christmas recap

with henry in the picture, christmas felt kind of weird this year. henry was basically our christmas present, so it felt like christmas had already come. when the hospital brought henry to the recovery room after he'd been all cleaned up and everything, they delivered him in a stocking :) i thought it was adorable:


we went over to emily and dave's house for christmas eve. they made a delicious christmas feast and we had a great time. a girl from our church gave us a christmas outfit for henry as a present, so he wore it that night (until he peed through it and pee went streaming down my boot...). he was adorable, and the feet had little reindeer on them. [pic via emily]


when christmas rolled around, josh and i opened our presents and stockings. the most entertaining present was in jay-z's stocking: a catnip ball toy. he went crazy with it, and it was so fun. we should have taken a video! in this picture you can see it tucked in his paws:

in the afternoon we went over to sarah's house and gave the kids their presents. one of the gifts we got for them was the angry birds game (like the app, but they can set it up in real life). they had a pretty fun time with it. griffin kept calling it the "birdy game".


josh's parents took a picture with all of the grandkids, and then each of sarah's kids got a picture while holding henry (seen here). here are all six grandkids with mimi and bear!

we took a picture of henry with his cousin cameron (who is about 3.5 months old). it's funny because i always used to think cameron was SO tiny. after having henry, cam looks like a giant!! here is a comparison picture of the little cousins :)


this was henry's other christmas outfit, which he was able to wear for all the family pictures, and then we had to change him because he peed through it. he likes to ruin cute outfits/photo-ops by peeing all over them. at least we got some pictures of him in it on christmas (see last blog post too).

christmas ended up being fun and laid back, which worked for us. hope you all had a fabulous holiday! ♥

what else?

henry photo dump. sorry for anyone who is getting tired of seeing my adorable baby. maybe someday soon when i get my normal brain back i will branch out to some other topics on the blog ;) haha. speaking of losing my mind...we do have some funny incidents that have happened since we got home from the hospital...

example 1:
josh came to wake me up one morning and i started searching around the bed for something. he asked "what are you doing!?" and i replied "looking for the button to lift up the bed..." he stared for a second and then said "jess...you're at home in your own bed!" haha. i woke up thinking i was in the hospital still...yikes!

example 2:
the other day i was plugging my cell phone charger in, and it was dark, and i was having troubles. josh was already asleep in bed and just goes "shhhhhhhhhh" in that certain way you do to fussing babies hahaha. it made me laugh pretty hard.

example 3:
this morning henry was crying so i got up. my mom was holding him and couldnt find the pacifier, and then felt it rolled up in the blanket. i had to go to the bathroom so i told her i'd be right back. when i came back it was josh holding henry, and i asked "where were you when my mom was up here?" he was super confused and asked what in the world i was talking about. umm...turns out i went temporarily insane and my mom was never there. it was josh the whole time.

ok, enough with embarrassing hallucinogenic stories. here are the pics!

all my boys!

all swaddled up

trying out his new quilt from my mom

snuggled up with nana (his great-grandma, who visited yesterday)

fashionable. h&m should basically hire him to be a model!

so true (thank you brittany!)

i wish this picture wasnt blurry but i was trying to move fast to capture the moment.
jay-z has actually been sweeter than ever since henry came home. what a good big brother!

4 generations ♥
we're all the oldest children of the previous generation too. pretty cool.

today henry is a week old!! so nuts! i still havent fully come to accept that i am now a mother, but im sure it will continue to slowly sink in :) ok, time to sneak in some sleep!!

