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I've been MIA...

My computer crashed and died a couple weeks ago. So very inconveniently, it was the weekend before finals started. It's running again now because I got a new hard drive thanks to it still being under warranty, but all my files are gone. My pictures and videos of Jude? All freakin' gone because I didn't have a chance to back them up recently enough before it crashed. So that's a pretty big bummer, but luckily, I have the ones that I shared on here and on facebook still.
Easter happened, it was filled with candy, family, and good times.

Jude's basket. His bunny was replaced by a chocolate one by his gran. Underneath the big green playsilk were some watercolor paints and a brush, sidewalk chalk, and shaky eggs.

He was so excited!

He loves his playsilks!

In other news; I bought a banjo, went to a Reverend Horton Heat concert (and hit up the merch table for a couple records), I only have one final left this Tuesday, so far my grades are fairly good (a B- & a B+), and I'm a psychology major.

Oh! And Happy Beltaine!

Have you heard?

About the newest household member? Kesey Comma Ken? He's been here a few weeks already, but I've been busy.

Toddler fingers get in the way.

This one makes me laugh. We tried to take a serious picture then the puppy stole Jude's cracker and my mum caught all the middle stuff on camera.

Finally, a good one that he posed for!

My UPS man has impeccable timing.

The delivery man came just in the nick of time when he delivered Jude's brand new rain boots! I was looking for a pair of shoes that I didn't mind him getting muddy in the mud-pit that is my back yard (thanks to the dogs) so we could go out and play.

Check out his rain boots!

Flowers have begun flowering in the backyard!

Giving the gnomie (his new favorite word/thing) kisses, or plotting with him.

Smelling the flowers, which smelled yucky (another new favorite word).

Springtime Egg Painting

I was walking around Michael's a couple weeks ago thinking to myself "what's a good springtime craft for Jude?" Then I saw a whole bunch of wooden eggs and bought 5 of them. I brought them home, painted them all white and decided to put 4 away for the future and let Jude do just one. It's our new tradition, every year he'll get to paint an egg. He had a blast doing it this year of course because he loves painting and getting messy.

p.s. Happy 100th post to me!

Kind of a Big Deal; A Confession of Sorts

"It's so great that you're back in school!"
"Good for you for going back to school after having a baby!"
I hear these things a lot. From all sorts of different people and they're usually accompanied by shocked, sympathetic faces. At first, I thought nothing of it and shrugged it off and said, yeah, it's no big deal. I'm starting to realize that it is.
Everyday I go to class I feel guilt ridden for leaving Jude at home. I sit in class and often wonder what Jude's doing instead of paying attention. I make plans in my head for all sorts of fun things I'd like to do with Jude when I have free-time, but then I get upset because I realize that I don't have this mysterious free-time to do all these things with him. It doesn't help that I secretly don't know what I want to accomplish out of going to school or what I want to do when I'm done.
Pre-Jude, I wanted to graduate and join the Peace Corps and change the world. I wanted to travel. I wanted to be a photographer for National Geographic or something epic. I wanted to be epic and do the things that come along with being an epic person. I wanted to be a nomad or gypsy of sorts and explore my world, I didn't want to stay in one place for too long.
Now, I send myself into several different identity crises because I don't know what to do with my life. I know I have to be a mom and I want to be the best mom that I can be. I still want to be epic, but in a slightly different way. Thanks to Jude, I strive to find more stability in my life for him. What would make me the happiest is making him the happiest. I feel like school cripples me in this aspect. It kills my time with him, it stresses me out to the point that when I'm with him I get irritated from trying to balance him and schoolwork, and it holds me back from doing things that I want to do such as making things and taking Jude to explore the world.
Maybe there's just some sort of secret balance that I haven't quite grasped yet, but even if there is it seems like it doesn't exist right now. Everyone encourages me to stay in school and finish, but I'm not entirely sure they know the pressure that I'm under. School just isn't my top priority right now, and who knows if it ever will be, but if I can't make it a priority and care more about it, then what's the point of forcing myself to do it?

