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Ok, this is going to be quick because Cate is finally asleep and I need to get to bed myself. So I’m going to be lazy and number things. Sorry, it’s just easier for my frazzled brain.

1. I guess I kinda-sorta started my job on Friday, but all I did was find out the details about the project I’m going to be working on, signed human resources paperwork, etc. My official start date is tomorrow. AHH!

2. Dave is currently setting up a big fancy desktop PC (actually his old one, plus a few new bits of hardware) in my office for me. Because he’s a sweetie. And probably also because I’ve been kind of freaking out about this job - nothing major, I’m just nervous because it’s a bit out of the realm of anything I’ve ever done before. So Dave wants to do whatever he can to help me chill out. So I’ll shut up. I’m guessing.

3. We’re going to do a little experiment over the next couple of weeks to see if we can get away with sending Cate to daycare only three days a week. Since Dave and I both work from home, the hope is that we’ll be able to take shifts with the baby so we can each get our work done. I’m not sure how that’ll work, or how I’ll be able to concentrate if I hear her crying while Dave’s doing his shift, but that’s why one of the new hardware bits that we bought is a set of speakers. Hopefully I’ll be able to crank up some music and drown out whatever else is going on in the house.

4. Totally unrelated to the previous 3 points: today we got a visit from Liz, aka Lizardbreath, and her own little baby Catherine. That was a lot of fun.

She is such a cutie-patootie, blowing raspberries and smiling and everything. And she seemed to weigh nothing when I picked her up - which I know isn’t true, it’s just weird how you get accustomed to your own heavy load so any baby that’s slightly smaller is like, “woo! She’s a baby feather!”

It’s funny because we both named our babies for the same person (although, honestly Cat, as much as I love you, if your parents had named you Mildred or Bertha or something… um, yeah. That whole namesake thing probably wouldn’t have happened). And also funny because it occurred to me that I always write Cate’s name as - well, Cate - but when I’m talking to her or about her, I always call her Catie. Which is what Liz calls her baby as well. I imagine that it would’ve been really confusing for them if they’d been older. As it was, eh, neither one pays much attention to their name yet. Lucky for us.

Ok, bedtime. Work tomorrow. Woo-hoo, paycheck!

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Just to move on from the whole poop topic, today is Cate’s 8-month birthday, so it’s time for yet another milestone recap:

* Crawling, crawling, crawling. She crawls everywhere, and I’m quickly discovering just how very unchildproofed our house really is. We’re working on correcting that. Oddly, her favorite place to crawl seems to be our bathroom. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s a linoleum versus carpet issue, or maybe it’s because Teenie usually hangs out in there. (Teenie likes it because the bathroom has a skylight, so there’s lots of sun to bask in, plus none of the other cats bother her there.)

* Speaking of which, Cate really loves all of the cats - and she doesn’t just want to pet them, she wants to rub her face on them. Which I must say is pretty hilarious to watch. The cats are not so into it, but they can get up and walk away from her, and she isn’t fast enough to catch up with them. Yet.

* Standing up!

The first time she did this, I was on the phone with my mom, and not totally paying attention to Cate because I was preoccupied with our conversation. Then suddenly I realized she had pulled herself up on the coffee table, and I thought “holy crap, she’s never done that before!” She was quite proud of herself, and she tries to pull herself up on everything now. It’s pretty funny when she tries it on me, because she usually ends up just stretching my t-shirt and pulling it down to her level rather than her rising up to me.

* Now that she’s mastered all of this crawling/standing stuff, sitting up on her own is no big deal. She can sit for ages, and is totally content to do so. However, I think it’s time to retire her Bumbo chair, because she managed to flip herself out of it and land on all fours. And it just happened to be when the Bumbo was on the kitchen counter. It scared the bejeezus out of me, and I’m really glad I was right there when she did it so she didn’t get seriously hurt.

* More foods that she likes: peaches, applesauce, spinach, potatoes (she hasn’t had them on their own, just as part of veggie blends), chicken and beef. Oh, and she’s decided that bananas are a-ok now too. I guess she’s finally warmed up to the idea of fruit.
Dislikes: prunes. Can’t say I blame her on that one.

