Birdies

One of the things we like about our new place is all of the enormous oak trees surrounding it. And the trees bring a large variety of birds -- a whole lot more than we ever got on Lowell St., which were mostly sparrows hanging out in our neighbor's bamboo. Sparrows = boring.

Here are a few that I saw just this morning over the span of an hour:

Rose-breasted Gross Beak
(There was a pack of them on the feeder - six at once!)

Cardinal and Rose Breasted Gross Beak hangin' out

Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker or a Red Bellied Woodpecker
(Too blurry to tell. Jan and Dad?)

After awhile this little dude planted himself on the feeder. A Baltimore Oriole. I was fumbling around for the camera like my life depended on it, because I knew Jono would flip out (he is the true bird watcher in this family).

And then there was this guy. Puh-leeeaaase. Move along.


Here are some that Jono has taken the past few days:

Tufted Tit Mouse
(Ha ha...best bird name ever. I make Jono repeat it more than once every time.)

Red Bellied Wood Pecker

I'm typically into watching fuzzier, fatter animals (like maybe groundhogs), but I think I could get into this birdwatching stuff too. Thanks to those Kloosters. But one thing I'll never do is drink my coffee black, so just forget about it.

;)

Spring II

I'm posting even more pics of Ty's visit because they turned out so dang lovely.

We went out to the lake for sunset one night, then went home and ate chocolate cake to celebrate both of our birthdays (tyler: march 31; me: april 11). I spent the next day hanging out with my parents in Holland.

(Yes Grandpa K, there are shots of Jude in there too :)

You

Someone told me something about you. They told me you want to see Jude. They said you're feeling picky today, because you don't just want to see Jude. You want to see Jude in a HAT. I get it.

Well, here you go then.

Yes, I know how unbelievable this is. And it's time they took me to the nut-house, because it's putting me over the edge.

Green Livin'

I found this image on someone else's blog (it was RepublicanTreeHugger actually), and thought it was clever. "From a time when conservation was patriotic".

I find I go back and forth in how passionate I'm feeling about green living. We're good about some things and lazy about others. I have no problem doing the easy stuff, but if it's going to take me a while to figure out how something works to make it more green, I tend to drop off the map. I hope to fix this.

In honor of Earth Day, here are some things we do that I think take almost no extra effort, but if everyone did them it would make a big difference environmentally. Some of these don't have a direct tie to the environment, but maybe they minimize waste and benefit it indirectly. (It's all connected anyway.)

We're good at the easy stuff:

• Using our own canvas grocery bags instead of plastic ones (and when we forget them, we re-use the plastic ones as trash bags in our kitchen)


• Flushing the toilet only as needed (you know what I mean...)


• Turning down the heat a few degrees and wearing our long underwear


• Using cloth diapers and wipes for Jude (though this one's a toss-up -- we save space in landfills, but use more water. It's more of a green choice in warmer months when we can save energy by line-drying them too.)


• Making our own green cleaners out of baking soda, vinegar and castile soap (this is a lot easier than it sounds... really)


• Using re-usable bowl covers for leftovers instead of plastic wrap


• Recycling paper, plastic and glass
  


• Watching our consumption by only buying things we feel are valid needs, and shopping second-hand on Craigslist.


• We buy used in general. Used house, used car, used clothes for Jude... etc.


• We've traveled to a lot of different countries, but in general we don't go on elaborate vacations. We usually hike or camp wherever we end up instead of staying in hotels or resorts.


• During the summer we grow a lot of our own vegetables organically and go to the farmer's market, so we spend less on food too, with no adverse environmental effects.
  
• Installing a more efficient furnace to heat the house, and using our fireplace to warm up the downstairs
  
• Walking or biking places rather than driving in the warmer months.


• Driving the smallest vehicle we can that will fit two people, potentially two carseats, a dog and camp gear into (we've opted for a wagon).


• Leaving the oven door open after cooking to heat the kitchen.


• Replacing some of our light bulbs with fluorescents. We're about 50/50 now, because I feel like we need to use the old ones up first.


• Turning the lights off after leaving a room (duh).
  

We're bad at the harder stuff:

• We still buy some non-local fruit, vegetables and other food, especially in the winter. This is wasteful because there's a lot of time, money and gas that goes in to getting us a banana in January.
  
• We still buy a lot of non-organic food to save money, the production of which uses pesticides and chemicals that harm the earth.


• We eat meat and eggs that probably come from factory farms that are bad for animal welfare and the environment. I want to start getting these things from small, local farmers, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Lazy.


• We can't yet afford a green vehicle. Even though ours is smaller and more efficient than say, a giant SUV, we're still driving a conventional oil/gas one.
  
• We live in an old, drafty, uninsulated house, so when we heat it, some of that heat is wasted as it escapes from nooks and crannies.


• Even though we may not stay in fancy hotels, we still drive our oil-guzzling car or take a gas-guzzling airplane to go to faraway places.


• When I do buy new clothes, I tend to buy them from "cheap" stores because I don't want to pay the up-front costs for organic cotton or hemp. Some of my clothes are probably made in sweat shops, and harmful chemicals are used to grow the cotton or other fibers that go into them.
  
• Not all of our appliances are very efficient energy-wise. Some of them are old and wasteful (especially our dryer).

One thing that bothers me is when "being green" starts to seem like it's for rich people. I know there are valid reasons why organic food is more expensive and hybrid vehicles aren't cheap, but I can't help but wonder why, at the root of it, things that are good for humans and the earth aren't naturally the best economic choices as well. Yet another reason to hope the green lifestyle thing gets more popular and sticks. If we drive up demand for these products, prices will go down.

Are you doing something easy that could make a big impact if more people did it? Or something I put on my "hard" list that you've conquered and find it isn't as much of a hassle as you thought?

BFFs VI

Spring!

Tyler was in town over the weekend on his way home from a show in Minnesota. He's got a good eye for photography is obsessed with getting just the right shot; hence the plethora of photos to follow of Jude and I together.

I feel kind of bad because Brett was here a couple of weeks ago but we didn't take many pictures and he didn't stay overnight here like Tyler did. So anyway, we loved having him around too even if it wasn't "documented". Sorry Brett. Next time we'll get a bunch of extreme close-ups of you and Jude together too :)

Au Naturale

French Elle recently came out with an issue featuring some famous chicks with no make-up and no Photoshop. Just all-natural beauty. I think we need a little more of that in the fashion-&-fame world. Check it.

Why is it that the French get into this sort of thing, but it kind of horrifies us? US Weekly's "Stars without makeup!!!" section doesn't count; it's used to humiliate rather than elevate.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting. Look how beautiful they are.

Yep.

Not on a mat, not with a cat. But in a hat.

Seen here with Uncle Tyler. Thanks for the hat and mittens combo Aunt Kathy :)

Uncle Fun

My Uncle Ken is known as Uncle Fun amongst the Geertsma clan. Let's just say the guy knows how to have a good time.

Well, there's a new Uncle Fun in town folks. It's Joel. Giving Jude all the things he's not supposed to have. Soon he'll be begging to go to Uncle Joel's house so he can watch PG-13 movies and play Grand Theft Auto all day.

I mean, raspberry angel-food cake?! At his age? Slow down.

A Slice of His Future Life

Jude is going to spend lots of time on the beaches of Lake Michigan, so his very first visit to The Big Lake was significant for us. Not that he was really awake for it. Here he is, and he's in a great mood.

Plus a little family shot (which we don't have very many of, actually):

We also got the beginning of his "too cool for school" phase captured on film (my mom insisted on this):

29

I'm 29 now. Bring it on 30...I don't care.

Let me just say that I have the best husband ever. If you also have a husband and think he's pretty good, that's fine. But mine is better. No offense. He really outdid himself for my birthday this past Saturday. Here's all the stuff he did for me:

First, on Friday he brought home two big containers of real maple syrup that one of the guys he has worked with taps from the trees and bottles himself. I would like to buy real maple syrup regularly, but it's pricey. So I was thrilled. That same night he had a bunch of our friends over for a campfire in the backyard, and he whipped me up a carrot cake on top of that. We discovered while it was in the oven that he had used the homemade pancake mix I had put into the flour container, but it was still delish. What a man. (After that night I highly recommend cherry wine - SO good. It's red wine with a sweet, tart little kick.)

On Saturday morning my one request was that we go out for breakfast. It's one of my favorite things to do on a Saturday. So we headed to Red Ball Jet Cafe, tossed back some coffee, and stuffed our faces with breakfast panini. So great.

After breakfast came the last mammoth thing Jono did for my birthday. It went as follows. I knew he had been working on some sort of surprise for weeks. I had caught him sneakily e-mailing people and making private phone calls. He said the surprise was next, so we piled in the car and drove west. I had no idea where we were going.

