Christmas!

Christmas Eve was spent at my grandma's house, as per usual. Everyone was there. It was a jolly good time, like always. Jude got a bunch of presents from everybody. He also got to run around with all the kids again. There was one minor downer though... my grandma accidentally got Jude a pair of baseball pj's that say "Daddy's All-Star" on them. The "Daddy's" part was quite unnoticeable at first glance, so I let it slide. I think I might make a Detroit patch or something to cover that awful word. I wish I didn't have negative feelings towards it, but alas, Jude doesn't actually have a "Daddy" who cares or is around or anything of that sort. Enough of the bitterness, and on the the pictures!

A goofy picture of my cousins.

The bigger boys were helping Jude open his presents.

Posing with his dump truck.

Christmas morning Jude woke up at his normal time, and everyone else was up shortly after we rolled out of bed. They all commented on how it was the latest we've all woken up on Christmas morning (I used to have a weird tendency to wake everyone up at 5 or 6 for Christmas morning). Jude walked past the living room without paying attention to the tree or presents under it. I redirected his attention, he saw his kitchen and got excited. He's a pro at unwrapping gifts too, but it took him like 3 hours to open all his presents because eventually he got to the point where he just wanted to play with them instead of unwrapping more. My mum's father and wife came over at 10 and my grandma & grandpa came over shortly after and we had our traditional brunch. After a little rest and a nap for Jude we headed over to my Aunt Kathy's for dinner and some Just Dance. I'll bore you with the list of gifts we all received another time. But now, more pictures!

Jude's stocking hung by the chimney with care.

Opening his stocking, he kept trying to put everything back into it.

I found my camera!

Now I can tell you all about my week leading up to Christmas!

Firstly, there was Sunday. The Annual Glod Family Christmas shindig. It's this big party with my paternal grandma's whole side of the family gets together at the community house across the street from my grandparents old house. We eat, we talk, we have a pinata and a Santa. It's pretty crazy. This year it was a super-small turn out unfortunately, but Jude still had fun running around with all my cousins.

I have a pretty cute family, no?

Santa gave my dad a tricycle and Jude stole it!

He's such a big boy, hitting the pinata!

Then, there was the Solstice, which is a pretty big deal in our house. Sure, the holidays are great for getting together with the whole extended families and all, but on the Solstice it has always been just my parents, my sister, and I (and now Jude, of course!) We light a fire and usually exchange a small, generally handmade, gift.  This year we decided to change the tradition a little and gave ornaments, since we always get an ornament from my parents and I try to get or make them one every year too. We also spend the whole night sitting by the fire and playing games. This years culprits were Dirty Minds and Scrabble. I was pushing for ghetto fab scrabble, but no one was having it when I tried to replace 's's with 'z's or adding new spaces around the border of the game. It was pretty hilarious and fun, nonetheless.

He got a copy of the Grinch and a Grinch doll from his gran. 

Opening the ornaments. He loved the gift bags most of all, he was carrying them around and putting the ornaments and wrapping paper back in them. So cute.

Happy Solstice!

I got Jude the Sea Lion because of our trip to CA, and my mum got me the Polar Bear because this is mamapolarbear.blogspot.com afterall. I've been thinking of ditching the "Kayleigh's Adventures Through Motherhood" bit and just doing Mama Polar Bear, opinions, yes, no?

Gran got him a Jude Man ornament because of his Halloween costume at the 5k for craniosynostosis. It's actually a dollhouse doll that she got custom made from an Etsy seller and rigged to hang on the tree. She hand-embroidered the Jude Man onto the cape though.

Expect to see more posts from me. Hopefully soon. Mostly a reminder for me: I still need to write about the sweet breakfast recipe from leftovers I "created", the cupcakes I baked for Sunday's party, Christmas Eve, and Christmas.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

The Grades Are In!

My semester has been over for a week and I finally got all my grades back. 

*drum roll*

B+ in History.

B+ in Chemistry (lab).

C in Macroeconomics (online). 

