Just Say Julie

This might be a bit of a "Ba humbug" post but there are a few gripes that I have and I just need to get them off my chest.  So...here we go: My radio station has switched over to Christmas music for the season.  The first week or so it was great. I  was in the best mood listening to the sounds of Christmas in my car on the way to work everyday.  And then, it got old.  I think I have heard the same Christmas songs sung 5 different ways daily for the past month.  OK...I'm over the Christmas music now.  Which leads me to my next gripe... Can't they just sing the blasted song?!?  Why must every artist feel the need to "make the song their own?"  It's just wrong.  Don't mess with my Christmas classics.  God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen to a pop beat...no...just no!  Stop the madness now and leave the Carols alone! Also, I hate that people feel the need to be PC at Christmas.  I get we all have different beliefs and celebrate different ways but I don't

Christmas is just over a week away but you wouldn't know it by looking at my house.  The Christmas spirit is definitely lacking here which makes me sad.  There is always a delay on putting up the Christmas tree here because of it's location in the house but this year the toddler in the house has stopped me from putting up any decorations at all.  You see, the only location in my house that is (sort of) available for the Christmas tree is in front of the picture window in my kitchen that faces the street.  There is no other spot that doesn't contain furniture that can't easily be moved and stored in place of the tree for a couple of weeks.  Instead, I have to move the dog's bowls and mat from it's normal spot in front of the window to another less convenient location on the other side of the kitchen.  Plus the tree blocks access to the pantry which makes life all kinds of difficult. Throw the toddler into the mix and it's just a recipe for disaster.  One of

1. I put Jackson in overalls and a turtle neck this morning. If I thought I could get away with it, I would dress him like this every day because he looked so adorable. 2. I laugh every day when I turn onto the street my office is on and see the "End of Sidewalk" sign they never took down after pouring the sidewalk in front of the building across from our's 2 years ago. 3. I smile every time I see the little Christmas tree in my cubicle because its so festive and makes me happy. 4. I'm dreading putting up decorations at my own house because I just know Jackson is going to try to pull everything down. 5.  Why is it still November?  This early Thanksgiving is throwing me off.  I am ready for it to be December so it can completely feel like Christmas. 6.  Now that we know the F1 Race and a UT home game are scheduled for the same weekend next year, we are debating a vacation at that time.  I started researching Disney and now all I want to do is take that trip.

For the last couple of years, there has been a trend on Facebook to post 30 days of thankfulness. I am not one to jump on bandwagons so I normally don't get into this trend.  However, it does make you stop an think a bit about what you would be thankful for if you were to list it out.  So here is my attempt at giving thanks on this Thanksgiving. Modern Medicine: This was a rough year for my family watching my Mom go through her bout of lymphoma.  Fortunately, we received the news in mid-August that the chemo had worked and Mom's PET scan was clear.  She still isn't up to her fighting weight so to speak but she is recovering and for that I am very thankful. Modern Technology: I hate living so far away from my family but technology helps cut that distance down.  Facetime allows me to call  my folks so they can watch Jackson grow and YouTube allows me to post videos so they can see all the fun things he does. My Job: Work often frustrates me and aggreviates me but I real

Apparently I forgot I had a blog or something which would explain my month long absence from my little spot on the internet. However, that is not the case and I just simply haven't had time to write nor much to write about. So I am cheating and using this list of questions I found in my Google Docs (or Drive as they now call it) to give me a kick in the pants to start writing again. After all, the holidays are upon us which always makes for good material. 1. Two TV Shows You Watch Every Week? Only 2? Um...OK, let's see which 2 should I select. How about 2 Broke Girls and How I Met Your Mother? Or would you prefer me to list Hart of Dixie or Grey's Anatomy or Revolution. I could continue. We watch too much TV. 2. Top Three Places On Your Must Visit List? Is it bad that the 3 places on my list are all places I have been before but love so much I want to go back? That being said my 3 places are New York City, Hawaii, and Disney World. 3. Current Favorite Decorat

