Merry Christmas and Craft Exchange!

I hope that everyone is having as lovely of a holiday as we are!  Starr, Jude and I are in California visiting the grandparents and having a great time.  We flew in last night and I'm happy to say flying with Jude went much better than I anticipated.  We are here for the week and are planning to send as much time at the beach as possible.  We already went once today!

Also, yesterday morning just in time for us to open before we left, we got our awesome craft exchange from the ladies at Insert metaphor http://insertmetaphor.wordpress.com.  They sent us the cutest ornaments and some very tasty chocolate!  Look at how cute they are!

Thank you Olive and Fern!!

Happy holidays!

-liz

Sugar cookies- creating traditions

This past weekend we made sugar cookies from scratch with Jude. He loved every part of it soooo much. It is a tradition I always did with my mom when I was growing up and I wanted to do it with Jude. He helped pour the ingredients in the bowl and turn the mixer on and off. He got totally covered in flour but a quick shirt change and he was good to go for the next part. After chilling, he helped us cut out the cookies. We placed the shapes and he would push them down.  Then it chilled and baked. Next was the best part. We took all the cookies over to the kitchen table and frosted them and let Jude go crazy with the sprinkles. He loved it so much.  We made a ton of cookies and Jude helped decorate them all! There was only 1sprinkle container with a lid with holes so he wouldn't pour them all out and it was hot pink sprinkles, so you can guess what color most of the cookies turned out:) he was mesmerized by it. He asked for more and more and even cried when it was over he loved it so much. It made me so happy to bring this tradition to my family.  What traditions do you do with your family?

-s

Moving on Up!

I know it's been ages since we last posted, but honestly we have been so busy that this is the first Jude nap in what feels like forever that I've been able to sit down, and that is just because we have people inside the house cleaning right now, or I'd be busy!  We are putting the house on the market this Friday and have been spending all of our spare time decluttering, packin and cleaning to get ready.  We are moving to Round Rock, which is just north of Austin.  Starr's job is up there and for the last year she has been commuting about an hour each way to work.  Of course for the six years prior she was also commuting an hour each way for a different job, but now that we have Jude and I'm not driving to work it makes sense for our family to move and cut her commute.  It's a good time to sell here in Austin, but of course having a toddler in the house makes things difficult, both in selling and in buying.  So this week we have had our carpets steam cleaned, a cleaning service to deep clean so that hopefully we can just maintain the clean, and a neighbor mowed the yard and cleaned up outside for us.  On Thursday we have a professional photographer come out to take pictures.  And we have take down the tons of art and pictures on our walls and packed up about 30% of our stuff.  Whew!  And now that's it's as close to perfect as I can get it Jude and I are just going to stay out of the house as much as possible until it sells (which cross your fingers is quick!).

Any tips on keeping a spotless house with a toddler would be appreciated!

-Liz 

Fall is finally here in Texas

Its a nice cold day here in Austin and Jude and I are playing in the backyard.  I love fall, the cold days, the warm snugly blankets, seeing our darling boy grow up.  We have been bad bloggers but time is always in short supply so a few updates:

-Italy was amazing!  I ate way too much pasta and pizza, drank a ton of amazing beer, saw a few beautiful sights and generally had a wonderful time with my brother.

This is my favorite thing that we saw, Trevi fountain.  It is also were I put my friend Melanie's ashes.  It's a tradition to toss a coin in and make a wish to come back to Rome.  Now I like to imagine Melanie is granting those wishes.

-We gave up on the toddler bed.  Jude was doing pretty good at nap time with it, but at bedtime he would get out of bed and lay on his floor kicking his bedroom door while screaming.  And he would do it for over an hour some nights no matter what we did.  So now he is sleeping in a pack and play, which with the mesh sides he can't climb out of it.  And bedtime has gone much smoother ever since.

-Jude continues to be a joy to be around at least 90% of the time.  He is talking more and more and his new favorite thing is to read books.  He has always liked books but now he will bring me book after book after book to read.  He especially likes books where there are busy pictures with things for me to ask him to point out for me.  

-We joined our local YMCA,which has been awesome!  It's a little more than we probably should be spending on an "extra" like that, but it is the best.  They have an awesome kid care room with super sweet staff and tons of toys.  They will watch Jude for an hour and a half up to twice a day!  So far we have been going 3-4 times a week.  So momma gets a good workout, a break from the little guy, and he gets something fun and new to do and kids to play with.  He seems to like it, he only had one day where he cried when I left the room.  I highly recommend to all stay at home moms to find a way to do something like this, it is worth every penny!

-It seems like everyone is moving onto their second baby but us these days.  We are in no way finically ready to have another baby, but man I'm feeling the urge!

-Jude was a ninja turtle for Halloween.  We picked up some ninja turtle footie pajamas and just used those as he only went half way around the block trick or treating.  And surprise, surprise, Jude loves candy! Kitkats to be exact.  

And here is a picture of our sweet boy playing outside this morning.

