Memorial Day

Hope everyone is having a relaxing day off.

I will spend my day working on this:

And guest posting here!

Have a a great rest of your day.

Gone So Long

I hate that I have been inconsistant with my posts lately.

I have been really, super busy settling into a new life.

I have been hesitant to announce it on my blog because this space has seen me go through so many ups and downs. It has watched me fall apart, wallow in despair, pick myself up and begin again.

And now there is another new beginning.

Its been a few months now and I feel solid enough to announce to the blogosphere....

Papa and I have reconciled.

We are back together and loving our new life with our amazing son. Its been empowering and scary and encouraging and intimidating and easy and hard to start to live as our own family.

I wont try to pretend that we are perfect or that problems have magically disappeared, but we have been working so hard to create a functioning and happy relationship. We council, we Church, We pray, We read. Anything that we think can strengthen or better our relationship, we are doing it.

And things are going fantastic.

We, of course, have had little hiccups, but we have been able to work and talk through them in a way that we never have before.

I am ecstatic about our new life. I have my love back. I never, ever have to leave my little love again. Our life is beautiful. Messy, real, chaotic but beautiful.

Kissin' Babies

So I was reading this post over at Cup Of Jo (Love her) and she brought up the subject of whether or not you kiss your babies on the lips and I thought it was such an interesting question. Mainly because it never even occurred to me that some people might not kiss their babies on the lips...

I give Cruz big ol' kisses right on his sweet little mouth. And I love when he plants a slobbery one on me.

And his Papa is the same. Since the day he was born, Papa would always kiss him on the mouth and say that he likes to smell his little breath when he breaths out because it smells so sweet.

We joke that we have to soak up the lip kisses right now because we know before too long he probably wont want to kiss our lips.

But then, while reading through the comments on Jo's post, it became apparent that TONS of people think its weird to kiss their babies on the lips. That they would never dream of laying one on their babies mouth.

What do you think? Do you kiss your babies/kids on the lips? And on the flip side, do you kiss your own parents on the lips?

Awkward and Awesome

Do you read The Daybook? Well you totally should because this girl is too cute. And her fashion is to die for. And in honor of the fact that she is soon to join the ranks of Mama bloggers (she just announced that their expecting their first) I have decided to partake in always fun "Awkward and Awesome" thursdays.

Awkward:

-Accidentally saying I Love You to someone you totally DO NOT love. Like the PG&E guy on the phone yesterday. Totally distracted and when he said goodbye I replied "Kloveyoubye."..... Silence
-The lady who's foot I ran over with the grocery cart today.
-Trying to pretend you dont see someone you know walking by that you really dont want to have to stop and talk to and realizing at the last second that you cant avoid them...and knowing that they know that you were totally dodging them.
-Cruz trying to run out the door of the store in his new shoes before I paid for them and setting off all the alarms.
-Realizing that my hair is more gray/green then brown.
-The guy at the grocery store insisting (INSISTING) on putting my bags in the car for me thus seeing my embarrassingly messy car.

Awesome:

-Cruz saying "love you" in all vowels. He doesnt exactly pronounce the whole word but he totally uses it in context, pronounces all the vowels and has perfect inflictions.
-Finally having the Internet back!
-Cruz bringing me his diaper and laying down when he wanted me to change him today. So awesome considering its usually a WW1 reenactment to get him to sit still for a diaper change.
-Drafting a pattern for what will hopefully be a super cute cover for a hanging highchair.
-Being able to shower as long as I want now without having to worry about the hot water running out.

Do you participate in "Awkward and Awesome?" Lemme know!

Dear Internet,

I've missed you almost as much as I've missed Michael Scott on the Office. And even more then I miss Pepsi Twist...and those M&M's with the crunchy stuff in the middle.

Love,
Cassie

So, obviously its been a little quiet on the front here the last couple weeks. We have been without internet during our move and instead of fighting it and dreading about finding a way to post, I decided to just take the time off, relax and get settled.

I have about 100 million things I want to check you guys up on. New food, new clothes, new crafts, new art, new songs, new photos. SO much stuff.

But for now, I'll start with a few Instagram's from the past couple weeks.

 A smashed fingernail. No fun at ALL.

 

A new rug... and toenails badly in need of some polish

A little boy eating breakfast in bed, resulting in lots of laundry for Mama.

 

New picture at an amazingly great price.  Love Ross.

 

Flowers picked by a little boy for his Mama.

A new play corner for Cruz.

So glad to be back! I've missed being in the space.

Cry Baby

These last few weeks have been rough, ROUGH for Cruz. And for Mama.

I'm not sure if it's just a stage. But he whines and cries ALL DAY. Like almost constantly.

And it's tough on both of us. Obviously he is unhappy which is hard and it makes me really sad for him. But it also FRUSTRATES me like crazy. Usually I am pretty patient and tolerant towards Cruz. But lately the constant crying has had my nerves on edge.

Anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time knows that I am pretty against the cry it out method. I truly believe in responding to your child when they are upset. But today I did something that is not in the usual for me. Instead of picking him up and running around like a crazy person trying to appease his crying, I let him sit on the floor and fuss. I sat right next to him and talked to him and I told him I still love him so much but that I wasn't going to pick him when he screams and cries at me.

He went ahead and continued to scream his head off. But I have learned his cries well and this one was definitely a mad cry, not a sad one so that made it a little easier to handle. But I eventually gave in and picked him up once the real tears started rolling.

I'm at a little bit of a loss and I don't know how to handle it. There is no way I can continue to have him scream at me like this when he doesn't get his way. It has been a big struggle for me and I still don't have an answer

He Speaks!!

Cruz isnt big on conherent language. He babbles all day long. Like nobodies business, but as far as actual words, they are few and far between. Like he says Mama on occasions when he really wants something or is really upset (like in the car). And he says Dadada, which is mostly just babble. But it sounds a lot like Dada so his Dad has started responding to him whenever he says it so I think he might be starting to make the associations.

Basically, he could care less about the English language.

Except one word.

Ball.

Any all balls. He doesnt care. Big, small, red, blue, hard, soft. He has no preferences. He just LOVES balls.

He has whole playrooms full of toys and he never plays with ANY of it. No matter where we go he wants to bring a ball. And he knows exactly where they keep the balls at any given store. If you take him to Target he will cry until you put him down and then he will start walking and not stop until he comes to the balls. He remembers where they are. I've never actually seen anything like it. I have never seen a one year old obsess over something like Cruz obsesses over balls.

Here is my little boy saying his one word "mmmba" aka Ball