Several of my blogging friends post regularly reviews of the books they have read recently.  I wish I could do the same thing but that would be a very short list.  I set a goal for myself at the beginning of the year to read 24 books this year.  I thought this would be an easy goal to accomplish because it was only 2 books a month.  So far, I have read 6 books this year and only because I read 2 books in that glorious 36 hours I was sans baby last month.  Rather than reading 2 books a month, it has been more like a book every 2 months. Now I love to read but I have a hard time reading more than one book at a time, mostly because I get so absorbed in a book that I don't want to put it down.  I actually had a boyfriend in college get mad at me because we were on a trip and I wouldn't stop reading and pay attention to him.  He wasn't a reader so he didn't understand getting completely lost in the world of a book.  I am thrilled that Chris shares my love for reading beca

I don't travel a lot.  That is something that I dislike about my life.  I really want to have the money and time to travel more but that's not going to happen any time soon.  Most of the traveling I do is to go home for one reason or another (holidays, birthdays, etc...)  I see my friends taking trips all the time and really wonder how they do it but then they don't have to work around crazy work schedules like we do.  Chris and I have a list of places we would like to go and trips we would like to take but those are just daydreaming for us right now. However, it seems like I have been traveling a lot (well at least for me) recently.  My mom got me a ticket to join my brother at the House that Jerry built in Dallas to watch Alabama and Michigan battle it out in the season opener Cowboys Classic.  So I loaded up Jackson and headed North with Clay, Jenny, and Blake to see the game.  Jenny stayed at the hotel with the boys while we headed to the stadium.  We had standing roo

I am on Twitter.  I blog. I have a Facebook page.  I live in a world of social media.  So it isn't surprising that I spend my share of time on Pinterest.  I'm not on it every day but I hop on at least once a week and pin ideas for recipes, cleaning tips, activities to do with Jackson, and anything else that tickles my fancy.  Chris just laughs at me when I start a sentence with, "I saw something on Pinterest the other day..."  However, he has been surprised at how well some of the ideas I have come up with from pins I have seen have worked.  There was cleaning the microwave by heating a bowl of vinegar in there.  There were the table decorations for Jackson's birthday party.  Now I am toying around with an idea on how to tackle Christmas presents for the boys and not kill our budget in the process. However, Pinterest has made me realize just how uncrafty I really am.  I see all these neat things on there that I would love to do and all I can think is that the pe

Jackson is working on his molars right now and I swear those things are going to be the death of us.  Teething has turned my happy baby into a fussy, clingy mess.  And I'm secretly happy for it.  You see, even though it was exhausting at times, I got my snuggly baby back at least for this weekend.  Now that Jackson is a toddler, he no longer wants to snuggle with me.  Bedtime consists of a sippy cup of milk and then straight to bed where he will either go right to sleep or fuss until he falls asleep.  I try to snuggle a bit and get him to settle down but he has no interest in it and squirms until I put him down or take him to his room.  Sunday morning Jackson fell asleep in my lap and I didn't want to move because I already miss all the times that he fell asleep on me and I just loved holding him.  I look at him now and I see him growing up so fast right before my eyes.  He isn't my tiny baby anymore.  He is curious and into everything.  He's a bit of a dare devil but h

A couple of months ago (before his birthday), I received an email of baby tips for my toddler and I refused to believe that Jackson could be considered a toddler at that point. He wasn't walking yet. He wasn't a year old yet. In my mind, Jackson was still very much a baby. Chris disagreed with me. I even went to Twitter with the question of how to determine if my baby was in fact a toddler. Most agreed that I was OK to still consider him a baby. (He will always be my baby.) Well, that is all changed since my two criteria for defining a toddler have now been met. I first started getting reports of steps from daycare about 2 weeks ago. Then I saw 4 steps myself that Saturday morning as J shuffled toward me. He would have gone further but Maverick created a roadblock by laying on the floor in front of the couch where I was sitting. Since then, we have seen a few tentative steps here and there. Not enough to call him a full on walker yet but we know we are just on t

I am in a rut, a wardrobe rut. Every morning I throw on a pair of jeans, a shirt of some sort, shoes that somewhat match, and I head out the door. That is my uniform and there is very little variation to it. My office is casual so this attire is perfectly acceptable there. However, dressing this way makes me feel unprofessional. I also think it makes me appear younger and less experienced than I am which sometimes causes people not to take me seriously.(I once had a co-worker tell me he thought I was 22 which is why he was shocked I had a master's degree. I was 32 at the time.) So I am trying to figure out a way to get out of my rut. I think that requires a history of my wardrobe post college. My early career (1 year post graduation...we will skip the 2 jobs before this) landed me doing bookkeeping work at a local CPA firm in Mobile. I worked there 4 years before leaving to finish my degree and move to Texas. It should come as no surprise that a CPA firm had a pretty f

At 8:10 AM on July 20th, I tweeted, "Y'all, my baby is one today.  I cannot even process this thought!"  Later Chris pointed out that Jackson wasn't officially 1 until 10:33 that evening but still.  Jackson is 1!  He is a toddler, not a baby.  He is standing on his own and trying to walk.  So of course we had to celebrate this occasion, not once but twice.  We were in Alabama on Jackson's actual birthday so we had a party there with some of my family and our close friends. (Remind me to never again plan an out of town birthday party, particularly one that involves assistance from my mom and aunt.) My great aunt and uncle with my mom and me Jackson with our neighbor Jackson and my dad Jackson with my brother and nephew The smash cake with Larry and Bob candle The decorated high chair Jackson really just wanted the candle He wasn't so sure about the icing or the cake  The weekend after Jackson's birthday we

We spent the week of Jackson's birthday in Mobile with my parents.  I wanted to make sure they got to share J's birthday with him and, since my mom really can't go anywhere right now, we decided to bring the party to them.  As with every trip home, a certain amount of nostalgia comes into play.  I miss home.  A part of me will always reside there.  But I'm not sure I want to live there anymore. Chris and I seriously discussed moving while we were there this time.  I think I feel the need to be home more so now that I have Jackson and I want him to be close to my roots and because of my mom's condition.  I struggle with this because I want to be there but my life is in Austin now.  We would have to start over on everything if we moved back to Mobile.  We would both have to find jobs and a place to live.  We would need a vet and a doctor and schools for the kids.  And we would need to find friends.  I am still in touch with some of the people I hung out with when I

I turned 35 on the 11th. That in and of itself may not seem like a big deal. However, 35 has always been a cut off for me. A line in the sand if you will that said my childbearing days were through. My mom had me 2 before she turned 36 and had her tubes tied during the c-section. I'm pretty sure that's where my magic number came from. 35 and it's time to stop. Chris and I talked about children a lot when we were dating. At first, we were both on the fence. He wasn't sure he wanted more kids and I wasn't sure I wanted any at all. I told him I would know if I was supposed to be a mother if I had a baby before I turned 35. If I wasn't pregnant by then, I wasn't supposed to have kids of my own. Jackson was born 9 days after I turned 34. All while I was pregnant, we talked about the next baby. I enjoyed being pregnant for the most part so the idea of having another baby wasn't a crazy one. But then the delivery was so rough that I wasn't sure I wante

Today is my birthday.  It is also Free Slurpee day.  I joked with Chris that I expected him to deliver a Slurpee to my office since it was my birthday and Free Slurpee day.  And since it's my birthday, I should get what I want, right? He did not agree.  Of course I know the reason why and that's because we tried to get a free Slurpee on my birthday last year.  I'm surprised I haven't told this story on here before.  I even went back to my archives to check so I didn't repeat myself but I guess I was so wrapped up in being pregnant that all other stories went out the window.  So here it goes. This time last year I was 9 months pregnant, 15 days away from my due date, in the middle of the hottest summer ever in Austin, Texas.  I had not yet diagnosed pre-eclampsia. I was basically miserable.  I told Chris that all I wanted for my birthday was tickets to see the final Harry Potter movie and a free Slurpee on my birthday.  So he picked me up from work that afternoon s

Jackson turns one in 16 days.  I have been in the throws of party planning for a couple of months now.  I rted down one path with the party theme but changed my mind about half way through after seeing how Jackson reacted to the characters on Veggie Tales.  So instead of "The New Sheriff in Town" theme I started out with, we are going for a Veggie Tales theme.  I got lucky because I found a lot of the decorations on the Veggie Tales website and they were on sale at the time.  But I have been struggling with coming up with the perfect cake.  My internet searches uncovered a lot of ugly Veggie Tales cakes.  You would be surprised how bad people can make a cucumber and a tomato look.  And then I found it!  Wilton makes a Larry and Bob cake pan that comes with instructions on how to decorate it.  Perfect! Or so you would think.  The pan is discontinued.  So I started a quest to find this cake pan.  I found it on eBay right of the bat but the person started the bidding at $40 wi

Something happened today that I haven't experienced before: a tearful daycare drop off. Even from his tiny days, Jackson has easily gone to his teacher in the mornings without so much as a whimper. This was so reassuring to me as I struggled with having to put my baby in daycare even though I knew I had no choice but to be a working mom. But things have changed and now we are dealing with separation anxiety full force at the worst possible time. See, my company decided to try a 4/10 schedule for the summer to allow the employees to have more time with their families. So on top of my 45 minute commute, I am working 10 hour days. The schedule change hasn't been terrible but it means I get home about 30 minutes before Jackson is ready to go to sleep. On the days Chris takes him to daycare, that little time at night is the only time he sees me. I'm not quite sure how that equates to more time with my family. So Jackson misses me. That is both a good and bad thing. Good bec

I feel like my last post was a little gripe-y so I wanted to share some pictures from San Antonio.  Despite the heat, we had an enjoyable time.  It was nice to get away for a few days and spend some time as a family. I was so excited to stop at the Buc-ee's in New Braunfels.  I have had a long love for Buc-ee's despite never actually having been to one.  I completely geeked out in the parking lot and was totally amazed with the place. We will definitely be back. Jackson and me with Buc-ee the Beaver (not a chipmunk).  The sun was really bright where we were standing. And, yes, the gas was $3.09 on Friday and $3.05 on Sunday. Crazy!   Jackson and me on the Riverboat Cruise.  We could not get this kid to look at the camera all weekend.    A tired little boy up past his bedtime having dinner at The Rainforest Cafe.   Our hotel was across the street from the Alamo so of course we were there when it opened on Saturday morning.  Even at 9AM it was still in the 90s

We don't travel a lot.  The last time we took a trip that didn't involve visiting my family in Alabama was our trip to Gatlinburg to get married 2 years ago.  Chris's work schedule makes it difficult to take vacations despite having a ton of time off and I'm still recovering from taking time off last year to have a baby.  So we fit in trips when we have the time off without having to take it.  With my company implementing 4 10 hour days for the summer, we decided to take advantage of my 3 day weekends and get out of town for a few days.  Next time I think that is a great idea, someone smack me. Not that we didn't enjoy our time away but I wouldn't say it was the fun relaxing weekend we had been hoping for.  We decided to go to San Antonio for the weekend since it's an easy hour and a half drive from here.  I booked the room in April since I was able to get a great deal on a place right in the heart of downtown.  We were set to go.  The closer it came time

Since birth, Jackson has been a healthy eater.  I have never had problems getting him to take a bottle and he hasn't turned down most of the purees we have tried to feed him.  On the eating front, he has done really well until recently.  He is still eating well as long as we are feeding him the level 2 foods or the basic level 3s.  But if we try to introduce something new, we are meeting with a lot of resistance and issues.  I know a child has to be introduced to a new food numerous times before the accept it but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to proceed from here. We have reached the point where we need to work on the transition from baby food to table food.  And this is where I am struggling.  I just can't seem to figure out how to make finger foods work.  I don't know what to give him and what little we have tried, has not gone well.  We have been giving him the baby puffs to some success but I know we can't make full meals off of puffs.  We have also

