G.I. Jude

happy 8 months, henry jude! you are now 2/3 of a year old! you've had a busy 8 month birthday today. actually, we've had a busy weekend period. so busy, in fact, that i am just now getting a chance to update. i'll start with friday...


for breakfast, you had quinoa (pronounced keen-wah).

as it was the first time you've had this, i worried what you would think about it. not to mention that as it was mommy's first time cooking it, it ended up a little overdone.

nevertheless, i mixed it with mango...

and after you thought about it, it seemed to be a hit.

after breakfast, you worked out, stairclimbing...

and because it was a beautiful day, we went outside.



saturday was even nicer, so you got to go out in more comfortable clothes...

i cooked up a storm that night... steaming, chopping, pureeing, and mixing until well after midnight. in the freezer now are purees of asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, onion and leek(for mixing), chunky green/red/yellow pepper puree, and mashed white potatoes. i even whipped up some baby guacamole (with some approved spices!) and mixed and matched some of your purees with one another and adding cooked, chopped brown rice made some vegetarian dishes. in the fridge waiting are the new fruits and one eggplant that will most likely get my care and attention tomorrow as i'm also working on vacuum-sealing everything else. learning to cook/store food is very fun for me, but maybe just because it's yours. :)

and now here we are back to today. sunday. SUNday! it was the nicest day of the weekend (and year) by far. you started off your morning with a little blueberry and vanilla yogurt parfait.


you LOVED it!

then we headed outside where you:
rode the dog...

rode daddy...

tasted the fence...

tasted a tree...

and caught some rays with the two people who love you most...

after that, we went to chuck e. cheese's for barron's 2nd birthday...

and even though you mainly only cared about his balloon...

despite the fact that mommy is a total germaphobe, i let you sit on one ride and get your picture taken for a token. hopefully daddy saved the picture because i was too busy trying to keep your hands off of everything to take one myself. anyway, you were completely tuckered out by the time the festivities ended.

you slept all the way home and until we went to the steakhouse with your gran-dan. gran-dan was so happy to see you and you absolutely had a blast keeping him busy during dinner. i thought that after everything you had done today, you would go right to sleep after your bath, but you surprised me once again by deciding you had something else in mind. CRAWLING! i thought you would be completely content to G.I. Jude around everywhere you went until you started walking. you've been getting up on your knees for about 3 months now, and just when i think you are about to take off, you've always dropped back to your belly and pushed/pulled yourself everywhere. but lo and behold, just as i settle into the fact that you will be a non-crawler, you just take off!


nana had tried to give you a bottle (and me a break) and get you to bed, but you just wanted to play, so she brought you down to the living room where daddy and i were watching saving private ryan. everyone was pretty into the movie, but we were also laughing at you trying to chase belle around. finally you gave up and started playing with some of your toys. you shuffled a little and it caught my attention because although you have done this on occasion, i am always interested to see if you will actually crawl more than two little "crawls"... but you never do... until tonight. you went for it again and the rest was history. the funny thing was that when you stopped you would stretch out your right arm/ left leg and then left arm/ right leg before taking off again. bedtime followed shortly thereafter, though, but now i just can't wait until tomorrow! goodnight and happy 8 whole months to my biiiiig boy!

class daze.

today was a class day. what that means is that i only get to spend about half of my day with jude. sometimes i am excited to get out of the house, and although i miss that sweet little face, it is nice to have a fun evening to myself. other times (MOST of the time) i am not at all thrilled about the prospect of a two hour and 45 minute class session that jude cannot attend. it seems that i want to bring him along with me everywhere these days, and i don't see this abating anytime soon. he is getting easier to take out, not that traveling is any more fun for him, but the overall experience of bringing him with me is much less of a hassle. he can now interact with his environment and i just love showing the world off to him. i am especially excited for the warmer days and the greener days when i will be able to show off nature. but for now we are mostly confined to indoor places and i am a slave to attendance policies and writing essays. this semester isn't too bad, a lot of writing, but that's what i love best. the one class that i go to on thursday nights is rock documentaries and it's great. and even though i got to watch probably the most interesting documentary of the semester (the US vs john lennon!), i was missing my baby bunches. and here's what he was up to while i was away...



climbing stairs! for goodness sake! is he already this grown up? i got to stop in and visit with deenie and baby holden for a few minutes this evening and as i was cradling that tiny, one-month-old baby in my arms i thought how crazy it is that it goes by so fast. i tried to imagine holden 7 months from now, jude's age and size... and then i tried to imagine 7 months earlier when jude was holden's age and size... i am barely hanging on the memory of his fragility, the way his skin felt like soft paper, how i was too afraid to even change his diaper until a couple of days after he was home... i mean, was jude really THIS tiny just over half of a year ago?!


what will i think when he's turning 18?!?

for now, i am content with him fitting comfortably between daddy and mommy in the bed at night...