34 weeks

yesterday i hit 34 weeks. i'm almost a mother...WHAT!? **my head just exploded**

nothing super new or different has been going on. henry moves around all the time like a little gymnast, so that should be fun to see how he acts when he gets into the real world... haha. we'll have a little hellion on our hands! last night we went to dinner, saw a movie, and then hung out at our friends house. this was a time frame of about 6-7 hours, and he was moving the entire time. he must have really tuckered himself out, because it was literally constant movement.

i still can't eat a ton of food (booo), but food loves of the week have included blue gatorade, beef jerky, five guys bacon burgers, and wendys homestyle chicken go wraps. yummm. i wish there was a wendys by our house because i would be hitting it up right about now!! and yes, i'm really looking and feeling like a whale these days. sometimes i have to ask josh for help getting out of bed in the mornings. just picture me laying there saying "save the whales! help me up! i'm beached!"


this week i was talking to my mom on the phone one night and jay-z came and snuggled up next to me (usually he is in love with josh so its semi-rare that he will cuddle with me when we're both sitting on the couch). i'm pretty sure he knows all about henry (or he's completely oblivious) because he was laying allllll over him. he was basically just canoodling my baby bump. and it was adorable.

photographic evidence.
[ignore the thunder thigh look, thats an optical illusion!]

i'm getting really excited for christmas decorating (i know, i dont know whats wrong with me either!) so i'm sure that will happen this week and i'll have to post pictures to show off how fabulous our house will look. ok, that was a joke ...sort of ;)

30 weeks!?

yesterday marked 30 weeks...what!?! CRAZINESS! 10 weeks or less left!! hopefully only like 8 weeks left...but we shall see :) it feels pretty cool that i'm in the final stretch, and that in a couple months there will be an actual baby here! ahhh! i've still been feeling pretty good (although if anyone has any miracle cures for reflux please let me know! haha), and trying to sneak in lots of naps after work and on weekends. i don't look so awesome in this picture but it had been a long day (and work was involved. ew):


of course, jay-z still thinks he's the only baby around these parts. this is one of his favorite spots to relax:
we keep telling him he's going to be a big brother but i'm not so sure he understands the full implications of that statement... somehow we just need to train him to be able to feed the baby in the middle of the night and then we'll be all set ;)

catnip crazy

on saturday our friend sarah brought over some catnip for jay-z. i've never seen a cat with actual catnip, just weak little catnip toys. josh said the same thing. i remember one of my old bosses said she used to just put down a little handful of it and let her cats go crazy for a little bit, and then sweep it up. so we decided to see what happened if we put a little pile on the floor. jay-z went a little crazy. i wish i had recorded more of him reacting, because it was so funny/out of character. take a look:

jay-z goes catnip crazy from yourstrulydear on Vimeo.

thanks for the entertainment sarah :)

roll tide!

mok and pok (our grandparents on josh's side) sent us some adorable alabama gear for henry. in case you didn't know, we cheer for alabama in this house. well, josh cheers for them, and i throw out a "roll tide!" every once in a while (because you know my extreme love of sports...).

because henry isn't here yet, and because josh decided to see how this hat would fit on jay-z, he will be modeling this crimson tide beanie:


adorable, right? i can't wait til we can dress henry up in all his alabama gear! its just so cute :) thank you mok and pok! we love you ♥

hobbles the cat

so anyone who's been around jay-z, or pays attention to my random musings about him, probably knows that he limps a lot. i brought him to the vet once about it, and he told me not to worry because jay-z probably bruised his leg while doing some acrobatics. well poor little hobbles has been getting more and more limp-y, and less agile, so i finally brought him to the vet the other day (a new one, not the same one who said not to worry about it!).

how can you not love this adorable face?

i snapped this picture because it was such an odd place for him to perch

one of kitty's new favorite places: the glider in the nursery.

he loves it (don't tell him its not for him!)

after doing some x-rays the vet found that jay-z's knee had some arthritis, and his fibia isn't attached (the vet said that could be a birth defect), and one of his growth plates isn't fully attached (again, probably some sort of defect). he only x-rayed one leg, but he assumed the rest looked about the same. the vet perscribed some special (aka expensive) food made for joints, which should help jay-z get feeling better after about a month. yayyy! i'm sorry i didn't take poor mister hobbles in sooner, but i'm glad that he's going to be on the mend now. if you come over to our house sometime, just give him an extra little love pat :)

attention hog...

jay-z was getting a little jealous of all the attention henry has been getting around these parts. so i needed to spice it up with a cute little cat picture. its been a while...

