Life Lately: February 2025

It goes without saying that this is Hudson's absolute favorite time of year because it's his birthday.

On Saturday, February 1st, he woke up earlier than normal. I was awake and sitting at the kitchen table and he walked over to me and said “Mom, it's February. It's almost my birthday!” and counted down the number of days to his birthday every single day.

His actual birthday was on a Tuesday and it was a mostly normal day, although he did get to start his day with a birthday cupcake. After that, he went to school, then we went to a park where we unexpectedly ran into some friends, and then had dinner at home.

And today (March 2), we celebrated his birthday party! I am always so excited for his birthday party because he gets sooo much joy by being around lots of his friends and having a space to just be a kid.

With each passing season, it becomes more and more evident that I am an introverted mom raising an extraverted kid. I get energy by being alone. He gets energy by being with me (and I can see through all the play dates that he also gets energy from being around his friends!) 📈

I wrote an app back in 2020 called Thread Stash. It is a digital inventory app built for cross-stitchers (and other needleworks) to keep track of all the threads we have on-hand. You can also enter projects that you’re working on/want to work on and it cross-references your inventory to let you know what you need.

But, as it happens, technology evolved and my app is now obsolete. I created a web version of it in 2021, and it’s currently the only “supported” version I have. I’m incredibly proud of what I have learned and what I have accomplished since 2020, but I’ve been spending a lot of time learning in 2025 and I’m RE-WRITING the app. 💻

It’s been incredibly fun to learn something new. But I keep getting in my own head, if I’m honest. I’ve never really talked about my app in earnest before: 1) To a non-cross-stitcher, the concept seems kind of like “That’s it…?” but to be honest, cross-stitchers are a very small niche group, but there weren’t many good apps out there at the time I developed mine that solved the needs I’m solving. 2) I am surrounded by incredible software engineers and I’m pretty much a junior-level developer; I have enough skill to get something up and running (obviously), but I feel self-conscious with how it looks.

I’m hoping this year will be a year of rewriting (my app), rebranding (my app), and discovering the confidence to be truly proud of what I made (because I built something, dangit!)