She’s at daycare today so I could have some more house-cleaning time. Which is great, although I was just getting on a roll when I got a call from the guy who will be my boss when I start back to work. And he wanted to know if I’m available to start working tomorrow. Yikes!

It’s good because it means money, I’m just having a minor freak-out over whether or not I’ve forgotten everything I need to know about my job, and worrying about how I’ll deal with taking Cate to daycare more often, when it almost killed me to leave her there this morning. She was crying and reaching for me, and I had to leave. Awful. I’m sure most working mothers feel this way, but there’s just something that feels vaguely unnatural about leaving your baby in another woman’s arms when she’s crying for you. Patsy called me ten minutes later to let me know that Cate was fine and happy (she put her in a stroller and took all the kids for a walk, which apparently worked for her like it does for me). I really appreciated that because she didn’t have to take the time to call me, and it makes me feel even better about choosing her for our daycare provider.

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That BabyLax stuff really works. Holy god, does it ever.

It kicked in about 2 minutes after we used it - I had enough time to get Cate’s diaper back on, and then I picked her up so that she was up against my chest (the doc said to keep her upright, since gravity can help). She bit into my collarbone as hard as she could and screamed the whole time. It was awful, I felt so bad for her being in so much pain and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

And for the record, the poop that came out was bigger than the poops that Kris’s 35-pound dog creates. And totally solid. Poor baby.

Of course, I’m only blogging about this so someday she can read it and be mortified that I wrote about her bowel movements on the Internet. Hee. Mama’s gotta get some kind of payback for all of the worry and torment that she puts me through, right?

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Ok, I know every mom in the world has a list of things that they never knew about themselves before their babies were born. Here’s mine:

1. I can, in fact, push another human being out of my body and not die.

2. I will wipe boogers off of my baby’s nose without even flinching. In fact, the first time I did it was when I realized that I really am a mother because I didn’t hesitate or gag or anything.

3. Another person’s bowel movements will occupy way more of my brain space than I ever thought possible.

Which is why I am currently freaking out, because certain little babies in my house have not pooped since Friday. This means we are on Day 5 of No Poops. I’ve tried everything I can think of. I’m feeding her fruit like there’s no tomorrow (even pureed prunes!), I’ve added a little sugar to her bottles of formula, and nothing. It’s getting to the point where she cries every time she toots because she’s in pain.

I talked to the pediatrician’s office this morning (who I keep referring to as the vet, because I am insane), and they gave me a couple of options. The first involved the words - disguised for Google freaks - “an@l mass@ge.” Which, can I just say, yikes. The second involves a product called BabyLax. Sort of like a teeny-tiny enema. I’m sure that’s going to be fun for everyone involved.

Wish me luck, because Cate is supposed to go to daycare tomorrow, but I can’t possibly leave her there if she’s still in her current state.

P.S. Since this whole post has been all about my baby’s hind parts, I would also like to add that Costco generic diapers are the work of the devil. They leak and they don’t pull the moisture away from her, so she has diaper rash for the first time in her life. Unfortunately, I still have well over 100 of them left in the box. I’m thinking I might call it a loss, drop them off at a women’s shelter or something, and go back to name brand diapers. [/end indignant consumer rant]

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Say you’re in a relatively family-oriented restaurant - like, oh I don’t know, Outback Steakhouse. Just as an example. And say you have a 7 1/2 month-old baby with you. She’s hanging out in her high chair, and she’s being a bit loud, but it’s all happy baby yelling, she isn’t crying or anything like that. You’ve given her some toys to play with, and a spoon to bang on the table, so all is relatively well. Plus it’s not even 5:00 in the evening, so you figure that it’s probably ok to have a loud baby with the early dinner crowd, since most other patrons also have very small children with them.

When the server brings you your food, he offers you animal crackers for the baby. She’s never had them before, but hey, she eats Cheerios, so it’s more or less the same texture and consistency, right? You think you’ll just break them up into Cheerio-size pieces and all will be well.

