Larry White

Ray and I own half of a calf! My parents got the opportunity to "save" an injured calf from death (ironically since he's going to be butchered in another year or so anyway). They asked us if we wanted to pay for half of his costs in exchange for getting half of the meat. Since the last cow they raised ended up costing them about $1/pound for steaks and hamburgers, we felt it was a really good deal.

Ray got naming rights for his first name, and he chose the name Larry. My mom decided that his last name is White because, well, see for yourself:


Cute, huh?

Sitting Up In Bed

I walked into Jude's room after his nap the other day and was met with this sight:


He was very proud of himself.

It seems likes he's learning something new every day!

ps- We lowered the crib mattress down a notch that night :)

Easter Is For Babies

I really do think holidays are more fun with children around. We had a great Easter weekend. We even ended up hosting both families at our house! It's actually not a bad thing, I only had to dust once ;)

Saturday, we had the Froehlich's over. I finally got a decent picture of the cousins:


We ate a ton, of course, and then walked it off on a hike down to Riverside Park. It was windy by the water, so we didn't stay long, but it was a really nice walk.


Sunday morning we went to church with my entire family, which is really quite impressive! Everyone then met up at our house for a rousing game of Easter Egg Lightning With A Baby Basketball Hoop. Only the Jochman's could come up with such a thing :) If you got someone "out", you received an Easter egg with $1, $2, or $3 in it. After the big kids were done, Jude even got to play!

We ended our Easter happenings with a really nice buffet lunch at Liberty Hall. It was a whirlwind of a morning, but we got Jude home on time for his afternoon nap. All in all, a very successful holiday!

Baiting The Baby

Cats make for really good incentive to get a baby to crawl:




Puffs work, too:

My 8-Month Crawler

I feel like I'm long overdue for a Jude update.

February and March were full of illnesses for Jude. Poor little guy. He seemed to just get over one cold and then another one would come along. I'm really hoping we're at the tail end of our last winter cold.

The illnesses gave us some setbacks in the sleep department. Some nights he had a hard time going to sleep and other nights he was up in the middle of the night. The worst nights were when BOTH of those things happened, though that was rare (thankfully). He's still having some trouble going to sleep, but he hasn't been up in the middle of the night for a week now - yay!

Jude loves to play with the cats. He can't decide if he wants the cats to play with the toy or if he wants to play with it himself. The cats have been great motivation for Jude to start moving. I think they deserve all the credit for the fact that Jude crawled for the first time on Sunday! He's pretty wobbly and only gets a stride or two in, but he'll be picking up speed in no time. Yikes!

Jude also got his first haircut. I guess it was more of a trim. His hair was getting really long around his ears and it was driving me crazy. I put him outside in his Bumbo seat on Sunday and carefully snipped away. I'm no hair stylist, but it looks better than before :)

Before (notice the hair over the ears):

After:

We're ready for summer now!

Showing Off My Freebies

I am a member at the website BzzAgent, from which I occasionally get the opportunity to sign up to try out products and share coupons and "buzz" with people I know. This week I really struck it rich and received two packages from BzzAgent!

The first was for S.C. Johnson:


Anyone want coupons for any of these products? I think I have 5 coupons for each. :)

The other package was from L'Oreal:


No coupons included, though, with the L'Oreal products. I was a bit bummed about that. I really like the mascara, but I'm not a fan of the eye shadow. You're supposed to be able to apply all three colors with one swipe, but it didn't work at all. I had to wash it all back off and start over. Good idea in theory, I guess :)

Oh, how I love getting free products!

Dancing Boy

Jude discovered dancing a day or two ago. He's getting really good at it! :)

Daddy took a video of Jude's mad dancing skills this morning: