Tonight was bath night.  I ignored the massive amount of splashing happening in the bathtub to claim a little moment for myself – to read the monitor in Entertainment Weekly, you know, which celebrity married who, which ones had a kid etc.  when I hear Jude start calling, “Dow?  Dow? (Translated: towel).”  And I grudgingly rolled off the bed to go assist the little prince out of the tub and into his jams.

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Jude has a little ceremony while I diaper and dress him: he kicks the living hell out of my stomach and chest.  I tell him, “That hurts Mommy, Jude.”  He laughs and thinks it is so funny, even when I start to cry. Tonight my approach was to tickle him into complacency, and when that didn’t work, I tried speaking in soothing tones, telling him about the day he was born, how we felt when he was brought to us the first time, how we all cried, and kissed him and held him tight.  I told him all about how I carried him inside of me for nine months and how small he was – just 8 pounds then as compared to his hearty 36 pounds today, just a fourth of what he weighs now!  I think that perhaps I was trying to keep myself calm as Jude continued to laugh and pummel me with his feet.  I cried again, as I left the room in defeat, job done, Boy dressed, so frustrated that I wanted to scream.

Moments later Bradley stormed from the room, frustrated because Jude managed to press enough buttons on the computer to lock it down and freeze it up.  He had to turn it off and reboot it, not a big deal, but still, so annoying!  We both stormed around the kitchen, cleaning out the dishwasher, needing some kind of activity that would release the tension we were feeling on something besides Jude.  Lucky that some of our glasses are plastic…

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Then I got on my laptop and started thinking about how I needed to post something.  I started looking through my photos for inspiration, and found this little cheeseball.  Yeah, he is crazy and SO FRUSTRATING at times, but he is also so cute, so funny, and such a little ham.  You just have to laugh sometimes and realize that this is temporary and someday we’ll be wishing for our little troublemaker back again…  I think.


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