Happy (belated) Spring!

We had a few nice days that we just had to take advantage of. Wish it would've stayed, but the past couple of days have been cold and icky again. 

As everyone knows, Spring started on Sunday. I'm pretty bummed that I didn't get to celebrate the Equinox with as much awesome celebrations as I wanted to thanks to work and picking up my parents from the airport. I had originally planned on giving Jude his basket on the Equinox, but I'm still waiting on a package o' playsilks from Etsy, need to craft some eggs, make some play dough, and buy a pair of shaky-eggs to add to his basket. It is going to be a most egg-cellent basket if I do say so myself. I was at the store with some friends and there were some pre-filled Easter baskets for like $10. I was shocked that you could get them that cheap, but then I looked at what was in them and it was just a bunch of crap. Plastic crap that will be broken/lost/forgotten about within a few days.

I was looking at Jude the other day and I noticed that his eye was swollen. I immediately asked everyone who had watched him in the 24 hours prior if he had hit it on something. They all insisted that he didn't, and the more I looked at it, the more I realized it looked rather similar to how he looked a few days after his surgery when his eyes were starting to open, but weren't quite there yet. He's over 9 months post-op but it looked like it was something to do with that.
I called the surgeon's office. The nurse wasn't in so I had to wait until Wednesday to hear back from her. I woke up Wednesday morning and it was even more swollen. I immediately called the office back and they set up an appointment with another doctor in the office to see him that afternoon, so I called off work. He said it just looked like he bumped it and asked me to come back Thursday afternoon. The nurse called after I had left the hospital and told me that there's the possibility that it could be from the plates they used to keep the suture open dissolving, she then reviewed the pictures the doctor took and told me to keep my Thursday appointment with his surgeon. So, we get to go all the way back out to Ann Arbor again this afternoon to try to figure out what this is. I have to miss an exam, but Jude and his health/wellbeing are billions times more important than school and I can make-up the exam. Hopefully it's nothing major. Part of me believes that, the other part of me that puts too much thought into things is panicking that he'll need another surgery.
No matter what, everything will all work out.

Spring is so close!

Less than a week away to be precise.

The weather is warmer, things are starting to look green instead of grey, the sun is shining brighter and longer.

Jude helped me plant some Daisy & Sunflower seeds to put in his basket and they just started to sprout!

I couldn't resist the Oh, Gnome diaper cover from Gen-Y Diapers, it's adorable and perfect for getting into that happy, sunshiny mood.

As you can tell, we're super excited for Spring to come! I hope everyone else is too!

And, because Spring is so close, I'm on Spring Break this week! I took the one day that's in between my class days off of work so I can go down to Ohio to see Zak. Carly and Kaleb are coming with us as well, and it should be super-fun!

Simplification.

I've decided that life needs to be simpler. Less toys. Less stuff. More hands-on. More simple.
It's all because I've been looking into Waldorf education and lifestyles. I would like to teach at a Waldorf school I think. There are schools for Waldorf teachers so I'm no longer going to pursue education at Wayne State, instead, I'm taking a faster route by getting a BA in Liberal Arts with a major in Psychology (WSU doesn't have a plain Liberal Arts degree, it's silly) which will take me 4 more semesters, max. Four semesters. Sounds far more appealing than the four year minimum I was looking at with the school of education, plus if I went that route I'd most likely end up teaching in a public school, which is against everything I stand for. I can't stand the standard school system. It's all about teaching children to memorize facts long enough to pass a test. Intelligence and opportunity isn't based off a number, or it shouldn't be at least. I would also like to send Jude to a Waldorf school, or homeschool him with Waldorf methods.
Some people may think I'm crazy, but whatever, I'm going to do what I want to make myself happy and make my life pleasant.
I've been trying to work on simplifying our lives, it seems like it would be easier to do once I move out of this house into my own space. Once I have my own space to do what I want, how I want.
The first step is weeding out all of Jude's unnecessary toys. He has a lot of them. A lot that he doesn't even use. They make me cringe from the sheer abundance of them.
I'm not sure what the next step is, but it will be good and I'll know when it happens.

