Did you use baby signing?

I posted this over at BlogFrog in one of the communities I am a part of, but I know I can get some great insights here, too.

I am wondering if I am doing this right. I am SO FREAKING TIRED of my 15 (nearly 16) month old pulling on my shirt when he wants to nurse, so I am attempting some baby sign language with him. We're starting with the sign for milk.

So, what I have been doing for the past several days is when he pulls on my shirt, I tell him, "Say: 'I want to nurse' " and I do the sign. Then I pick him up and begin nursing him and repeat that while doing the sign.

Well, this morning he did the sign AFTER he had begun nursing.

Am I reinforcing this wrong?

Rock on!

O.k. When I saw this over at Dou-la-la, I just couldn't resist! This has got to be the most awesome fountain in existence. I can definitely say this: been there, done that!

With no further ado, I give you "Abundance" from the Piazza Maggiore, in Italy.

He Gets Around!

"My Husband Rocks!" Friday, on Saturday, and quite a bit late!

So, my husband DOES still rock even though life has been so crazy since the end of September that I haven't sat down to think about WHY he rocks. Jude was sick, then his 1st birthday, out of town family visiting, a 14 hour car trip north to meet Daddy's extended family, the loss of my great grandmother and another 11 hour car trip north for the funeral, Holidays, illness, illness, and did I mention illness?

But as I was preparing to shower this morning, I was reminded of another reason why Jeff rocks. They say that the average person loses 200 hairs a day. Well, if that the average person, I must loose upward of 500. It's awful! My hair is everywhere! It totally wraps around the vacuum brush, toes, socks, the tub drain. . . Where ever you don't want to find my hair, you will.

And it is not like I intentionally rinse my hair down the tub drain. I promise that I collect as much as I can in my fingers as I "wash" and condition my hair. ("Wash" because I no longer use shampoo in my hair. See Curly Girl for an explanation. My hair has never looked better than it does now!) But it never fails that about every two or three months the tub starts to drain slow and we bring up big wads of hair.

But it dawned on me that I haven't noticed a slow drain in at least half a year. Telling me that my sweet husband has just accepted this fate and has just been quietly de-clogging the drain on a regular basis. Have you ever seen a hair clog? They are so freaking gross. My husband rocks for doing my dirty work;-)

Don't forget to visit Katy Lin at The Great Adventure if you want to sing the praises of why YOUR husband rocks!

Sharing Is Caring

One of Jude's latest discoveries is sharing. Not that I think he will hold onto this virtue when he's a little older and it comes to sharing toys with other kids, but right now he LOVES giving his food away to other people. Often times he will ask for a cracker and turn right around and give it to Daisy-dog. We're working on breaking him of that. He really loves trying to feed his cracker (or raisins, or whatever) to mommy or daddy.

My Big Boy

Until I became a parent, I never realized that a small triangle of construction paper could elicit such strong emotions from a person. That person, of course, would be me.

We've been going to a Moms2Moms (like MOPS) group since Jude was 6 months old and for the last meeting, Jude went to the "toddler room" nursery. This is the kid that doesn't even look back to say goodbye when I drop him off at any nursery.

I guess the first thing that got my blood pumping was when I went to pick him up and he was the first in the front of a whole pack of kids waiting at the baby gate for their mommies. I almost didn't recognize him because he just looked so grown up standing there!

Then as I was putting his jacket on, the girl in charge handed me this:





















and so much pride began flowing through me that I truly felt like I might burst. What?!! A little piece of construction paper with yard sale stickers and a clothes pin? Really? Yep. My baby had composed his first creation and it was definitely one of the highlights of parenting thus far.

I look forward to many other, odd, small joys over the next several years, but I don't think anything can top how I felt in that moment when the nursery worker handed me Jude's Christmas tree:-)

















Please excuse the greasy finger print. I let him hold it while we were having lunch!

Not too shabby. . .

Well, it wasn't the same great results as last month (8 pounds) but for the month of December I am down 4 more pounds. I blame the holidays. . . and my extreme lack of will power when it comes to cookies and cake;-)

It is amazing to see what a difference 12 months can make. From my little butterball to my little man!














Hope everyone had a Happy New Year's Eve and blessings in this new year!