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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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!

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...

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.

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.