Goodbye 2012- A Year in Pictures

It’s hard to believe that this is where we were this time last year, VERY pregnant, waiting for Jude.  It cracks me up to think that last New Years Eve we went to a party at a friends house because we were convinced that Jude was coming any day and that there was no way we could have people over to our house.  Cut to February 2nd, Jude was born, two weeks late and after 27 hours of labor.  Geez, way to make us wait!

Ever since that day, our lives have revolved around this tiny boy.  We had some hard times though at first, a few days in the NICU, a month later S had to have her gallbladder removed, we ended up with $10,000 in medical debit, lost a car, lost the best cat ever, but in the end, it was a great year.

There was a lot of crying.  Especially the first 3 months.

Jude learned how to do all of the normal baby stuff, hold his head up, smile, roll over.

He laughed for the first time this year.  There is still nothing I love hearing more than his laugh.

He had his first hang over.  Not really, but doesn’t it sort of look that way here?

He grew his first moustache.

We went swimming.

We swam a ton.

Jude celebrated his first holidays.

Jude ended up having a total of 4 hair cuts this year.  Wow, that kid has some hair!

He got to swing in a large variety of swinging contraptions.

We have read some really great books.

Jude played in the sand.

And saw the ocean for the first time.

He learned to sit up, to crawl, to stand, and to take steps, but no real walking yet.  He also chewed on mom’s wallet A LOT.

He went to the park for the first time.

Spent his first Thanksgiving with his family and friends.

A of course got to meet the horrible Santa Claus.

All together a pretty good year.  I can’t believe next year Jude will have his first birthday, start walking, start really talking, get off of formula, and so many more things.  We have truly been blessed this year and I can’t wait for 2013!  Happy New Years!

-Liz

Christmas Time is the Best Time

We had such a wonderful Christmas this year.  We were able to go to Dallas to see S’s brother and girlfriend and also my brother, sister in law, mom and youngest brother.  It was so nice to be with family for the holidays.  S’s new job rocks and they gave her off the whole week of Christmas and doesn’t have to go back till January 2nd.  So awesome.

While we were in Dallas we went to check out the Chihuly exhibit, which was amazing.  Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the exhibit.

His work is really beautiful and I highly recommend you check it out if he ever does anything near you.  

Jude of course got way too many toys and things for Christmas from all of our family and friends.  One of his favorite new toys is his cozy coupe, which he enjoys riding around in, but really loves pushing it himself all around our living room.  He even took our dog Pedro for a test drive in it the other day.

Pedro was less than thrilled

This is Jude opening his first Christmas present from my brother and sister in law, a tiny pair of baby sized Toms shoes.  So cute.

We ended up having a white Christmas in Dallas.  It started snowing right as we were leaving, which was pretty exciting as we don’t normally get snow in Central Texas.  

And a bit late, but here is Jude’s 47 week photo!

Craft Exchange!

For Christmas we went out of town to see some family and so we didn’t get home till late last night.  And it was so exciting to come home and find our craft exchange present from the ladies at Delightful Insanity!  They sent us the most delightful box of chocolate covered goodness!  From the looks of it there are chocolate covered pretzels, marshmallows and gram crackers.  S bugged me all last night and all this morning to take a picture so that she could dig in!  Thank you for the gift, we really love it!  Here is a picture for the rest of you to drool over:

If you want to see what we sent out for the craft exchange, be sure to check out Lezbemom’s post. 

I have to say I really really enjoyed the craft exchange and I’m so glad that I signed up.  I can’t wait to be a part of it again next year.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!  We will be posting hopefully this evening all about our Christmas.

-Liz

46 week pic

46 weeks long!

The Terror of Santa

Over the weekend we took Jude for his first visit to meet Santa.  We went to a nearby mall, knowing that it was going to be a bit of a mad house.  But with S’s new schedule the weekend was the only time we could go.  So we got Jude all dressed up and away we went.  The line was SOOOO long! We stood in line for well over an hour, though I think that was in part because we got there while Santa was on a break.  Luckily they had a train for the kids to ride while they waited.  Jude of course was too small to get on the train, but he had a good time watching it go around and seeing all of the other kids.

He was in a great mood the whole time.  There was a Starbucks right next to the line so I grabbed us some drinks and scones, which made the wait for the mamas a bit nicer too (Jude did dig in on some blueberry scone though).  When we got up to Santa he was still just as happy as can be, smiling at the “elf” helping with the pictures.  And then, he got put on Santa's lap.  At first it seems like maybe he is ok with it, and then he of course had a melt down.

Personally, I like the last one the best where you can really see just how mad he is about this.  And isn’t that Santa just about the best Santa you have ever seen?  The beard and hair were totally real, which S verified when she reached over and grabbed it in an attempt to distract Jude (she felt really weird about doing that later, it cracked me up).  What is it about Santa that scares the crap out of little kids?  Jude certainly wasn’t the only kid to cry while we were there.