Soon we were in the suburbs and I joked, "Did you buy me a suburan home?" He said no. We pulled into someone's driveway and I said, "This place reminds me of your Aunt Mary's house." Jono said, "It isn't." But then his Aunt Mary answered the door and I thought, "Yes it is, you rascal."

At this point I didn't get what the surprise was yet, so I stood there like a dork. Then Jono said, "Mary has been a huge help to me with this." Then it dawned on me. Mary is an expert on stringed instruments. I turned around and saw two cellos sitting by her fireplace and I couldn't breathe. I kept saying "Are you serious??"

Jono got me a cello for my birthday.

Here's some background. I played the cello in junior high and high school, but stopped in college. I picked up my old cello a few times to play in church since then, but was frustrated because it would make buzzing and squealing noises on certain notes. I took it in to be assessed, and the cello people laughed when they saw it. They said in the 70s people had tried to figure out how cheaply they could make and sell a cello and out came mine. It suited me fine in high school -- I got it for free from my great aunt -- but now it had degraded to the point that it wasn't worth my time to play it.

I was a little dejected because cellos are very expensive, even used, so I didn't think I would be able to replace it. I ended up selling it on Craigslist for $50, which is probably more than it was worth. I felt bad because Jono had sold his electric guitar to pay for repairs on it when we were dating, and his grandma had later given me some money to fix a few more problems with it as well. It seemed like a waste.

Now there sat two cellos in Aunt Mary's living room, and Jono told me I could pick one of them, or he had a stack of Craigslist ads and we could drive around and try those out too. I couldn't believe it. I played the first two and both were such a huge step up from my last one that I would've been fine with either one, but Jono suggested we look around a bit. We're still debating how much we want to invest, but either way, I have a cello again - and it's going to sound good, and not like a dying cat! My parents, Jono's Dad and Jan, Jono's mom, and Grandma Klooster all chipped in for it -- it was the best present I could've thought of, and way better than I would've guessed.

In between cello test-drives, we went for a walk by Reeds Lake in GR. The sun was out and I loved it. So that was my birthday. It was very happy :) Here are some pics.

Red Ball Jet
(he's looking over at Jude with a proud daddy face)

This is what Jude was looking like.

Reeds Lake

Spring is coming, like molasses in January

Good thing we got a stroller that can handle off-roadin' it

Jude with a bit of green

In the sunshine with Daddy

FINALLY.

Most people have a babe's room ready months before he/she makes an entrance, but it just didn't happen that way for us. With the chaos of moving in when I was nine months preggers, we were a tad behind. Sure we had a crib and changing table - the essentials - but for me a room isn't really finished until there's stuff on the walls and it's arranged to my liking. I can be a little, shall we say, picky about the placement of objects, so it took even longer than it should have.

But all is well now - we finished the room last week. I don't know about you, but I love peeking into other people's houses to see what they have around and what it says about 'em. If you're as nerdy about that sort of thing as me, you'll enjoy this post, if not, you'll think this post is, well...nerdy.

A few interesting tidbits:

1) I'm not big on the blue-for-boys, pink-for-girls idea in bedrooms. So we did green walls and lots of bright accent colors.

2) The "E is for Elephant (and Emily)" bib was mine. My mom made it for me. Now it makes a nice wall hanging for Jude.

3) The four-bird textile (now in a frame) was brought back from Panama from Jude's globe-trotting Great Grandma Klooster. She went there just a year or two ago. The rest of us can only hope to be as cool in our 80s.

4) The rocking chair was my parents', and my mom rocked me and all three of my brothers to sleep in it when we were bambinos.

Pics! (Click to make them bigger.)

He's Crafty...

...He's just my type.

Foxes are crafty no? I think it's a fox. A quirky one. It says "Aladdin" on the tag, but I don't remember any foxes kicking around in that flick.

This hat was found by Jan and Dad (aka Grandpa and Grandma K) at a second-hand shop. Yay for weird thrift store finds!

For Grant

Do not look directly at the lion booties. Your head might explode.

Flirting with Solids

Ha ha, look at his face! (click for larger view)

Daddy gives it a try...

What a train wreck :)

Jude is only 4.5 months old, but we decided to try a little brown rice cereal on him recently. They say you can start them anywhere from four to six months. I was hoping to wait until six, but he has been acting extra hungry lately and shows extreme interest in whatever I am eating. I have to be careful to hold my food or drink away from him or he'll try to swipe it. Plus he is still waking every three hours or so all night, and he's hungry. All signs he might be "ready". I asked my doctor about it and she gave the go-ahead, so we tried it.

