Trick-or-Treat!

I drew, cut-out, and colored all of those bats!

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. Everything about it is just fantastic: scary movies, autumn weather, candy, pumpkins, apple cider, spooky things. To make it even better, this was Jude's first participatory Halloween!

I took him Trick-or-Treating and he made a pretty good haul considering we were only out for a little while (I was carrying him and he's a fourth of my body weight). As with last year, this year he was a Skellington. Except this year his bones were glow in the dark, which he just thought was the coolest.

I was surprised just how much he enjoyed himself. Being carried around by Mommy, meeting random people, getting to choose his own candy from their dishes, staring in wonder at people in costumes, laughing at other children. His world is magical and I am so grateful to be privy to it.

Not bad, Jude, not bad.

Weaning Hormones

I lucked out during pregnancy, I didn't get much if any super crazy mood swings. Just cravings for things like halva and pizza. I'm pretty sure at least 50% of Jude is made of pizza. Postpartum I got pretty lucky too. I experienced postpartum blues aplenty but managed to avoid full blown postpartum depression. Weaning has been a whole different animal for me though.

When Jude first started skipping his short throughout the day nursing snacks I was fine. After several days of it I started feeling kind of blue, like I had right after he was born and my hormones were out of control. Once he started skipping a whole session a day I started feeling really sad. Like, beloved pet recently died levels of sad. Now he skips two sessions a day (only truly nurses when he first wakes in the morning) and I can say on a scale of one-to-needs-antidepressants, I'm definitely the latter. At least until the hormones have stabilized.

Only I'm still nursing, so I can't take antidepressants. So I just exist in this dark lonely void where everything is bad even when it's good. If anything bad actually happens my mood becomes completely uncontrollable and I just break down into an emotional mess of snot and tears. Which is a very surreal experience for me. There's nothing like feeling the world is against you, or being in a room full of people who you know love you yet feeling totally alone anyway. To say "it sucks," would be a monumental understatement.

I can't watch or look at most anything without associating something tragic with it. Glass of water, people dying in third world countries because they don't have access to it; computer, how limited this planet's resources are; food, how many children go to bed hungry every night; pets, how many die in shelters every year; and so on and so forth. It's baaaaalls. You name something and I can tell you why it's depressing as hell. Go on, anything.

This isn't a cry for help or something. I'm not in danger of harming myself or anyone else, I have enough sense and self control to realize all of this is temporary and will pass. I have however found myself questioning my existence and existence in general on more than one occasion. Not in a "we should all just self-terminate and get it over with already" sort of way but in a "what is the point?" kind of way.

Why write this at all? Because I think it would be incredibly dishonest not to. Too many people sugar coat their life on the internet to make it seem like only good things ever happen. People reading or watching get the wrong idea and when their life is far harder than that of apparently everyone around them they feel isolated and worse. No, man. Life is crappy sometimes, for everyone. You aren't alone. This is why I write about how great motherhood is yet also write about all the sleeplessness and hardships: it's the same coin. You can't have one without the other and if you do, you're probably delusional.

Life is all about ups and downs. If it were just a straight line with no challenges or hurdles to overcome, imagine how unfulfilling that would be. Every experience shapes you and those around you, good or bad. If you took away all of the bad experiences imagine how different you'd truly be -- and most likely not for the better. If you need support or reassurance, seek it. It may not seem like it, but I'm willing to bet more people in your life than you realize have been through the same struggle, whether it be depression, insomnia, overeating, under-eating, whatever. Someone has been there! Just knowing that helps.

I do have brief interludes of joy, like when Jude looks at me, Neelix lays on me, a dragonfly flies especially close to me when I'm outside, or Aaron and I are having dinner. So at least there's that.

12 Months!

Happy first birthday, Jude!
Here are a few pictures from his celebration.

His gifts!

Nice hair.

My gift.

His cake!

Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream cake.

"Give me the plate, Mama."

"MINE!"

"The cake is not a lie!"

"What is even..."

"We can't stop here, this is bat country!"

"OMG SUGAR!"

There's just a little... something on your face friend.

:D

Goodnight, Birthday Boy.

Can you believe it's been a year?!

Babies According to The Green Brothers

An excellent prerequisite to childbirth for any parent or parent-to-be:

How to Make a Baby

Weird Things That Happen to Pregnant Women

How to Name Your Baby

How to Be a Baby Properly

Five Amazing Facts About Babies

And last but not least:

The Ultimate Concern

Learn, prepare, and enjoy!

Infant Cereal Cookies

Cookinari!