Later that day Jude was obsessed with playing with this funny pen and we kept joking that he was wanting to write a letter to Santa to apologise for his behavior.
-Liz
PS- I was just looking at our blog stats and this week 7 people some how searched for "uncircumsized cheese” and ended up on our blog.  Really?

Christmas is Just Around the Cornor

It’s the most magical time of the year, and it’s almost here!  I can’t hardly believe it as I am not even close to done with getting my shopping and crafting all wrapped up.  At least I have finished the stuff that had to be mailed out, so that is one accomplishment. If you are like me, then you might need a little help getting finished and what better way then to finish online, in your pjs, drinking hot chocolate.  Plus, as if pjs weren’t incentive enough, you won’t have to go the post office this week, which if my trip last week was any indication, it is going to be a mad house.  So check out the P&G eStore!  Here are some of the deals.

15% off on a first-time order from a new customer, using promo code: A9Z-MN5-KY3-ISA

Free Shipping on orders over $25

Free Samples with every order-- I LOVE Free Samples!

I’ve got my eye on the Olay Regenerist.  I think as a stay at home mom you see so many ads for anti aging stuff that even at only 30 I am starting to worry about wrinkles.  S says that I have too oily of skin to be worried about wrinkles, but all the same, I worry.  I wish I had been able to get a free sample to be able to review for you guys, but the timing on this promotion didn’t work out.  But if I do get any in the future, despite S’s sweet insistence that I don’t need it, I’ll be sure to tell you all what I think.  Click on the link below to check out the deals on it!

Olay Regenerist Micro-Sculpting Cream Facial Moisturizer - 1.7 oz 

There are lots of good deals on Olay products for moms, along with a few Pampers offers for those of us with little ones still in diapers.  Of course there are some things out there for guys as well and the whole family, but with a 10 month old in the house I don’t have time to get into the details, so check out if you have time.

This weekend we took Jude to see Santa, so tomorrow I’ll post some photos to reward you all for checking out my sponsored post.
-Liz

45 Weeks Cute!

10 month skills

Jude is crazy cute right now.  He is picking up more and more not very useful but adorable skills all the time!  He before would: blow raspberries with his tongue, click his tongue, drum his lips like he is crazy, take an inhalation of breath when we do.
  This week he learned 3 new skills: 1. to clap- so dang cute.  He seems to do it to cheer mom up in the mornings when she is sleepy and just when he just feels like it. 2. He dances.  Now when he hears a beat (mom pounding out meat with a meat tenderizer) or a song he bops his head up and down and smiles.  He is REALLY into a Christmas card that he got.  He smiles and dances whenever we open it because it plays music 3. He waved a few times at Liz.
   He does other things that are newish skills.  The other day, I had him move a ball from bucket to bucket.  He loved doing that.  He also loves for me to let him hold one finger in each hand and let him walk around and kick a ball.  Sometimes he just sticks a foot out and hops on the other one until it gets close enough to kick a ball.  Thus I have taught him soccer and basketball:)
  My new job is going well and he seems to like me being home for dinner and to put him to bed each night.  He has been waking some during the night, but usually cries for a few and goes back to sleep.  At what age do they just go to bed and not cry themselves to sleep?  He still throws a fit for bedtime and cries in his crib for a few before falling to sleep.  I wish he would just lay his little head down and sleep.
  He also is saying more things that sound like words.  He says “at” for cat and “ow” for meow.  He has said “baba” for his bottle and “mama” more and more.  It is his own language that I am sure no one else would be able to decipher, but we know what he is saying.  His babbles sound very much like he is trying to say something too.
 Overall 10 months is soo cute and I cannot believe he will soon be 1 year old!
-S

Tis the Season to be Busy

I just finished making my second batch of English Toffee (or at least my version of it) and the whole house smells like sugar and butter.  I have glitter on my shirt (which is my pj shirt because a shower hasn’t happened yet), and paint on my arm.  All of this adds up to me trying really hard to get everything done and not quite succeeding.  Busy is the word of the day.  Because of S’s new job and the gap in income I am crafting/baking/making all of our Christmas presents this year.  It helps that I am naturally a pretty crafty person, but it has been extra hard this year because of a certain baby and also because I am broken.

I don’t know that I have mentioned it before, but about six months ago I did something (not sure what, though I’m sure it involved picking up Jude) and ever since then I have had intense pain up and down the right side of my leg.  The pain is all day, pretty much everyday.  I’ve seen my general doctor, an acupuncturist, and now a chiropractor.  I got xrays done last week and was able to confirm that I have a bulged disk in my spine that is causing the pain.  So I am currently going to the chiropractor twice a week to get it all worked out.  Which is hard to arraign because of S’s schedule and the office hours for the chiropractor.  Luckily I have some of the greatest friends in the world and between my friends Brandon and Tara I have been able to leave Jude at home with one of them when I go to my appointment rather than try to manage him while I’m with the chiropractor.  But having all of these appointments got me thinking, what would I do if they couldn’t help?  Or if I was really sick?  I need to find some sort of drop in day care for Jude that I can use once and a while.  Hopefully next year I can set up some sort of “Mommy’s day out” care once a week just to get a break as well.  And it seems like there just ins’t much in the way of drop in day care in South Austin, which is the part of town we live in.  Either they are full and won’t do drop in, they are way up North, or he is too young.  Erg!  So I’ll keep looking.  It also seems like a lot of the Mommy's day out stuff is church based and I’m just not sure as a non-religious lesbian mom family how Jude would be treated/accepted in that sort of setting.

