE TIME now. unless he's in a strange environment of course. but otherwise everything has been "up" all week.

oh and he's tried a few more things this week. graham bunnies and organic apple juice. i introduced them on the same day because i figured since he's already had apples that he couldn't be allergic to an organic form of their juice. plus i needed something to soak the graham crackers in to soften them. he liked them ok. he HATED the apple juice. i even tasted it thinking it might be sour due to lack of added sugar, but no, it tastes just like mott's to me. he made a terrible face everytime he took a sip and eventually stopped sipping altogether. i'm going to keep trying though. and then later in the week i gave him some organic oat "o's." cheerios, basically. but because i haven't given him wheat yet i decided to try the ones made of oats. he LOVES these. i break them in half and scatter them on his high chair tray and he goes to town. he's almost got the pincher grasp down now. today at the park he even pinchered some mango and pear bits. he's started chewing, too. yay! i'm so happy to experiment more with finger foods! and even happier that he can finally really pick them up and feed himself now.

in other news, he's still sleeping like a newborn... waking up every few hours for food and comfort. but it's ok. i just keep telling myself it's a phase. he just likes to know that i'm there, which is why he protests the crib. who wouldn't want to sleep snuggled up to their mommy with their fingers intertwined in her hair? i mean, really. that's security. and when i'm not thinking of how exhausted i am, it's a pretty gratifying feeling.

well, what else? ... we've been playing outside like everyday this week! the weather's been gorgeous! and he really REALLY likes being outside. he gets all excited and bounces on my hip when we walk out the door. sweet thing.

that's about all for now. i'm pretty sure there are other things that have made me say "wow" this week, but i need sleep.

baby can read.

i have been so inspired by jude's desire to learn! since we got "your baby can read" in the mail, i have been doing flashcards with him and today, in the car, he watched the accompanying dvd for the first time. he was absolutely mesmerized. and not the vegged-out kind of mesmerization, but the kind where you can tell his little gears are totally turning. his eyes follow relentlessly as the little arrow scrolls from left to right beneath each word, and he smiles in wonder as they show the picture/video clip associated with the word. since yesterday he has learned to not only point to the eyes on his crab toys but to the eyes on almost any animal toy. tonight, i got him to raise him arms by exclaiming "arms up!" (which was on the video). a baby's capacity for learning is simply incredible. my friend christine (and mommy to holden isaac, 2 months) is already doing both an english AND a spanish version of the "head, shoulders, knees, & toes" song. and holden already pays attention. i wish i would have realized sooner how much they absorb at that age!
in addition to a growing understanding, jude is beginning to really imitate language. he says, very clearly, "up" in regards to the light switch when we play the up/down game with it. moreover, tonight he actually tried to mimic me saying "arms up." he's getting pretty impressive at imitating sounds. my mom pointed out today that when she vacuums (even with the dust buster) he hums. and then today while visiting zach's cousins, after i introduced him to brandt, making sure to say his name slowly and clearly as well as pointing at him, jude reached out his arm and spoke (with his best effort) something quite similar. it's just so crazy how quickly this happens. and i am trying to do more everyday to encourage him.
i'm determined to start baby sign language this week, also. i've been telling myself i would for a couple of months now, but like i said, now i'm really inspired! and, don't mistake my intentions in any of this, by the way. i am not doing this to have the "smartest" baby or in order to brag. i am doing this for his stimulation and benefit (though i might brag a bit, lol). and the more articles i read, the more impressed i am by the benefits. babies actually enjoy learning at this stage in their life, so why not take full advantage of that?

and now for a little bit of today...





<3

friends with kids.

it's not even ten thirty yet and already i've been in bed for around two hours. and it's felt soooo good! i snuggled my little one to sleep and dozed off for a bit myself. what's even nicer is that daddy was going to play xbox and fell asleep on the couch instead so when i woke up i got to watch house on bravo AND blog surf without someone complaining that i'm unable to do both at once. whatev. as a woman, i am TOTALLY able to do both... easily. but i do want to point out that i believe this momma multi-tasking thing us girls are capable of is both a blessing AND a curse. you know what i mean. sure, we CAN do it all, but do we want to? heck no. but of course there are mornings like this morning when we've got somewhere to be and i literally have to nag zachary out of bed as jude is climbing over him in a desperate attempt to flee from its confines himself, and then i have to get up and think of everything to pack, pack it, think of more things i forgot, make jude breakfast, change jude's diaper, dress jude, pack even more things i forgot, etc... all while balancing a 24-lb baby (who really just wants down on the floor so he can get into everything i've packed) on my hip. i'm exhausted even remembering it. but thus goes our saturday mornings before kindermusik. which usually results in a fight en route to kindermusik about how i did everything while zachary took a nice, hot shower and brushed his teeth. but then sometime during kindermusik while watching zach hop and dance around the room with jude, i remember that he works hard all week so that i can stay home and i realize i am ok with taking care of his offspring. it's so hard to stay mad at him now that there is a little half-him, half-me crawling around on the floor between us... oh, parenthood.

and this morning was particularly exciting at kindermusik, so i had no time to be mad anyway. zach's friends (and now mine!) matt and emily

brought their 22 month old son, grayson to class. having someone there that we knew on a more personal level made class twice as fun, even though the instructor's four year old daughter was being an absolute nightmare. but i think (i hope!) grayson had a good time.









after class, we decided to take the kids to the park (omg i can't believe i can say things like that now). jude was totally whipped, so he napped on the way...


at the park...












and then we had mellow mushroom pizza... grayson watched a riveting episode of cartoons on his dvd player and jude pouted because he had to sit in the stroller for more than one minute...



and then he KO-ed on the way home...


what a GREAT GREAT GREAT day. i'm so thankful for the sunburn on my cheeks as well as new, interesting friends (with kids!!!)