As an accomplished eater of solid foods, Jude typically wants to eat things he has to chew these days, so I'm finding myself with a surplus of infant cereal. To avoid any going to waste, I decided to use some science and a general knowledge of baking to take items we had on-hand in the kitchen and transform excess cereal into something he'll actually eat. Here's the final result:

Baby Biscuits:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup baby cereal (any variety)
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 10 ounces of ice cold water

*You may sweeten the mixture in a number of ways. I added 2 tablespoons of natural Maple sugar. You could use brown sugar, raw sugar, or even bits of fruit though if you want. It's up to you.

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 425
2. Mix the flour and the baby cereal together.
3. Add the olive oil, stirring as you do.
4. Stir for a while, the mixture will appear dry -- that's ideal.
5. Stir in ice water gradually, a few ounces at a time until the dough begins to take form and pull away from the bowl.
6. You want it to maintain its shape but not be watery!
7. Roll the dough out to the thickness of a Ritz cracker on a floured surface, you can use your hands if you don't have a rolling pin.
8. Cut dough into the desired shape, I just used an upside-down baby bottle to make them into circles.
9. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 10-15 minutes, or until lightly browned.
10. Allow them to cool completely and then serve!

I tried one as soon as they came out of the oven, still too hot for baby hands, and have to say they're pretty good. I decided for my second batch to dress them up a bit. I dusted the tops of a few with brown sugar and added rainbow sprinkles to a few others. Fun! I used infant multigrain cereal and infant oatmeal for the original batch. I think I will make a batch of infant wheat and infant rice as well though and leave them unsweetened for serving alongside lunch and dinner.

We know I enjoyed them but the important question is: did the baby? Yes.

Success!

Why I Decided to Procreate

In today's day and age your choices are often called into question by others. Why do/don't you: you eat meat, recycle, buy organic, vote, exercise, drive, believe in global warming, etc., etc.? Here I address why I decided to have kids. I know the general population is divided by this. Some view it as irresponsible to introduce more humans to the planet, that having kids is a selfish way to feed your ego, and so on and so forth. Meanwhile the other side views childbirth and rearing as some sacred, natural, rite of passage. I'm kind of between the two, honestly.

When I was a child I wanted a dozen kids one day. I also wanted to dress them up like a moving color wheel and carry them around in my backpack though. Once I learned where babies came from I didn't want to have my own because boys are gross and they make babies with the same hole they pee out of (true fact). A notion I held on well into my teen years.

When I was a young adult and particularly selfish with my time and resources, I definitely did not want children. Life was one big party. As I matured and got bored of a life where my only responsibilities were paying rent on time and feeding myself regularly, I realized that I wanted something more. I realized that I would like to shape the future of our planet by having or adopting a child and (key component here) having an active role in its upbringing and development -- not like those mothers who have a child only to essentially leave it up to daycare professionals and nannies to raise.

It's my belief that the problem isn't too many people having children, it's the wrong people having children. People who don't have the time for them, the money for them, or worse didn't even want them to begin with.

I don't want to have children to fill some psychological void in my life like those people who try to make themselves feel better by hording, buying things they can't afford, gambling, being promiscuous, or abusing substances. I don't need children to 'complete' me. I'm well aware that the only entity or object which can complete you is, in fact, you. It was more or less my looking at society and having the epiphany that I alone will never change it for the better in my lifetime, but realizing that perhaps my children could take up the banner for change once I could no longer hold it up.

It's much more than that, once you do it. You come to understand a love so genuine and pure that no amount of words could accurately depict it. It is unconditional, absolutely. Anyone who thinks true love doesn't exist has never had children.

Sugar High

Normally I'm very diligent with Jude's daily intake of sugar. He gets Graham Crackers as a snack, but never more than two unless we're out of the house, and that's pretty much the extent of his sugar intake outside of the fruits he has for breakfast and lunch. Today he had a little sugar high though.

Aaron and I were watching Attack on Titan and eating lik-a-stiks and Jude was super interested in what Mommy and Daddy were eating and really wanted to try mine. So I dipped it in the powder and offered him a taste. He made the funniest face about the powder flavoring but loved the stick so much he almost sucked it right out of my hand and crawled off without giving it back. I let him have a few more licks before reclaiming ownership because of how adorable it was.

Then he came up onto the bed with me and stole my saltwater taffy. It was still in the wax wrapper so I figured there was little he could do to harm it but then I look over and he is sucking the taffy, that he's warmed in his hands, through the end of the wrapper like it's the world's messiest straw. Oh geez.

It didn't hit him until dinner time, where 90% through his meal he suddenly had to practically hurl himself off of my lap and bounce all over the floor. I was a little worried it'd keep him up, especially since he didn't nap today, but he sugar crashed at around 7:40 and I went ahead and just put him to bed early so he wasn't too miserable about it.

Yeah, the adults of the household eat candy and watch cartoons. What? :P