Lumberjudah

I've REALLY been wanting to get back into blogging.  We moved into our new apartment over a month ago.  It's a rental, but I love it anyway...despite our really noisy upstairs neighbors, who are listening to Christmas music this morning...not cool, people.  It's November 9th.

I admit that I've been thinking about Christmas and trying to get into Christmas production since August.  I wanted to go mostly homemade this year.  There's no good reason not to.  I'm home with Judah all day, every day, and he is usually a very good napper.  Judah finally has his own room, which means I get a crafting space again.  And I had all these great ideas and all these great intentions of starting early...

But now it is November 9th.  Occasionally Jason will say things like, "There's less than 7 weeks til Christmas," or "Yes, Robin.  It's November," or "I get to see my family soon" (it's his family's year for Christmas), and my response is always "I HAVE SO MUCH TO DO!!!"  I think he started saying those things to get me excited about Christmas.  Now he just does it 'cause he thinks it's funny that he can make me panic on command.

So not only are my neighbors annoying because they are Christmasing WAY too early--which I HATE.  (I have very strict rules about holiday traditions, one of which is that Christmas does NOT start until AFTER Thanksgiving.)  But they are also reminding me that I HAVE SO MUCH TO DO!!!

(I generally think that writing in all caps is really annoying, so I try to avoid doing it whenever possible, especially when I have emphasizers like bold, italics, and underline available.  That just goes to show you how EMPHATIC I am about this.)

So...all that to say, I actually have gotten started on Christmas crafting.  And I've wanted to share some makes with you, but...obviously, I can't do that...because they're for Christmas.  But today, my sister Amy posted about some AWESOME Halloween costumes she made for her boys, and that reminded me of the costume I made for my boy, which is much less impressive but nevertheless warrants a post because of how cute Judah is.

So, without further ado, here is my Halloween post:
(Actually, just a little more ado...every time I write Halloween, I sing in my head a song I learned in 3rd grade from our terrible music teacher, who used to throw books and desks at students.  It goes "H, A, double L, O, W, double E, N spells Halloween."  Without that song, I cannot spell Halloween.  I wouldn't even know where to start.)

I debated for a long time whether or not Judah would get a Halloween costume this year.  I wanted to make him a lion costume, but I knew I wouldn't have time in the midst of the Christmas crafting I am SOOO behind on.  We could have bought one, but we were waiting for this perfect costume at Target to go on sale, which it never did, and then it sold out.  My indecision took me to the morning of Halloween.  I wasn't going to take him trick-or-treating because: 1) we got 6 inches of snow that weekend--which I think was just another way Christmas is trying to remind me it is coming whether I am ready or not--and Halloween night was a toasty 35 degrees, and 2) people would have known that I was way too old to go trick-or-treating and was just using my adorable baby as a way of getting free candy for myself.  And Jason was taking the youth group trick-or-treating, so I wasn't going to host a costume party by myself just so Judah could have something to dress up for.  And we live in an apartment building, so I knew we weren't going to get trick-or-treaters.  So why bother, right?

But in the end, Halloween morning rolled around, and I felt that not having a costume for Judah's first Halloween meant that I was a terrible mother.  I decided that I needed to make him a costume so I could take pictures of him in it and prove my love for him so that years from now, he couldn't say, "You don't love me, and I know that because you didn't dress me up for my first Halloween."  Taking inventory of Judah's wardrobe and the portion of my craft supplies I have unpacked, I had to ruled out lion, lion tamer, Daniel in the lion's den, and a snowman (in ironic memorializing of the unseasonable weather).  And I settled on a lumberjack.  Why?  Because his flannel shirt, jeans, and boots happened to be next to each other in his pile of clothes that are still awaiting a dresser.  So no cute cleverness to celebrate his name.  No important reason or hidden meaning or funny story that I would remember forever and tell his future girlfriends.  Just general messiness and chaos yielding uncharacteristically helpful results.

I had a hat I'd crocheted for his cousin.  I had the shirt, jeans, and boots.  Now all he needed was a beard and an axe, and I could call it a day.  Mission motherhood accomplished.  I had some brown jersey fabric that would do for a beard.  I'd never sewn with jersey before, but I used a zigzag stitch, and it did the trick famously.  And I threw together an axe in about 5 minutes.  And here are the results:

And the money shot:

I decided to give you the whole photo shoot, since that was the point after all.  Judah actually did really well with the beard.  He didn't mind it at all.  He was much more interested in the boots.

And...just for good measure, here is the song that was in my head all day on H A double L O W double E N:

This is my 6th attempt to write a blog post worthy of displacing Judah's birthday.  This won't be that blog post, but maybe it will take the pressure off a bit to just give a quick update to what's going on around here:

1)  Judah is awesome.  He's really the best ever...best baby, best person, best thing to ever happen to me.  He's just the best.

 See?  Isn't he the best?  Yes.  Yes, he is.

2)  Jason finished his master's degrees!!  Hooray!!!  He's also down to 2 jobs instead of 6.  He's keeping his youth pastor job and also teaching high school and junior high Bible part time at a Christian prep school.  We tried really hard to get out of Massachusetts...to no avail.  But now that it's decided, we're excited to be here, and Jason is really looking forward to teaching.

3)  So...since we're going to be here (and since we soon have to vacate student housing owning to Jason no longer being a student), we started looking at BUYING A HOUSE!  I was really excited about it.  I thought it would be fun.  But it turns out that house hunting is not fun when your budget would get you close to your dream house just about anywhere else in the country except right where you need to be.  We haven't found anything in our price range worth buying, so we're most likely going to rent for at least another year and see what pops up on the market in the spring.  *boooo*

4)  In the mean time, I am in limbo like never before.  I'm hoping that once we find a place to rent, I can utilize Judah's impeccable sleeping skills to start getting disciplined about making stuff again.  I've started here and there to get in the swing of things, but our apartment is so overrun with Judah's stuff that it's hard to talk myself into pulling out the materials to make an even bigger mess of our tiny little shoebox lives.  I started to rearrange furniture to better maximize our space, but then I found out that we would have to move soon, so I stopped mid-rearrange and haven't been able to motivate myself to finish the job...or to pack...or to care enough to do anything but state in no uncertain terms that I AM IN LIMBO, and I DO NOT LIKE IT.

5)  I don't really have a 5th point, but we all know how I despise the number 4, so there you have it.  Instant list of 5, and finally, a new--and altogether anticlimactic--post.

Judah Benjamin

The very hardest and one of the very best days of my life. Enjoy!

My water broke at 2:15am. About an hour and a half of repacking hospital bags, and we were off!

We got to the hospital around 4am, which is when my contractions started to be more regular. As you can tell, this picture was taken very early on.

And this picture was taken much later. After about 10 hours of labor (including about 2 hours of pushing) and zero pain mediation. Isn't my baby boy the sweetest?

Here's Judah picking his nose.

8 pounds .5 ounces, 21 inches long. It's a good thing he was 10 days early!

The proud papa and very best labor coach ever.

And here he is!!

At this point, Jason said, "This is one of the greatest moments of my life."

Judah is almost smiling here!

Trying to get a good family portrait with a baby who would much rather be sleeping.

The happy Lawrenz family of three!