Catching Up

Anansi stories

On February 27th, 2011 (yes, last weekend), my dad and I took Jude to the DIA to see an Anansi puppet show.

They were watching intently.

Sometimes, Anansi would suddenly pop out with his legs spread like this and it scared the crap out of Jude. It made me laugh because I'm mean, or something.

After the puppet show and browsing through the museum, we went to Niki's pizza and had Saganaki (flaming cheese, OPA!). It was Jude's first time having it, but he nomed on it like a little fiend. :)

Hello, Weekend Off!

Well, I worked Friday night and Saturday morning, but I don't have anything to do until Tuesday morning!

• Saturday, one of my besties came up from Ohio to see me and Jude before heading home for Spring Break.
• We hung out with Jude and he loved playing with her.
• We went to the bar and had some jolly good times.
• Sunday, she was still here and went with me to get tattoo #4!

"UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing's going to get better, it's not"
From "The Lorax" by Dr. Seuss.

• We also went out for some OPA! and gyros. 
• Played with Jude some more, of course. 
• I love Kelsey and the best friend time I get to sometimes have with her. 
• Monday (tomorrow, the future!) I don't have to work so I'm going to hang out with Jude. We're going to go see "Gnomeo & Juliet" and it'll be his first time at the theatre so hopefully he'll behave. We'll go early when hopefully not many people will be there, just in case he is a menace. Who knows, maybe we'll do some shopping too. 

Well, he's definitely my child

The culprit of this story.

Last night, Jude was being his normal, menacing, toddler self and decided to try to play with the doorbell chimes.  Well, he chimed one of the bells and pulled it so hard that the top part fell off and decked him in the head with it's corner and sliced him a little. He cried, there was blood (which, admittedly, freaked me out a little), but eventually he returned to himself, he had a small bump and a flesh wound.

Look at that flesh wound!

While we're eating dinner and my parents start debating whether or not he needs stitches and if we should take him in, which freaked me out even more, especially when they started talking about their experiences with holding and strapping me down for me to get forehead stitches multiple times. So they're freaking me out and my mum thought he needed a few stitches and we packed him up and headed to Children's Hospital's ER.
We waited there for 2 hours, never got seen, and I gave up, because the more I looked at it, the more I realized he didn't need stitches. Plus, I was getting really irritated, Jude was getting restless and tired, and I didn't want to catch any germs from the massive throng of sick kids that needed to see their pediatricians instead of being there. We came home, cleaned him up, and put a Band-Aid on it. Luckily I bought a box of Toy Story Band-Aids at Target over the weekend with the reasoning that "He's a toddler boy, he's probably going to cut himself one of these days."

18 Months!

That's right, Jude is 18 months old as of Wednesday. And 8 months post-op.
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(Look, ^ Jude can blog too)
He's smart. Too smart sometimes. He's a full-blown toddler with messes and toys and tantrums and words and running. I wish I knew where he got all the energy from and how I can get the same energy.
Here are some pictures because he's also really cute.

Before the Red Wings game on Wednesday!

He's a handsome boy.

Winter Days.

I'm not a fan of winter, but Jude had a blast playing in the snow the other day! He walked around the front yard, then started digging in a snow bank. I also showed him how to make a snowball and we had a mini snowball fight. :D He loved when I handed him snowballs and threw them.

He had just thrown a snowball.

Jude's Asleep

Alone. In his crib. It's so odd, I don't know what to do with myself. That's a lie, I have lists of things I'm doing, will probably do, should do, and want to do.

What I should do:

1. Study, study, study. I have a test in developmental psychology next week. It covers 6 chapters. I really should study for that. Y'know, make notecards and whatnot.
2. Read the library books I took out for my children's literature class. We have to read 30ish picture books and make annotations for them.
3. Clean/organize something somewhere in this craphole house.

