october and november in our home

october and november are two of my favorite months to live in new england.  we were busy this fall as i was tutoring quite a bit, had many visitors, and were preparing for crosby's arrival.  i took a bit of a break from blogging, but wanted to share a few of my favorite memories from this fall.

first up:  blake came up from houston to surprise Greg for his 30th birthday.  while it definitely was not the same without ryan and their kiddos, it seemed like the greatest gift in the world for both of these guys.  i am so thankful for blake and greg's friendship.  so this visit was one of the highlights of our fall.

one of the greatest joys of living in boston these past 5 years is being so close to my family that lives in new hampshire.  my mom's brother and his wife, as well as their two kids (my cousins) and their little ones all live about an hour and a half's drive from us.  while living in the south, i only got to see them every 2 years or so at our family get-togethers.  it has been such a blessing being able to drive up and spend weekends, birthdays, holidays, and such with them.  i love my family dearly and these past five years have just made me feel so close to them as we have shared all of the wonderful moments of our children being born with them.  here are some pictures of a walk jude and i took with my aunt and uncle on a weekend trip to see them back in october while greg was traveling.  they live on a beautiful lake and the trees were brilliant.

we went trick-or-treating with our good friends, mimi and kent and their little ones.  as i've previously posted, jude's favorite book was always moo, baa, la la la.  so it was only appropriate to dress him up as a sheep for halloween and let him go to the doors and say 'baaaaaaaaaaaa.'

we were not able to travel at thanksgiving since that was right around my due date.  but our good friends, paul and kate, invited us to spend thanksgiving with them here in boston.  jude was thrilled since their daughter, nora, is the love of his life.  here are some pictures from our really special thanksgiving here with the jin family.

and finally, we went to pick our our christmas tree the day after thanksgiving since little crosby (unnamed at the time) was due any day around that time....but then he took his time in coming. :)  this was the tree jude picked!

My little man and his Radio Flyer Scooter

You know there are those purchases that you realize were the best money you ever spent.  I bought this little Radio Flyer scooter at a consignment sale for $15 back in September and realize that it has brought jude such joy (and me as well)  for about 10cents a day up to this point.  He rides his scooter all around our house - in circles, backwards, and through my legs saying, "sku, sku" (excuse me).  When you live in a small space in New England, the winter can seem rather non-ending, so instead of riding it in the nearby cemetery where we did in the fall, he now rides it all around our house.

crosby wells o'brien

crosby wells o'brien was born december 5th, 2011 at beth israel deaconess medical center in boston.  our dear friend and OB, Mimi, was able to deliver him and it was a super fast, smooth and healthy delivery.  we are so very thankful.  he weighed 8 lbs. 2 oz. and was 20 1/2 inches long and was a great eater from the very beginning.  crosby doesn't really look like jude at all - he actually looked a bit like a bulldog when he was born (see picture 2) :)

well, you know what they say about the second child ...  we have taken very few pictures of crosby as we have just been in survival mode with two babies under 2.  but the past two nights, crosby has slept through the night, and so i feel like a bit of a new person (with the help of my cup of coffee that i've been nursing for the past 5 hours).  so i thought it was about time (now that he's 7 weeks old) to post some of the pictures we have taken.

this is when we introduced jude to crosby.  we had just gotten home from the hospital and jude got up from his nap and we brought him downstairs to meet his little brother.  jude is enamored by him!  As you can tell from the pictures, jude just wants to hug him all the time.  and the last picture is what happened when we tried to take crosby out of jude's arms - he started yelling "mine!  my baby!"

The rest of these pictures are just some of my favorite moments with our new little guy over the past 7 weeks.

favorite moments from the fall

without a doubt, the fall is my favorite season here in New England.  actually i love every season here except for March, April (and sometimes May).  but this was our last fall here in boston and so i really wanted to capture the beauty of it on film and to enjoy being outside.  unfortunately the early snowstorm in october shortened these opportunities.  but i wanted to post some of our favorite moments we had this fall.

i am irrational and emotional at 40 weeks of pregnancy

who knew??  not me....i wasn't still pregnant with jude at this point.  jude came a week early (he is very type-A like his mother - actually he makes me look normal).  but this baby is in no hurry (maybe he's greg's prototype) despite my urgent pleas for him to come quickly.  maybe he's trying to give us more time to come up with his name since we're struggling so much with that.

regardless, i am still pregnant (even though I'm not technically due until monday), and i have made many irrational decisions in this past week....i was completely normal until we passed the day that he should have arrived on jude's time table.  feeling huge and unattractive, i went to get my hair cut only to leave feeling even more unattractive and still huge.  i was on the verge of tears, but didn't let myself go there.  then, today i was fed up by everyone's comments about jude's hair needing to be cut and time to get rid of the curls, etc, that i caved in to the opinion of others and cut his hair myself in a rash moment this morning.  then i sat on the floor and cried.  i butchered it (see exhibit below) - and completely cut off all his curls except two troll-like ones above each ear.  i didn't mean to cut off all the curls - i was trying to just clean it up to get people off my back, but i've lost my baby's curls and at the moment it seemed like life was an utter loss.  my friend, mimi, called to tell me not to make any more major decisions between now and baby.  good advice.  i'm not even sure i should leave the house.   i didn't experience this craziness with jude because he came earlier than i expected.  i'm ready to have this baby - to be able to go running, sleep on my stomach, drink caffeinated coffee, sit on the floor, have a good glass of wine, and be normal once more (at least as normal as you can be when sleep deprived).

so i'm in the business of cheering myself up now - after the disastrous haircut.  so i'm watching old jude videos and thought i'd share a few of my favorites.

Reading Jude's favorite book in September (he has subsequently thrown it into the toilet, so it hasn't been read now in quite some time).  Please ignore my early morning pregnant look.

The hard thing about Jude learning to verbally say please along with the sign language is that it is so dang cute, i think i might give him a knife if he asked for it with a please.

New words from October.  You only need to watch the first 30 seconds or so - I wasn't sure how to shorten it:

And lastly, Jude riding his favorite toy:  his radio flyer scooter which he rides all over our house and outside.  I'm mainly posting this because I get to watch his curls and i miss them so much.