-Liz 

While Liz is in Italy, I get to single mom it

Super exciting news for Liz is that she is in Italy for 10 days!  Super unexciting news for me is I am not and I am currently working full time and taking care of a high energy toddler.  Honestly, with Liz’s surgeries this year, we have this routine down.  If you think about it,  Jude has been at the nannies or with other people caring for him for about a whole half year with me taking care of both of us and sometimes Liz too.  Not all at once, but when you add it up, it is a long time.  So, that part we are used to.  We get by as best we can and cling to each other a lot:) Not to say it is easy, but Jude and I get a rhythm of get up together go to nannies, come home and have a bottle and a cartoon, read a bunch of books, snuggle and go to bed.  In all honesty, there is not much time as I leave for work around 8:20 am in the morning to get Jude to the nannies and then I pick him up around 7:30pm at night and have been putting him to bed at 9pm.  We are BUSY during the week.  It is a routine of get home- get a bottle, feed the dogs and feed myself and get ready for bed. Crash into bed between 9 and 10 for me and get up and do it all over again.

The big difference for me this time is all the alone time.  I basically invited myself over for dinner to a friends on Sunday because I had spent all weekend with just Jude other than random trips to places and one short pre-nap visit to a friends.  He was SUPER good all weekend and all week, but it is REALLY hard for this very social mama to be with just a toddler all day. Fortunately, when I called our friends R and T, they came to the rescue again and let me come over there with Jude for a few hours on Sunday night.  They are soo sweet and save our little family over and over again in so many ways:)

It is only Tuesday.  It feels like my wife has been gone forever and she does not get back until Saturday night.  Jude and I ran all over the place over the weekend.  We went to the part multiple times everyday, went to an October event at the YMCA and to Target and such.

We have Skyped a few times with Liz which has been nice.

The super cool thing about Jude right now is that he is learning about a word a day.  He now can say, “love you, night night, bye, hi, mama, Emma (one of our dogs), dog, cat, more, one and can make the sounds of a dog, cat, bird, cow, sheep, 3 singing pigs(la la la), monkey, lion, dinosaur, bear,  and we have even taught him to tell us what a fox says, which he will dance and make funny noises to. (if you don’t know what I am talking about, google “what does a fox say” and watch the video as it is hilarious).  There is a new word all the time. Yesterday he said “nice” and today he learned “night night”.  It’s pretty amazing to see him learn right before my eyes.  He can also identify animals and colors.  I have been working on counting with him, but he just says, “one, one, one, one” for all the different numbers.  It is still pretty cute.

I love this age.  He is cuddly, but wants his independence.  He pushed me out of his room the other day because he wanted to play by himself.  My little Aquarius is already demanding his alone time:)

Alright, well this tired mama needs to go to bed as we have another long day tomorrow!
-S

Toddler Bed

Jude is officially growing up too fast, about two weeks ago my little baby went from sleeping in a crib to transitioning to a toddler bed.  I guess transition isn’t the right word, he went right from one to the other.  My boy is a natural climber and I think it was only a matter of time before he climbed out of his crib, but I was hoping that wouldn’t happen for another six months at least.  Wrong.  About two weeks ago I put him down for a nap and he was fussy and didn’t want to go down.  So I closed the door to let him cry and about ten minutes later along with the crying I hear a drawer slam shut.  I knew there wasn’t any way in his crib he could reach any drawers so I ran in to investigate.  And there he was, on the ground outside of his crib crying.  Oh boy, he had climbed out.  That day he didn’t end up taking a nap as I couldn’t trust him in the crib.  This was only my second day “back on the job” so to speak after my recovery from my hysterectomy.  I was so tired by the end of the day!  Luckily our crib converts to a toddler bed so I took the front bar off and boom, toddler bed.  He was really tired that night from not napping so he went to sleep easy that night, no problems.

The next day I went again to put him down for a nap and he lays down for about 5 minutes and then realized, hey wait a minute, I can get out of this bed!  So up he jumped and he played around in his room, which is very well baby proofed and stripped down to almost nothing at this point, but then he got up on his toddler bed and from there climbed onto his attached changing table.  Crap!  Luckily we had gotten a video monitor recently so I saw the whole thing.  I ran in and firmly told him no and put him back in his bed where he cried for like .2 seconds and then fell asleep.  I watched that video monitor like a hawk the rest of his nap in fear he would climb on the table again.  Once he got up I took apart the changing table too.

Since then naps and bedtime have gone better than I thought they would have.  About 90% of the time he stays in bed after we put him there and goes to sleep.  The rest of the time he gets up and plays or cries and eventually climbs back into bed and goes to sleep.  The only problem we have really been having is in the middle of the night if he wakes up he is next to impossible to get back down in the toddler bed.  So on those nights he ends up in bed with us, which isn’t too bad for me but a bit worse for S because he likes to sleep on top of her and kicks his little feet the whole time.  Not the best way for mama to sleep!
-Liz

Jude Pics

This blog has turned into an all Liz all the time sort of place and that is not it’s intention.  So here are some Jude pics to turn things around a bit!