We mixed a tiny amount of cereal with some breastmilk, stuck Jude in his little seat, turned on the video camera and had at it. Not much of it actually made it down his throat, and most of it formed a small lake around his neck in a bib fold. He made funny faces, was distracted by the camera, and eventually started fussing. But it was good practice. He needed a bath afterwards because some of it got in his neck rolls and the tiny mullet he's been growing since birth.

It's been a couple of days since then and I've noticed the little man has been having some trouble "eliminating" his rice-cereal. Since he's still so young I've decided to put it off a while longer until I can be sure it's just the normal constipation involved in transitioning to solid foods, and not that his digestive system is too immature for it. Maybe we will make it to six months after all.

Other than some uncomfortable moments when he couldn't get things moving in the poo area, he's been so happy and interactive lately. I love being around him, and I miss him more now after I put him down for the night. His new thing is to reach for my face when I'm holding him and plant his little palm on my chin, mouth, or anywhere else he can reach. He stares at me while he's doing it with a cute smirk on his face. I laid him on the rug for awhile a few days ago and put my face close to his. He reached up with both hands and put them, palms open, on my cheeks. Then he giggled because he liked my face so close. I was eating it up.

He's also really into making a "razzing" noise with the spit in the back of his throat, and he loves it when I make the same noise back. The other day we were razzing at each other back and forth in rhythm for a minute or two. It was the first time we both contributed equally to the conversation :)

So there's your Jude update for the week. I hope everyone's excited about Friday, because you are not going to believe the hat he'll be wearing.

Perfect

Does anybody know what time it is?

It's time for a little Jude in a hat.

(He's flashing the peace sign in that last one.)

This and That (but Mostly Poo)

We went for a little walk this morning so that Mona would poo. I needed a stool sample for her vet appointment. She didn't provide, so after the walk I puttered around the backyard for awhile looking for a sufficiently fresh-looking deposit. Hers isn't the only poo I must look at on a daily basis. My life revolves around poo, it would seem.

We enjoyed being outdoors anyway even though the weather continues to be total crap. Jude went face-forward in the baby carrier for the first time and looked pretty hilarious, so of course I had to capture the moment. (We needed to wait until he could hold his head up well to do this.)

Mona gets excited when we go to the vet because she gets treats from the receptionist in the lobby. However, during her shots today she needed three people to hold her down and me to stand by her head speaking to her in soothing tones. She threw a big fit about it and wasted one of the shots by smacking it out of the vet's hand. She also made a huge racket with her husky "yowls", and the vet said, "Huskies are wimpy." (Exact words.)

"Get away...."

Anyway, she's all caught up on her shots now and was quite pleased with herself on the car ride home. She continues to maintain her weight of 43.5 pounds, which is almost exactly how much she has weighed since we got her over four years ago. It's like she's counting calories or something. It would seem so: her habit is to take a few pieces out of her bowl at a time and move them to a different location in the house where she chews each piece individually. It takes her about 30 minutes to finish a bowl. We're constantly stepping on pieces of dog food that she left in the kitchen, on the living room rug, in the entryway, EVERYWHERE - where they turn to dust and grind themselves into a powdery mess. Super annoying.

In other news, Jude rolled over last week at four months. I didn't even see it the first time. I was sitting on the floor next to him while he was having tummy time, but I was talking to Jono instead of looking down at him. While I was in mid-sentence, the top of his down-covered head brushed against my wrist. When I looked down he was on his back with a surprised look on his face. He did it again a few minutes later. Very impressive :)

I haven't spoken of this much on the blog, but I've been back to work part-time since Jude was about 2.5 months old. I get to work from home, which is pretty ideal, except it's all I can do to find more than 15 minutes straight in which to work uninterrupted. However, I'm very spoiled on certain days when our dear, dear Aunt Kathy (that's great aunt to Jude) takes him every Monday for at least three hours. We love love love her. Jono's mom Jan comes most Fridays for awhile, and Jono's step-mom Jan plans to come every other Tuesday now to watch him all day while I log some hours. These people are true blessings and I can't thank them enough. XOXO. You're saving me some serious headaches (and now we can go on vacation sometime with my earnings - woot!) My mom feels bad she can't come more often, but she works 50+ hours a week and still manages to spend time with Jude on weekends so that I can catch a break (thanks Mom ;)

I felt it was time for a quick update that wasn't just photos of Jude, so there you are. More photos of Jude will ensue.