I figured a fitting follow up to my post on grocery shopping would to discuss how I handle menu planning.  I must say this is something I have had a hard time figuring out.  I don't think I ever planned a menu during the entirety of my first marriage.  I would just go to the store and buy things that could make up a meal with no real idea what I was going to make.  And then I would discover that I didn't have all the stuff I needed to make whatever meal I decided on so I would either run to the store again or scrap the meal all together. Honestly, I have only really heard about menu planning in the last couple of years because several of the bloggers I follow post their menu plans on their blogs.  Seeing these posts got me thinking.  So I decided to try my hand at menu planning.  I don't remember when I started exactly.  Some time before Jackson was born I think.  But I didn't really start being diligent about it till I went back to work from maternity leave.  We nee

When I got divorced 4 1/2 years ago, I was living in Killeen near Fort Hood because that was where my ex had been stationed for the previous 2 years.  I had a house and a job and I could have stayed there if I wanted to.  However, I knew it wasn't the place for me and I began my search to relocate.  A lot of people were surprised that I didn't just pack my bags and head back to Alabama.  Instead, I viewed this as an opportunity to explore a little bit.  I was a 30 year single professional with no commitments to tie me to any one place.  I could spread my wings and fly so to speak.  So I started seeking job opportunities in places I thought it would be fun to live: New York City, Orlando, Dallas, Austin.  I could go anywhere and do anything and I was looking forward to starting a new chapter in my life. One of the first jobs I applied for was in Austin and was very similar to the job I was working in Killeen.  I figured I could at least leverage the position as a pay increase

Yes, I'm writing a post about grocery shopping.  I've become one of *those* bloggers.  Sorry.  No, I am not going to tell you the right way to do it. I'm just going to talk about how I've been handling it recently and gripe about my frustrations with it. When I moved into my house, I quickly realized that there were 5 grocery options within a 5 mile radius of my house: 2 HEBs, 1 HEB Plus, 1 Randall's, and a Super Walmart.  Shortly thereafter, a Super Target (not included in that original count of 5) opened up within a reasonable distance.  Why someone needs that many options so close together, I will never know.  But that's what I have to work with.  I will say right that I never go to the 2 regular HEBs or the Super Walmart because they just aren't convenient.  Plus I have a strong dislike for grocery shopping at Walmart.  I have found that they have a heavy stock of one type of product but no variety to brands.  So I am going to focus on the 3 stores I t

I have been asked by a couple of different people recently for suggestions on baby registries so I decided I would share some of my favorite products for those who are expecting and might want to know. Ultimate Crib Sheet - A friend suggested this to me when I was pregnant otherwise I never would have tried one and boy am I glad I did.  Having this has made changing Jackson's bed so much easier than having to remove the crib sheet and the mattress pad if we have an accident. Sleep Sacks - I know most babies like to be swaddled at the early stage but mine did not.  Almost as soon as we came home from the hospital, he wanted his arms free and, luckily, he would sleep that way.  The sleep sacks have been a lifesaver for us when a blanket just wouldn't work anymore since Jackson moved around to much.  I have bought most of the ones we have from Zulily when they have offered them at a discount rate.  The shipping takes forever but the price is usually pretty good. Space Sav

Jackson turned 9 months old on Friday.  We also had his 9 month checkup that afternoon.  I now understand why everyone kept commenting on how big he was while we were in Alabama.  Little stinker weighed in at 21 lbs 5 oz (78 percentile) and 28 3/4 inches tall (68 percentile).  I guess he is on the big side although he doesn't seem that way to me since I have seen the natural progression of his growth.  I was pretty shocked at how many people said something about him being "a big boy." Someone actually said they thought he was at least a year old. The last month has brought about a lot of change around our house.  Jackson has mastered both the belly on the floor and belly off the floor crawling.  He prefers belly on the floor because he can move faster and this is his method of traveling when he is trying to run away from us.  The living room has turned into a sort of baby playpen. We block off the hall way with one of the dog gates and use the ottoman to prevent exit i