Life Lately: May 2025

May has been a ton of fun. This is a great contrast to March and April where I was just down-for-the-count. I’m still recovering from a recent surgery and I’m hoping the treatment for the underlying granulomatous mastitis will start soon (and will hopefully resolve everything quickly) 🤞🤞🤞 But alas, here’s a very small glimpse of May:

We are a “cruise” family, for sure 🛳️ During this season of life, it’s really nice to be able to have a “simple” vacation: We fly to Florida, get on a boat, do things on the boat, get fed on the boat, get off the boat and go to a beach, and then fly home. When Hudson’s older, I’m sure we will all want to do something different, but at this age, cruises are easy.

Due to an itinerary change, we went to ports we had been to before, but we still had a ton of fun!

In addition to the cruise, Hudson has been up to some big things, too! I am always amazed at his capacity to learn; the moments don’t come without push back and frustration (”This is TOO HARD!”), but we’ve been trying really hard to instill that he can do hard things. We will often say “What’s your name?” and he will respond “I’m Hudson and I can do hard things”.

But he’s been doing hard things and succeeding, so time for his flowers 💐

We’ve worked really hard on phonics and helping him start to put the skills in action. He read through two “Learn To Read” books. He’s also earned toys (because reading is hard), but after this second book (and getting a giant Lego bucket), I’m regretting the precedent 😅

I had meant to keep the Lego bucket for something else, but when he sat down and read like 16 pages of “Biscuit”, I couldn’t deny the desire of his heart 🥹

Feeling brave/confident has always been something that it’s taken Hudson time to build up. There are many things that seem to come naturally to him, but climbing on big things without help has taken time. So when we went to Cheekwood, I was so excited when he started climbing the rope ladders with no hesitation!

He’s also learning big skills at home, too. He has been helping with laundry for a while, but we tried our hand at scrambling eggs. 🍳 🥚 He worked hard on them, then did not eat a single bite 😅

I guess it’s true that once you know how to ride a bike, it stays with you. Hudson hasn’t really ridden a bike since August or maybe September. I was really proud of him when we wheeled the bike out and he just took off! He had one big fall on Friday (he tried to put his feet down instead of using the hand break) and he fell on his side/bottom and the bike fell on top. But he said “I fell down.” and then I helped him back up and asked “Do you want to keep going?” and he said “Yes” and got back on! 💪

We also had the cool experience on Saturday of having a butterfly “choose” us, by landing on our hands! 🦋

If I may now shine the spotlight on myself… 🔦

Something I’ve been doing a lot more recently: reading. And not just reading, but Reading Physical Books! Hudson has activities in the evenings (gymnastics on Tuesdays and drum lessons on Fridays) and rather than spend the time on my phone, I spend time on the uncomfortable bleachers or slightly-wobbly chairs hunched over physical books.

My favorites from May:

After impulse buying First Lie Wins earlier this year at Target and loving it, I thought I’d take another shot and buy another one. And I’m Not Sorry about this purchase (pun intended). I read it on the cruise and, man, oh man, I thought it was so good. Big plot twists. And I was there for it.

There’s probably a word for the feeling I have when I read some psychological thrillers — where I’m like “I don’t want to read this anymore because it gets in my head and makes me feel paranoid and uncomfortable, but I can’t put it down so I speed read it so that I can have closure”. Anyone else? No, just me, cool.

I loved the tone and writing and story!

There were other Books That Are Books That You Can Read, but were “meh” to me.

I also visited a local bookstore (it’s in Murfreesboro, so not Super Local To Me, but I can see myself making a quarterly drive out there to trade in books and get new books): Happy Book Stack. I took in 7 or 8 books and got a fair amount for store credit and walked away with 3 books in good condition at very very very good prices! 10/10 would highly recommend.