What I want to do:

1. Create something. Anything, really. I haven't had any creative output lately. It's lame. 
2. Read a book for fun. Like maybe one of the billions I've started. 

What I'm doing now:

1. Drinking sangria.
2. Watching Cyrus.
3. Blogging.

What I'll probably end up doing:

1. Drinking sangria. 
2. Watching movies.
3. Eating pudding.
4. Thinking about studying.

Something we like to do around here...

Painting!!

I cannot wait for it to no longer be winter. It seems Jude is even feeling stir-crazy and our in-house activities are fairly limited. I should take him to Jungle Java or something, but I don't want to go alone. Time to find some playdates! I think we're going to go to the library tomorrow before I work so I can read my picture books for class. That will be an adventure.

Working = Money = Shopping

Now that I'm working and bringing in the dough, I have many, many more shopping opportunities. It's not quite out of control yet, but my shopping has definitely increased. There were the earrings & baby shower gift I got last week. Then there was the couple of extra things from Amazon when I ordered books for school. No big deal, right?
Then I got a new carseat, some new cups, and some painting things for Jude. Things he needs, y'know?
Yesterday after I got off work, my grandma told me she'd keep Jude a while longer and that I should go to the mall and go shopping. I need a new pair of shoes, but I hate shoe shopping, especially when I'm alone. Instead, I just spent $30ish at Lush. I needed soap, got some bath bombs to try, and know that their ocean salt face scrub is magic for your face, so that was a totally necessary purchase, they always give me samples of things to try when I go in there, so an even bigger bonus.
Then, this morning, I went onto Zulily, found out that T.U.K. makes kids shoes, and it was all downhill from there. I managed to only get 2 pairs of shoes, but still spent $50 something after shipping. I mean, come on, what kind of punk rock toddler doesn't need combat boots and leopard print creepers? They're totally justifiable.

Jude will be curb-stomping in these bad boys.

Online shopping is a truly marvelous thing. I can do it in 3 minutes, in class, at home, wherever, whenever.

You know what's fabulous?

Etsy. I've known about it for years. I didn't order anything until, erm, last year? 2 years ago? Something, who knows, who cares. Etsy is freakin' fantastic and addicting. I just ordered stuff from there for myself for the first time. I have only gotten gifts thus far (Jude's Easter basket and half the gifts in it, a personalized keychain for my mum when she ran her first 5k, etc.) but yesterday I caved whilst shopping for a baby shower gift and decided to get some earrings. I'm so very excited for them to come. I got 3 pairs.

Painting the roses red!

Vintage glass Buddhas.

T-Rex's! Rawr! 

I did also get a baby shower gift. I've found that it's super-hard for me to shop for baby things for other people. I know my parenting style and what I like and like Jude to have, but I don't know if others are the same way or if I'd seem like I'm trying to push my opinions and ways onto people. If it were up to me, I'd get everyone cloth diapers and things to aid breastfeeding. Y'know, the things I really wished to get at my shower. Alas, I'm not like everyone else and that's what makes me so fabulous. Dammit. 

School started today.
I work. A lot.
I don't make enough tip-money on a daily basis, but at least I'm making money.
Jude can count. To 2.
We were at Target and they had Yo Gabba Gabba! underpants. He saw the Yo Gabba Gabba characters and started going "Yo! Yo! Yooo!" so I bought them for him. He was very happy and kept going "Yooo!" throughout the store. He's going to need them eventually anyway. :P
He was sick again at the end of last week. :( The flu and whatnot. It was messy, to say the least.
That's all I've got. I think. I'm not all that exciting.

Things that happened in 2010...

The first half was more or less filled with lots of doctors appointments and anxiety. 

Jude became mobile early in the year, then even more so later in the year.

He had surgery in June. 

He turned one in August! 

I went back to school.

I made some new friends.

We went on vacation to California.

We road-tripped to NY to walk for craniosynostosis.

I got a job.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

2010 was long, and busy. 2011 promises to be good.