I’m also excited for the Blog Holiday Craft Exchange!  I finished my craft last night and I can’t wait to send it out.  And the deadline is motivating me to finish up all of my gifts that need to be mailed so that I can make just one trip to the post office.  I have an appointment tomorrow and thus a babysitter so I’m planning on getting everything finished up tonight to send out before the deadline, so I better go get crafty!
-Liz

44 Weeks Photo

Jude turned 10 months this week.  He is getting so big, and I can hardly believe that he almost a year old.  Not going to be a baby much longer I’m afraid.  Maybe it’s because we are almost at the end of the ‘baby’ phase, or all of the cute babies that have been born recently in blog land or all of the round pregnant bellies out there, but I have baby fever right now.   I still think that a second baby is at least another year away from even trying for, but I just can’t wait.  But at the same time I still haven’t totally forgotten those first 3 months, which are so so hard even with a non-colicky baby.  And I LOVE sleeping through the night and getting smiles and laughs.  Hard to think about how life would be like trying to deal with all of the normal newborn stuff along with a 3-4 year old.

Anyway, I know I’m not the best commenter, but I am enjoying reading all of your wonderful blogs out there.  Again, so many cute babies, so many cute bellies!

43 Weeks Photo

DIY Felt Christmas Tree

I love holidays.  I enjoy pretty much all of the big ones, but I have to say that Christmas is my favorite.  I love watching Christmas movies (Elf is my favorite), drinking hot chocolate, wrapping presents, decorating the house, and putting up the Christmas tree.  This year Christmas is even more exciting because it is Jude’s first Christmas and I’m really looking forward to going all out.  Except there is one problem- having an almost 10 month old who crawls, is about to walk, and still puts everything in his mouth makes having a Christmas tree just about the biggest safety hazard you can think of.   I brainstormed ways we could still have one- we could put in the kitchen with is gated off, I could find a way to put it up somewhere really high, we could put it outside on the front porch, etc.  But nothing seemed like it would really work or be practical.  So this year instead of a real Christmas tree we made a felt Christmas tree!

This was such a fun, cheap, easy project.  As far as supplies we used:
2 yards of green felt to make the tree (On sale ended up being about $8 total)
10-15 multicolored pieces of felt for the ornaments (4 pieces for $.50 total about $8)
Tacky Glue to stick it all together (already had)
4 Nails to put the whole thing up (already had)
Masking Tape (already had)
Sharp scissors (already had)
Total cost about $16!

First I took the two yards of green felt and folded it in half length wise.  I wanted to cut what was now the large rectangle diagonally so I took some masking tape and used it to make a straight line to guide my cutting.  Then we just nailed the big green tree to the wall.  Now, we nailed ours because I know Jude will tug on it and I didn’t want him to pull it off the wall/end up with a push pin in his mouth etc, but if you had older kids then you could totally use push pins or those doubled sided sticky tab things.

The ornaments were a ton of fun to make.  Our awesome friends Rex and Tara came over to help us make them and they turned out so great.  I love them all.  All we did was cut out the shapes we wanted to make and used tacky glue to stick them together.  Then we just put them on the tree.  The cool thing about felt is that it sticks to its self, so all of the ornaments are just sticking to the tree with no glue or Velcro or anything like that.  So Jude can decorate or undecorate the tree as much as he’d like.  We did glue the string of lights directly to the tree so that way he wouldn’t mess them up.  We also put all of the more complicated ornaments up higher where he couldn’t reach and all of the single piece ones down low.  So far Jude really loves pulling the ornaments down, but he doesn’t get that he can put them back yet.  Maybe next year.
 
And now, the big reveal!

I think in this last picture with Jude you can get a sense of the scale of the tree, it’s really big!  It ended up being about 6ft tall, which is great for us, but you could easily make one smaller or whatever size you like!  That’s another thing I love about this project, it is so easy to customize to what you need.  If you arn’t that artistic just make really simple ornaments, or if you have older kids, get them to craft with you.  You could cut out the shapes in advance and have smaller kids glue them together if they arn’t ready to handle sharp scissors yet.  And we arn’t religious so our tree isn’t full of symbolism, but you could totally go that way too with this.  Or have all of the ornaments match the color scheme of your house/living room or whatever.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed my new project and be sure to tell me if you end up making one too!
-Liz