Go me! I'm pretty proud of them. I probably could have done better, but it was a good first semester back. I raised my GPA from a crappy 1.55 to a mediocre 1.90, which is splendid because I need to ultimately get it up to at least 2.50 in at least 2 more semesters. That's doable. 

Next semester I have U.S. Government online, Speech, Developmental Psychology, and Literature for Children. It should be pretty easy, I only have classes Tuesday's and Thursday's, and my friend Carly is in my Psych class. It will be a good semester. I'm hoping to get at least one A. 

It will be a super-busy semester too because I'll also be working 2 jobs. I'm waiting on Tony Sacco's to open, which should be in the next week hopefully. This week I've had to go in to help clean up and get things together. It's coming together nicely and I can't wait for it to open! Laurel Manor is... Laurel Manor. Banquet hall stuff... Meh.

Look forward to several fun posts about our Christmas excursions... as soon as I find my camera that disappeared off the face of the Earth. >.<

Ferndale Holiday Ice Festival, Winter Fun, and a Christmas Tree!

Last Saturday, my mum and I took Jude to Downtown Ferndale for their Holiday Ice Festival. They had ice sculptures outside of the shops and there were Reindeer, ice carving demonstrations, a craft fair, and Santa was there!

I asked Jude, "Do you want to sit on Santa's lap?" He had such a serious face and replied with "no." 

The next day, we had a big snow storm, so naturally, I took Jude outside to play in the snow! We also bought our Christmas tree, but we didn't put it up and decorate it until Tuesday.

He loved riding around the yard in the sled! He kept yelling "more!"

He's such a good helper!

It's missing something...

Sometimes, Motherhood is Disgusting.

Wednesday night I went out to finish my online finals that night, came home, Jude woke up as soon as I started getting ready for bed, we cuddled, he nursed, and we both fell asleep.
Next thing I know, my bed is covered in puke (complete with half-chewed macaroni noodles) and he's throwing up. I panic and pick him up, take him to the bathroom, strip him naked and give him a bath (at 2 in the morning, mind you) to clean the puke out of his hair. The whole time, the poor guy was shivering, so it was a super quick bath. That's when our pile of "clothes that have been puked on" began. I put some new pajamas on him, stripped my bed, added the sheets to the pile, and then he puked. Again. All over my clean sweater and his clean pajamas. After we changed again I grabbed a pile of clean clothes for the both of us, grabbed his potty and a cup of Pedialyte, and we cuddled on the couch.
We watched Elf. He puked more, I tried my best to dangle him over his potty. He fell asleep at the end of Elf. I turned on Four Christmases and fell asleep for a little. We both woke up, he puked more, cuddles, puke, cuddles, puke.
He wanted to nurse, but when I did let him, he projectile vomited. After the projectile vomiting, he didn't puke anymore.
The weird thing is is that he didn't act sick, he acted normal and when he puked he was so... nonchalant about it. We spent the rest of the day cuddling and luckily we got a nap in and he ate some crackers. His appetite still wasn't back to normal today, and he never ran a fever, so who knows what was wrong, just a stomach bug I reckon.
That night, I was angry about being a single mom. I had no one to help me out or give me a hand, but I did the best I could and took care of him. It's one of those hurdles that was bound to be crossed eventually.
Our pile of laundry ended up filling the washing machine completely and I washed it twice.

Top 2 Tuesday!

We sometimes play a lot of games in my family, especially when we're all together around the holidays. Card games, board games, video games, word games, you name it. I'm not going to lie, I only know a few card games off hand but we have a plethora of board games in my basement. I should have a holiday party/game-night/awesome times. hmmm... But anyway, I'm getting sidetracked.

Top 2 Favorite Games!

1. Euchre. My family always plays euchre when we get together. After dinner you can always find 4 people sitting around the table enjoying dessert, coffee, and dealing out a hand of euchre. I didn't realize it until I went to school in Ohio, but apparently it's mostly a Michigan game. It's fairly simple, once you learn, but that learning process can be difficult and a lot of people I've tried teaching just give up. 