with being able to smell his sweet milk breath as it warms my cheek, and with snuggling him to death while he's still too young to protest. we took a three hour nap together today and i felt so at home next that tiny body and slept so soundly. it definitely made it hard to leave him this afternoon. but i did get a lot of shopping done at the whole foods market before class, and i am so excited for all the new recipes i get to try and new foods jude gets to try over the next couple of months!

and now i am going to work on my poetry explication and my newest personal reading list...

a long day of play.

today was mostly good. today jude and i played... A LOT. today i did not get a nap. today i realized that school is going to get significantly more difficult in the next couple of months (and years).

thinking about this fact, i completely balked, wondering if i am really up to the challenge. i feel overwhelmed probably more than i should. i have an incredibly hard time following through with things. i second-guess myself constantly. i wonder whether i am lazy or if i am subject to some deeper-seeded issue. i really, really think i would benefit from therapy. but i always put off calling about it. i feel as though i dream big and when those dreams begin to come to fruition, i turn on my heel and run off in another direction. i will figure this out someday. anyway, speaking of balking at the thought of school... i wondered what life would be like if i got certified to teach kindermusik classes. i seriously considered this today. i mean, i did JUST find out what kindermusik is today, much thanks to my dear aunt daphne, mother of now-1-year-old meguire. i found a class that we are going to this saturday, and i am more excited than i have been in a long time. if we like the preview class and decide to enroll, it will end up costing us approximately $145, but i think/hope it would be worth it. jude is finally at an age where he really interacts with people as well as objects. he responds to stimuli and acts to gain responses also. for anyone who is unfamiliar with kindermusik (maybe i was just out of the loop?) it is a series of classes that promotes well-rounded development using a music-based program. activities are tailored to your child's age and they work to engage your child physically, mentally, emotionally, etc. there are different types of classes available, including one i can't wait to take, a sing and sign class. i bought several books about baby sign language, and will be cracking them open in the next few days. on that note, i will give a quick update on different things jude now understands.

belle



today, jude was sitting on my lap on the couch, facing me. we were talking about this and that when i said "jude, where's belle dog?" to my complete surprise, he turned to look over his left shoulder, then over his right shoulder, finding her curled up in a chair. not only did he purposefully look at her, he looked back to me, then back and her and "talked" to her. i was taken aback. i know that he recognizes, for instance, when i say "bite, bite" to open his mouth for food... but it seems that almost overnight he has started to understand more of the things i say to him. he now stops and looks up at me when i say "jude, no" in a stern voice, although only for a second, before turning back to whatever he is doing. he looks for his daddy, looks toward things that are a distance away when i say "jude, look" and point, and even cries when i pick him up and talk about "sleepies" when he isn't ready for a nap. i feel like he is learning new tricks daily now.

here are some "bite, bite" pictures from today:

i decided to try this stuff...






and for lunch, as promised, kiwi a la carte...


he seemed a bit surprised by the sourness, but overall really liked it.


he played in the ball pit today...










played with bowls...








and had a gratuitous photoshoot...










and read allll about cats...




played in his frog jumper...


decided he no longer wants to wear bibs...


and learned how to play drums on the tabletop...


today was a mostly good day.

jude plays.

jude had so much fun at his first birthday party! his cousin meguire turned a year old on feb 23, and his party was this past sunday. it was the first time i've ever seen him play with another kid. i mean really play. they baby-talked to each other, pulled on the others' clothes, and jude even tried to chase meguire a bit. the most fun they had, though, was definitely in meguire's ball pit.









he even learned to climb for the first time.


















so, of course i had to get him one the next day, haha. lucky for me, they had the baby pools on sale for $9! hooray! for something that we paid $25 for last summer (when he could barely hold his eyes open, mind you) it was quite the deal. and he...




...loved it? lol

he actually has played in it a lot for the past couple of days, and is using it as a tool to perfect his climbing. he can successfully climb out of it, and nearly climb into it. interestingly enough, he has now started trying to climb out of his crib (the few times he has actually been in it this week). tonight as i watched his eyes peep over the edge of the rail, i decided it is time to drop the mattress down. he actually slept in it sunday night, too. yay for little jude! the teething thing is getting easier on him, and although he does have his rough times during the day and night, he is adjusting the new sensations and pains. i've tried to stop giving him tylenol and only use the teething tablets and i think it is working pretty effectively. besides, he isn't liking the cherry flavor of tylenol as much as he liked the grape.

speaking of tastes, he had kiwi for the first time.







i didn't get a very accurate taste face photo though, because i mixed it with yogurt, but i think i will give it to him a la carte for lunch tomorrow. as far as i can tell, he seemed to be pretty indifferent. he still isn't a huge fan of yogurt.

in other news, i'm pretty sure we have an official favorite toy! they fell in love back in december on our roadtrip to gatlinburg...





but lately this love has been solidfied with a smile everytime they see one another. today, jude tried to have a conversation with pooh, and pooh's predictable responses of "hi there, little baby!" and "little bitty bugs, are in my pocket, snug" didn't even bother jude a bit. :)





cuties.