now if you'll excuse me, i'm taking my nieces to get feather extensions!

meow meow meow meow

thanks everyone for your nice words about jay-z. [[while i was joking in my little ps, i was mostly trying to get across that i know i'm more obsessed with my own cat than anyone else is...etc...word vomit*]] i am happy to report he is totally back to normal. i'm thinking josh may have slept on top of kitty and squished his leg somehow, but who knows... orrr jay-z really does have some sort of arthritis (?) and it was acting up. i'm not sure. poor thing :/

anyways, to all my fellow cat lovers [and/or human lovers]: CaPow over at windshield diaries posted a sad story about her cat that just happened (involving an emergency vet visit...) and the bills were crazy. i know all too well about medical bills, and these ones were for her poor suffering cat! and if you read the story, you know i'm not exaggerating about the suffering part :(
i just wanted to tell you how you can help a sista [and kitty] out. you can either donate via paypal, or purchase something from her amazing etsy shop. i bought myself a maine print. please at least go check it out, and send good thoughts to little miyagi ♥

hopefully [if i have time] i will post something tomorrow... either involving something my cousin wrote, or a package i have received. we shall see....i like this whole being mysterious thing... ;)


*word vomit = when words just come out of your mouth... you may not have really thought them through... sometimes there can be negative and/or embarrassing consequences (like telling one of your bff's mothers that diet coke can give you cancer, when its clearly her favorite drink. definitely in my top 3 word vomit horror stories...)

kitty love

i took this picture a few weeks ago with my phone when jay-z was cuddling with me in bed. there are a lot cuter pictures of when he was actually sleeping (and had his paws over his face!), but i was going through my phone and thought this one was really funny. not only can you see my pasty white arm looking larger than life, but kitty has such a funny face!


yesterday jay-z's paw was really hurting him. he limps around a lot, but he switches up which foot its on, and he never meowed when we would touch the leg to see if it was hurting him. so basically we just figured that he was doing it for attention haha. but yesterday he was doing little meow cries, especially if you touched his leg, and it was really sad. of course it had to happen on a sunday when theres only emergency vet places open and you have to pay at least 30% more than usual to go to. so we held off and checked it today. this morning he was doing a lot better, but still meowing and kind of limping. but by the time we got home from work he was totally fine. he was putting pressure on the leg and wouldn't meow if you felt his leg. hallelujah! i guess the poor guy just had a rough day yesterday :(

i'm just glad he's feeling better, and that he is so freaking adorable i just want to cuddle him all the time. ♥

ps: i know [next to] none of you really care about the health of my cat, but i felt like sharing the information. sorry if you read through that long paragraph and you felt like you were wasting moments of your life away. maybe to express these feelings you could channel them and throw red paint on fur and participate in rebel activities such as that. i feel like thats a good idea. carry on!

kitty montage

yesterday i sat in bed reading and relaxing, and my little cuddle bug came and found me. he was adorable, and it made reading that much more enjoyable :)

then...it was torture time. for the record it wasn't my idea, but i ended up helping. about once or twice a year we give jay-z a bath. we have this lavender mint animal shampoo that makes him all fluffy and [apparently] smell really good. we used the kitchen sink since it has one of those sprayer things, which made it go more smoothly than when we gave him baths at our apartment, when it was just under the faucet.


this is poor little kitty afterwards. he wasnt too happy with us. i blowdried him off a bit so he would stop shivering.

and then he sat in the corner and got to business. poor little kitty!

last night we went to dinner at costa vida and then went and saw bridesmaids again. it really is hilarious. we'll do a movie review soon... speaking of reviews, and cats, i finally did the review for african cats on we review last week.

are you guys doing anything fun for the long weekend?

in tune with the wild

last night we went and saw african cats with our friends emily and dave. it was a fun night, and a decent movie [review coming soon to we review]. i liked seeing all the animals, especially the baby animals!

of course, theres always that time when the momma has to teach her cubs to grow up, and then let them be on their way (well, for most animals. lions are different and all stay together and stuff). josh and i learned a valuable lesson in this movie...

when we got home and little jay-z was all excited to see us, and was hungry, we promptly told him: "kitty, it's time for you to start hunting for your own food." and then ditched him.