2. Rummikub. This is another one of those games that I love to play with my family, and we're almost always playing when we're together. My grandparents, sister, and I (and sometimes some other people like aunts and cousins) stay up late after the little kids go to bed and play when we're up north. 

Runners up: Scattegories, Boggle, Scrabble, Life, and Pay Day.

Look What I Made! (Holiday Edition, Part 1)

I love these winter holidays because it gives me an excuse to craft up a storm. Not that I should really need one, but holiday crafts are lots of fun, especially when you can make some awesome homemade gifts.

Tonight, I made a stocking for Jude out of a wool sweater from the thrift store.

I would have taken a picture of it hung by the chimney with care, but alas, I couldn't find any hooks.

So, maybe you're scratching your head wondering, "how did she do that?!" Or perhaps you've already figured it out. Either way I will tell you how. I wish I would have had some foresight and taken step by step pictures to make a real tutorial, but I got all caught up in the moment and just did it.

1. Acquire a delightfully patterned 100% lambswool sweater from the thrift store, they usually run between $1-5.
2. Be a rebel, throw that sucker in your normal laundry load, you know, the one with hot water and toss it in the dryer too. For you wool-lovers screaming at me out there, you want to do this, it felts the material and makes it much easier to work with, plus since you got it from the thrift store chances are it has already been ruined.
3. Take a stocking, or print off a stocking shape and cut it out, lay it on top of the freshly washed and dried sweater. You can use either the neck or the bottom cuff as the top cuff (I used the neck for this one).
4. Cut around the stocking (or stocking shaped paper).
5. Turn fabric so the right sides are facing each other.
6. Pin and sew. I used a straight stitch.
7. Make sure to make notches around the curved parts at the heel and toe of the stocking so they properly curve when you turn it inside out. 
8. To make the loopy, take a piece of leftover sweater (I used about 6 inches of bottom cuff fabric), form a loop with it, and sew the loop to the top of the inside seam on the opposite side of the toe. I used a zig-zag stitch and went back and forth about 5 times for extra strength.

There you go, now you can make your very own wool stocking! And your cat will love it.

What is with cats and wool, anyway? When I was working on this, my cat would lay on my pieces, or my pile of sweaters, then when I was done she made it her bed on the table. Weirdo.

I also made a pair of longies from the sleeves, but I couldn't figure out how to do the waist band and think I made them far too large so I gave up on them until I can get help from my mommy. 

Post-Thanksgiving weekend

We had a busy weekend after Thanksgiving!
Friday
No crazy Black Friday fun-times. Just a trip out to Ferndale for lunch at the WAB and some Black Friday deals at No Pins Required. We picked up some bum cream, soap, holiday edition Rockin' Green detergent, and 3 diapers; a purple Fuzzibuns, a black Happy Heiny's and a robot Rump-a-rooz.

This print is so cute, it's the only reason I got the RaR, not going to lie.

The rest of the day was quite lazy and spent with catching up with laundry and fluffing it up since our dryer had been broken all week. Thanks to Ikea and our drying rack/hanging octopus thing! I also worked on my semi-top-secret Christmas crafts.

Octopus!

Saturday
My parents took Jude on errands for most of the day. I went to an open-interview for a new restaurant opening in a month. It went really well. They said they'd call within a week, so imagine my surprise when they called later that day and said they'd love to hire me! Luckily, I'll have time to finish up this semester without that added stress/time-eater. After that interview I napped and then Jude and I chilled, my dad & I went super-grocery shopping at Costco.

Sunday
My mum and I took Jude to get his Christmas portraits taken at JC Penney. He wasn't being very cooperative, until the very end and afterwards so they didn't all turn out as adorable as they normally do.

This was one of the few good ones, so naturally, we ordered a bunch of it!

We then continued on to Ikea for some Christmas presents for Jude and had some tasty meatballs for lunch.

This is his big present this year

Some things you may have learned from this post:
Jude is a punk. I have a real job starting next month. We love Ikea around here. I love cloth diapers.

Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving yesterday was spent at my Aunt Kathy's house with my dad's side of the family (all my aunt's, uncle's, cousins, and grandparents). Dinner was tasty. Jude was shy at first. My grandma brought back gifts from Disney (a shirt and Toy Story cars for Jude, an antenna topper for me, and a Mickey pepper grinder for everyone). We chatted. We played euchre and Wii games. All the cousins drew names out of a hat bag for Secret Santa gifts, which I organized. It was good, quality family time that really never gets old. I didn't take pictures for some reason, I just got caught in the moment and didn't think about my camera. Hopefully I won't do that when Christmas time rolls around.
When I was younger I never really understood the "being thankful" for something aspect of Thanksgiving. I'm not sure why, maybe because I just wasn't mature enough to grasp the concept or something, who knows. This year I was am very thankful for lots of things:

1. My super adorable son who gives me a reason to live, work, laugh, love, breathe... I think you get the point. 
2. My family for being so supportive of me by letting me live at home, paying my bills when I am strapped for cash, watching Jude so I can work and go to school, understanding that sometimes I just need to get away, and being awesome. That's right, my family is awesome. Deal with it.
3. Zak, my best friend. He's willing to talk with my about literally everything, and we do talk about everything. Some things we talk about, I'm fairly certain no one else can understand. He adores Jude almost as much as I do and he likes to talk about the silly, minute details of his life. I adore that when he talks to people about Jude he refers to him as his Godson even though Jude's not(and never will be) baptised. I do wish he lived closer, but despite our distance we still have mad-crazy telepathy with each other and our cycles sync up. I don't know if I'd be able to stay sane without him. 
4. The internet, for it has allowed me to do a good portion of my Christmas shopping in my underwear and without having a panic attack. This year I've vowed to not step foot in a mall for any of my Christmas shopping. So far, so good, and I'm almost done thanks to Ikea, Amazon, and Etsy. I'm also trying to make a bunch of stuff for people. 

What are you thankful for?

So it goes...

Lists, lists are fun, right?
-Jude's walking! Like, all over the place and not just a few steps here and there! He does still crawl a lot.
-I'm putting my blog under construction until I can make it look snazzy.
-I'm oddly excited for the hectic holiday season. I won't be shopping for any Christmas presents at the mall and I'm hoping to make a decent chunk of them, especially Jude's stocking/stuffers. I need to figure out what to stuff his stocking with. I already have most of his other presents. Amazon & Ikea are my favorite for that.
-Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's that whole recent boycott against Amazon because of "pedophile handbooks" but all the books referred to in anything about that are not a how to diddle little boys, so I choose to continue to use their awesome services. That's enough on that topic.
-Still no check. :| Seriously, State of Michigan, you suck.
-I have no school until next Monday! I'm so excited for this little break. Hopefully I'll be able to actually get stuff done. I should write myself a list so I don't forget things, or I'll just wing it.
-I saw some of my favorite people on Sunday. I went to Kelsey's potluck in BG and it was amazing! Everyone made excellent food (I slaved over pumpkin soup all day), and it was just an all around good time. I miss it down there, but then I remember how much I wouldn't have (Jude and my awesome new perspective on life that is credited to Jude) if I were still there.
-I don't have much else to say, really. not that I can think of at least. If I don't come back before Thanksgiving, have fun, be safe, and may the force be with you!

I feel like this blog isn't exciting enough...

Maybe that means my life isn't all that exciting?

I started working last weekend! I'm working at Laurel Manor, it's a banquet hall. I worked there in high school but had to quit when I left for college in Ohio. In high school I was a busser, now I'm wait staff, woot. It's really not all that more exciting, I get paid more than I used to, and I might get more hours, but it's mostly a weekend/night job, because that's when the majority of people have weddings/parties/excitingfuntimes.

I took Jude to story time at our local library for the first time today. He wasn't a complete punk like I half expected him to be. He was more interested at looking at all the other babies than he was in the stories/songs/dancing. It made me realize that he really does need more exposure to kids or else he's going to end up all socially awkward like me. On that note, I didn't have a huge panic attack like I usually do in most social situations. Hooray!

