Grammy and Aunt Rachael's visit!

My mom and sister decided to come down for a few days to visit with the newest addition to the Pohlman family! They ventured from the ice covered roads of Indiana, through the snow covered mountains of West Virginia, and ever so thoughtfully brought that cold air with them! They had to cut their trip short because of predicted icy roads on the way back, but I absolutely loved having them here. Both Shawn and I have always been thoroughly independent and neither of us have had a difficult time with moving away from our families...until now. I miss our families - particularly my mom - and am on a campaign to get my parents and siblings to move down here. :) So far, no luck! My sister was the first of Jude's aunts or uncles for him to meet. Mom and Rachael watched Jude one night while Shawn and I had a date, and Rach said Jude looked at her like, "You kind of look like my Mommy. You kind of sound like my Mommy - but something is just not quite right."

Actually, I realized for the first time that Jude knows me, he actually knows me. When my Mom held him and I was talking, Jude turned his head to see where I was. If he was crying in the stroller, my face calmed him down (for about two seconds - until he remembered that he was mad again). What a great feeling to see that he knows my voice and recognizes my face!

I haven't taken Jude out a whole lot beyond a quick trip between his feedings - it's always seemed like it's not worth the nightmare of timing his feedings/finding a place to feed him/deal with his crying in public, etc. It's tough enough to get our butts to church every Sunday in one piece, and I just haven't really wanted to venture out for an entire day. I figured that I may as well take the leap while I had Mom and Rachael with me to help. So we did a day of shopping! I used our stroller for the first time, which was surprisingly easy to use. I nursed and changed Jude in the nursing room at the mall (thanks to Shantel - I would've never known there was a nursing room at the mall!), which was also surprisingly easy. The only real difficulty was calming Jude down when he started fussing in a store. This wasn't such a big deal in the mall - it was loud enough that he wasn't a huge bother to others, and I could easily take him out of stores. When he started crying at Starbucks and Edward McKay's however, I had to deal with dirty looks from annoyed people. It was freezing outside, so I couldn't take him out of the store until he fell asleep. Any advice on how to deal with an infant's melt down in public?

My mom also got to witness Jude's first forays into splashing in the tub! Shawn's been trying to teach him to splash for weeks, and Jude finally figured out how to splash with his legs - and boy was he pleased! His little frog legs were going wild in the tub and his eyes got big as he realized how much fun it was! The visit from Mom and Rachael went by all together too quickly, and I was sad to see them have to leave. I'm looking forward, though, to visiting with them again in May. I wish I had some great pictures to share with you, but I was so wrapped up in visiting that I completely forgot to whip out the camera. Next time, I promise!