...juuuuuust kidding! how could we ditch this cute little monster? however, we did tell him he needs to be more like a lion and show us more love and affection. like lots of nuzzling and more cuddling. i dont think he really picked up on it though...

so rude... maybe we should make him cross a river full of crocodiles so he can appreciate us more? haha. have you guys seen this movie yet? or any of the earth day movies?

happy easter

josh took some pictures of me after church today. i'm wearing my "easter dress". this dress started out as my graduating-from-high-school dress, so it's been around for a while. and i still love it, and thankfully i still fit into it!

[dont judge this picture. there werent any really good ones that showed the whole outfit...]
cardigan: nordstrom. dress: boutique in maine. belt: thrifted. tights: from a friend. shoes: payless.

sometimes we call kitty "bunny" because he sits like a bunny (which we refer to as "bunny pose"). so this morning i brought kitty downstairs and said, "look juji, i have a present for you! its the easter bunny!"

then josh left us so i took a picture of me with the easter bunny. true love ♥

now we're off to have dinner with josh's family. what have you been doing for easter?

fake blogging

confession: i'm starting to get kind of bored with this 30 day challenge thing. i'm sorry if you can tell by reading them. i mean, i obviously think i am amazing, so doing posts that are 100% about me is super satisfying, but sometimes the topic is just like meh. or i'm too lazy. or i just want to post a funny cat picture. [but then i come off as the crazy cat lady... altho i think that cats already out of the bag... BAHAHA get it?]. so...good thing the challenge is almost over, and most of the remaining days seem fun.

HOWEVER, i will be skipping day 22, since i already talked about my favorite food. pizza, duh.

i should probably skip day 23 too, since i am awesome at everything...

which really just leaves me to post a picture of my cat...

this is from last night, he was waiting for me to come to bed. cuuuute!

ps: i really dont think i'm that awesome, but i actually am skipping 22, and tomorrow i'll get it together enough to post day 23 haha. forgive me?

pps: i am seriously considering doing some sort of blog/tumblr that is just about jay-z. yes, i have gone cuckoo. it's ok, just embrace it. thanks.

day 8: bahhhahahaha

DAY 08: A PICTURE THAT MAKES YOU LAUGH

i dont think this picture needs that much explanation. everytime i look at it i laugh. hope you enjoy :)

day 7: my snowshoe

DAY 07: A PICTURE OF YOUR MOST TREASURED ITEM

ladies and gentlemen, meet Jay-Z. we adopted him from Pet Smart almost 3 years ago. he is a snowshoe cat, which is a "rare breed" coming from siamese cats. we didn't even know he was a snowshoe until one day a comcast technician told me (he was really into cats, and knew immediately. i was like whaaa? haha). the name is because their paws are white, like they stepped in snow. isnt that cute? snowshoes are very loyal and love their owners, and we read somewhere that they typically attach themselves to one owner in particular. Jay-Z is DEFINITELY attached to josh, although he loves me too (duh). i blame kitty's homosexuality...

anyways, Jay-Z is definitely my most treasured "item," if you want to call him that. he's my sweet baby, and has officially turned me into the crazy cat lady. ♥

cheer up charlie

when days are NO FUN AT ALL and make you want to rip your hair out... that's when you need to remember the good things that have happened recently, like...

♥ dinner last night with friends.

i totally stole these pictures from emily's blog (shh! haha). there's a group one too, but we all look ridiculous hahaha. you can head over there if you're dying to see it...

