Well, ok. I'm back.

To update you on my life, I had my baby! He was born on Tuesday, December 30th. His name is Andrew, he weighed 8 lbs 6 oz, and measured 20 1/2 inches long. He has blond hair and blue eyes, which is crazy because I have brown hair and brown eyes. He definitely inherited Jason's genes - he has light brown hair and blue eyes, but apparently was born with blond hair too. He'll officially be a month old tomorrow, and I can't believe how slowly and quickly this month has passed at the same time.

Before he was born, I just pretty much spent my time lounging at home. None of my interviews for work panned out (I guess no one wanted to hire a pregnant girl who didn't have a degree in anything), and I guess that turned out to be a blessing in disguise for a couple reasons. The first being that I didn't feel well a lot of days. I had heartburn every day of my pregnancy from mid-September until the day I had Andrew. It was awful. Not only that, but towards the end, I had nerve pain in my legs and could barely walk. The second reason it was a blessing is that Jason and I live in subsidized housing, meaning that we pay a percentage of our income as our rent every month. If we had both gone to work, it would've been cheaper for us to live in a normal apartment situation than to live in a subsidized apartment. That wouldn't have been that wonderful.

So yeah. Life has pretty much been Andrew around the clock for the last month. My parents came for two weeks starting the 5th of January to help us out, and it was so great to have them here. I had missed them a lot, and having their help was incredibly invaluable. I don't think we would've survived without them. My mom took the "night shift" with Andrew. And my dad dealt with the nasty umbilical cord stump and taught Jason how to give Andrew a tub bath. I'm so grateful for the time they were here.

Since they left, Andrew has been an easy yet difficult baby. He tends to sleep well at night, but that's after an evening of colicky behavior. I say "colicky" because we just found out he has some sort of reflux problem, so I'm hoping that once that's fixed in about a week, he'll be a happy baby all the time! It's definitely hard to listen to him cry. There've been a couple times where we had to resort to the old "take him out for a drive" routine to get him to go to sleep. It's been rough, but something that gives me comfort when he's spitting up or crying his eyes out or having a blowout in his diaper is that he'll outgrow it all. It'll take a while, but knowing there's an end in sight makes it worth it!

Ok, now that I've updated you, I'm going to tell you why I'm back. Yes, I'm on blogspot (http://jasonandmelodymcbride.blogspot.com/), and until recently I wasn't a very good blogger. I'd do it like... once every three or four weeks. I think there are a lot of people on there who update about the same. Since having Andrew, I spend all my time at home not having the energy to do much else except feed him, change his diaper, and get on the computer when he's asleep. Since I don't think a lot of people want to hear my every day ramblings on blogspot, I figured, hey, why not do it on Xanga? You don't mind if I ramble here, do you? I hope not.

I hate to admit it, but I've missed Xanga, even if it has gotten really complicated and I don't understand it anymore. *shrug*

And because I'm bored, here's a survey thing:

Rules: It's harder than it looks! Copy to your own note, erase my answers, enter yours, and tag 10 people. Use the first letter of your name to answer each of the following questions. They have to be real . . . nothing made up! If the person before you had the same first initial, you must use different answers. You cannot use any word twice and you can't use your name for the boy/girl name question.

1. What is your name: Melody

2. A four Letter Word: Made

3. A boy's Name: Mark

4. A girl's Name: Melissa

5. An occupation: Mason

6. A color: Magenta

7. Something you wear: Makeup

9. A food: Mango

10. Something found in the bathroom: Mirrors

11. A place: McDonald's

12. A reason for being late: "Medicine made me drowsy!"

13. Something you shout: Man!

14. A movie title: Monty Python

15. Something you drink: Mott's juice

16. A musical group: Maroon 5

17. An animal: Mouse

18. A street name: Main

19. A type of car: Mitsubishi

20. The title of a song: Maybe it's Maybeline (by Relient K)

Two online classes, three classes + their finals, and 2 big projects down, one more final, a final paper, plus a project pick-up left to go! I'm almost done!

On my way back to my car after class today, I nearly started to cry because I've almost made it. This has been the hardest semester of my entire life, and it's almost over. Hallelujah! And I don't even have to go to school at all on Friday! Oh, life is good!

I should get started on my paper. It's supposed to be five pages long (at least) and I haven't started on it. Eek.

I can survive this semester! You know why? There's only a few more weeks! Hurray! We have tomorrow off for the 4th of July - wonderful! - and then we have two more weeks of classes + finals, and that's it! Oh, I can't tell you how great it feels to know that I'm going to make it through this semester. Maybe not with fabulous grades, but I've made it through without dying.

One thing that's made the end of this semester easier is the fact that I can drive our car pretty proficiently now. I drive to school most days, which is nice since I get so tired walking around with baby growing in my tummy. Speaking of that, I'm finally getting a little energy back. And I'm not feeling nauseous anymore. But now that those issues are better, I have either a cold or my allergies are really getting me. Hurray. The bad health never ends. Haha.

For one of my classes, Jason and I made our first real official budget ever. It was kinda scary! We're living off the tail-end of our savings, and planning on how to make that stretch the next month and a half was... interesting. We haven't been keeping with it perfectly, but I think we may come close...? I'm just glad that we didn't include the money that we're getting for selling our books back to the school because it means we'll have a little more leeway money than we originally planned.

OH! I just wanted to share this with you! There's this website called www. SpiritAir.com that has really REALLY cheap flights to certain places in the United States and Central and South America. Jason and I were thinking about going to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for a while, but things didn't pan out. It's too bad, too, because the tickets to fly there from Vegas would've been $11.11 each way per person for a round trip flight. The thing that deterred us was the fact that we couldn't get to Vegas without spending too much money. Shucks. Anyway, just thought I'd let you know about the site, just in case you wanted to go somewhere fun on a whim.

Later friends.