2 days ago was the 9th, which means 5 months post-op from the CVR!
2 days from now is the 13th, which means 1 year post-op from the skin tag removal!
So much happiness and excitement, and I know I say it like every time some sort of milestone and time passes from those surgeries, but he looks like a completely different baby now. Plus, his eye color changed dramatically, which I didn't really notice until I was making a sweet comparison scrapblog thing and had two pictures side by side. I then went through a lot of my pictures to try to pin point when it changed and the determination was some time around April.

I almost made a whole calendar of things like this. I still might, after I finished this one I made another one, for fun (and my computer desktop) because I have a cool kid who has a skeleton sweater for every year! He already has one for next year too.

Halloween 5k for Craniosynostosis

Over the weekend my parents, Jude, and I roadtripped from our humble abode in Metro-Detroit to Long Island for a 5k walk/run for craniosynostosis. We took off Friday night (I forgot to take epic roadtripping pictures to commemorate Jude's first roadtrip though :() and stopped in the middle of Pennsylvania the wee hours to get some rest in a motel room. Saturday morning, we wasted no time in getting out of there and back on the road and got to New York in the early afternoon. Before checking into the hotel we made a stop at Coney Island for lunch (coney's, naturally) and to go to the aquarium.

Jude was a shark!

He wanted to eat the penguins, because that's what sharks do. 

With his sharky brethren.

On the Coney Island boardwalk.

After we got to the hotel that night, Jude crawled and played around the room until eleven o'clock because he was so restless from being stuck in the car seat for so long, but he was so happy to be free.

Stretching before the race. My mum was a trooper and ran the 5K while the rest of us walked. She ran it in 33 minutes!

At the starting line!

Mile 2! Jude wanted a little break to stretch his legs.

He walked a little bit of it, with help from his Pop-Pop and I of course.

He crossed the finish line and got a medal for being so awesome.

We made a slight detour to have Halloween lunch in Sleepy Hollow... because we're that awesome nerdy. 

We all had matching capes that said Jude's Mama, PopPop, and Gran and also shirts that said "Going the distance for Jude Man" buttttt we didn't take pictures. I think we should take pictures sometime soon so we can have some. There were tons of people at the race, it was great to see all the people supporting the cause and we got to talk to a few. Jude played with a few kids afterwards too. 

The downfalls to the trip:

- No trick-or-treating for us.

- Jude became addicted to the tube because we had car DVD players and it was the only way to keep him calm. I didn't think that I would need more than 4 full movie and 1 Baby Einstein DVD's so we ended up watching "Alice In Wonderland" 4 times. I knew I should have followed my gut and grabbed more. 

Top 2 Tuesday!

I'm getting an early start on this. Tomorrow (or somewhere else in the near future) you'll get goodies about our weekend.



Top 2 gifts I have received. (Aside from Jude, of course)
1) My tea press. I love tea. Especially loose leaf tea. My parents got me this for Christmas a few years ago and it's the greatest thing in the world. It makes two cups of tea, which is great for the times when I want lots of tea, which is usually all the time. The only downfall is that loose leaf tea isn't as easy to find in stores, but I did discover Teavana recently because one of my friends works there, I just haven't had the money to go and spend on tea. :(

Image from Google.

2) The surprise trip to NYC my parents took my sister and I on for Christmas a couple years ago. We were opening our presents and we got to the last box. It had socks in it and underneath them were tickets to plays and airplane tickets to NYC. We were still half-asleep and it took us awhile to catch on, but we pretty much packed our bags and got on a plane Christmas day and went to NYC for 3 days to see "Evil Dead The Musical" and "The Producers" on Broadway. It was great!

Pumpkin Painting

Jude finger-painted for the first time on Sunday. Onto a pumpkin! I made up some flour paint and let him go to town. He had a blast, and of course made a mess. It looked like Jackson Pollock had visited our house because Jude threw the paint around a lot.