Sneak peek!

I'm so behind on my blog!  I apologize!  I've got a ton going on right now with work and life and I have a million things I need to blog about.  Fear not, I'll play some catchup this week and will have a few recaps and thoughts.  Stay tuned!  For now, how about just a few photos of Jude at his first birthday party last weekend at Mama's Pizza with the family.  It was a very informal night with grandparents, uncles, and cousins with some pizza and birthday cake.  He wasn't sure about it at first.....but then a whole sugary world opened up for him!  Enjoy and I'll be talking to you all again very soon!

What the....?  Hmmmm...

I'm not sure about this.  Not sure at all.

Here, Dad, try some first, make sure it's not poison.

Oh MAN, how come I've never had this before!

Life Is a Ball.

Well, according to Jude at least.  We're experiencing a mini-explosion of word and word associations in our household lately.  Jude can say and identify Mama and Dada (although sometimes he apparently gets us confused), ball (ba!), book (gook!), hi, dog (da!), monkey (kkkey)...and there are a few others that I "think" he says, but they are too sporatic to say for certain.  His favorite word and thing is "ball".  The kid goes absolutely ape whenever we are at the grocery store and he sees one of those giant containers with those marble swirl bouncy balls.  He starts pointing, kicking his legs excitedly and emphatically repeating over and over "Ba! Ba! Ba! BA! BA! BAAA!" We are the proud owners of three (yes, three) identical of these because Phil puts one in the cart every single time because it makes him so happy.  He hasn't learned the genius move I pull out of my pocket by either a.) avoiding the aisle completely or b.) quickly get away from the display with a silly "peekaboo!" to get him to giggle and it's soon forgotten.  However, this obsession with all things ball has gone beyond the scope of cheap plastic ones.  Display of watermelons and cantalopes?  BA!  Circular wall decorations in restaurants or shops?  BA!  Tires?  BA!  Doorknobs?  BA!  If it's circular, then it's a ball- and Jude wants to have it.

Here we go!

My first cloth diaper purchases are all ready to go!  I currently have about one day's worth of dipes.  So far, I have an assortment since we're not sure what diaper(s) is going to work best for Jude.  Another amazing bonus of cloth diapering is the resale value.  Anything that doesn't work out for us we can always resell at a diaper swap or Craigslist.  Score! 

Here is what we have so far:  Bumgenius 3.0 (light blue), Fuzzi Bunz pocket (red), Happy Heinys pocket (butter), Thirsties Duo (mango), Thirsties cover (green), a Rumparooz G2 pocket (monsters), Monkey Snuggles fitted (skull stripe), and a Monkey Snuggles overnight (chocolate chip cookies).

 
I also got 8 organic prefolds with snappis to try out.  There's no turning back now! 

I spent all of tonight prepping the diapers for our first official day of cloth diapering Jude tomorrow.  The biggest time consumer was prepping the prefolds.  I boiled them for about half an hour and then ran them through several wash and dry cycles in order to get maximum absorbency once they are on the little boy's bum.

Wish us luck!

HUGE milestone.

That's right, avid blog followers.  It's official.  The day we've all been waiting for.  Are you waiting with baited breath?  Can't stand the anxiety for one more second?  Alright then, here it is....




We would like to announce.





Jude finally has enough hair to make shampoo mohawks!!!!  Wheeeeee!!!!



Enjoy the cuteness of the photographic evidence (and also the last time a bath will take place in the kitchen sink as evidenced by the last photo, before the expensive camera was almost lost to a tidal wave).