♥ having jay-z be absolutely adorable since he's still so happy to be home with us


♥ still having jobs despite the rock chip and a speeding ticket we got today (josh's first EVER)... filling out 2 incident reports at work isn't the best way to start a morning...

on that note, cheers to tomorrow! hopefully its better than today...

home sweet home

here's kitty on the drive home! drugged up again (poor guy), but he found his little spot on the suitcases in the back. can you spot him? it's a shoddy phone picture, sorry. haha


sooooo, we are HOME! after being away for a MONTH we are finally home! and it's glorious. we got home last night after a long drive back from arizona. for all of you who didn't watch my vlog, we were in arizona for a month starting our jobs down there. while the weather and close proximity to my parents was delightful, it is rough to be away from your home and living out of a suitcase for a month straight. especially since we only thought it would be for 2-3 weeks. then it turned out to be 4. phew! but anyways, we are liking the new jobs and we are extremely grateful that we have them.

the drive home was exhausting, but we made it. i got a rock chip in our BRAND NEW work truck within the first weekend we got it... awesome... it was literally a brand new truck, only 50 miles on it when they first gave it to us. and BAM, rock chip. you should have seen me, i was just yelling "ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! YOU STUPID VAN!!!!!!! YOU THINK YOU CAN PASS ME AND THEN GIVE ME A ROCK CHIP!?!?!?!" so yeah...that was just fabulous.

theeennnn, when we got home both of my plants were yellow-ish (i didnt even think about getting someone to water them! durr...) and.... our toilet had some issues. you would flush it and it was like niagra falls. the thing between the tank and the bottom part was busted. thankfully my dad had driven back with us so he was able to fix it for us. he also fixed our shower handle. basically he is super dad. love you dad!

jay-z is happy to be home too. he's totally back in his element and absolutely adorable. see for yourself (also, shoddy phone pic. my new phone is awesome, all except for the camera. oh well!)

we are glad to be home, and hopefully now that we're back in our element i'll get back in the blogging groove! also, josh's aunt sent us a Flip (those recorder things), which is awesome, so you might be seeing some more videos in the future :) muahahaha. i hope you all had a great weekend! ♥

sweet reunion

wow guys...it's been like...forever! ahhhhhhhhhhhh. did you miss me as much as this little guy did?

yes, now my butt has officially been plastered on the internet.
but there's a cute cat involved, so it's ok, right?

so just to kind of update all of you, we have been in arizona. we spent christmas with my family (my parents are down here, and my grandma is staying with them), and it was so much fun! I love spending holidays with my family ♥ since the monday after christmas, we've been training for our new jobs, which is code for being thrown right into the thick of things. honestly though, that can be the best way to learn stuff so it's all good with us. our company has been so nice to us, we still feel like we're in some kind of dreamland and we'll wake up at any moment!

we went back to my parents' house and spent the weekend with them, and got to see our little kitty! he's been staying at their house while we worked away for the week so he can be looked after and still get attention when we're gone. my parents have dogs, so it's been quite the little experiment. when we left a week ago he wouldn't even go out of our room. when we came back he was even venturing out into the living room with the dogs right there! he's still really on edge, but he's progressed a lot during the week. this gives us hope that someday we can get a dog!

josh totally has retracto head in this picture, so just ignore that.
he was smothering the cat on the bed right after we got back.

well i need to go to sleep so i can wake up tomorrow, but i will try my hardest to be better at blogging this week! everytime i was like *i need to blog!* something would happen, like going to eat food, staying late at work, being so exhausted it was all i could do to wash my face before falling into bed, etc. so if you're actually reading this and you haven't totally forgot about me, thank you. i love you too. ♥ haha ;)

sedated...

we had to go on a road trip, and usually we leave jay-z at home and have friends come over to feed him and clean up his doodoo. this time we thought it would be best for our situation to bring jay-z with us. as you know, i got his shots updated and i also got some sedatives while at the vet. he doesn't exactly do very well in cars, which we know from our short experiences w/car rides in the past.

so the big day came, and we drugged up the cat and got ready to go. at first he was not doing so well, but he finally got used to it and calmed down enough to act semi-normal. he found a little nook in the back, between the seat backs and the suitcases and nestled down in there. so he would go back there for his cat naps, he'd come sit on our laps, and he'd lay in his kitty palace.


yeah, his eyes are kind of glassy. don't judge us, it needed to be done...

anyways, i'll update more later, i just wanted to share these adorable pictures. because i'm a crazy cat lady and i like sharing it with the world ♥