The baby is getting fussy in her high chair, and you’ve managed to wolf down half of your dinner, so you set it aside and sit the baby in your lap and let her play with the animal cracker pieces. She tries unsuccessfully to eat them a few times. Finally, she gets a piece in her mouth. Then she starts to make a gagging face. You and your spouse suddenly realize that this baby is about to blow chunks from here to kingdom come. You have about two seconds to make a choice:

A) Aim her toward the inside of your booth, so the other restaurant patrons will be spared the sight of the barf spray. This would seem the courteous thing to do for folks who are trying to eat, however keep in mind that should you choose this option, it means that your fancy-shmancy diaper bag that you love will also be covered in baby barf. (And the bag is open, so… yeah. Lots o’ mess.)

B) Aim her out and toward the floor. In this case, other people will witness the barf, but clean-up will be minimized. There’ll be less barf on yourself and the baby, and it would seem to be easier for the restaurant people to mop a section of the floor than to have to get inside a booth.

Which would you choose?

For the record, I chose B. I think Dave was horrified that I didn’t choose A, but you know, the two tables closest to us both had babies with them, and I thought they were sympathetic. (Ok, maybe not the people with the newborn, but whatever. They’ll learn.) Cate was already sitting on the side of my lap that was closest to the outside of the booth, and I didn’t know if I would have time to maneuver her toward the inside of the booth before VomitWorks 2007 started. It’s certainly not like I had time to run her outside or to the ladies’ room, which would’ve been ideal.

I apologized about a hundred times to the wait staff who came over to help us clean up, and I way over-tipped to compensate for the grossness. I felt really bad about it, but I didn’t know what else to do.

So am I a horrible person for potentially ruining a few people’s appetites in exchange for not ruining my bag? It sounds awful when I phrase it like that, but it all happened so fast, I honestly didn’t have time to think it out that much.

Also, option B doesn’t mean that you won’t get any barf on you, it just means that there’ll be slightly less barf. So if you’ll excuse me, I have to go take a shower right this second, and everything I’m wearing has to go in the washer immediately. Yuck.

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Today was Cate’s first day at daycare, which I have to say was far less traumatic than I was expecting. For me, anyway. According to Patsy, Cate had a few meltdowns during the day, but she also took a couple of naps while she was there, she enjoyed playing with the other kids, and she loved Patsy’s cats (which I kind of figured, since she loves ours). So it all went much smoother than I anticipated.

As for me, it was kind of amazing to have a few hours to myself in the house to do nothing but clean. You can get so much done when there isn’t a tiny person shrieking for you to pick them up every five minutes! The entire upstairs is cleaned and pretty much child-proofed. (Is there a way to child-proof a litter box? Anyone? Help?) The first floor still needs some work, but I’m saving that for when Cate goes back to daycare next week. But as nice as it was to get so much work done, I missed my little munchkin like crazy, which is bizarre since we were only apart for six hours.

When we got home, I made a video of Cate crawling. I know it might seem kind of weird to film her in the bathroom, but it has some of the best lighting in the whole house, plus she crawls better on the linoleum (I guess it’s easier to slide on than carpet?), and for a little extra motivation, Teenie was there and just hanging out as a big beacon of furriness for her to crawl toward. Worked like a charm.

(Warning to Angie: this video combines babies and animals. Your head may explode.)

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Today is Dave’s birthday. I normally make a big huge stink about birthdays, but not so much this year, mostly due to budget constraints, but also because I’m too tired to plan much of anything. He knows I haven’t forgotten since I keep whispering thirty-six to him, over and over, just to drive him crazy. (His usual response is to call me 32, which, whatever dude, some of us still have a few months left until our birthdays. So there.)

Cate, however, gave Dave his birthday gift last night: she crawled forward for the first time. Even better, she went straight to him. Woo-hoo!

After her bath, I was trying to get her dressed, which is always a struggle these days since she’d much rather be on all fours rocking back and forth, and do you have any idea how hard it is to dress a baby like that? I think it’d be easier to dress the cats.

Anyway, she started doing this new thing of raising herself up onto her tippy-toes, so she was more or less in a downward-facing dog position. It was really cute, so I yelled for Dave to come see, and she got so excited when she saw him in the bathroom doorway that she lowered herself back to all fours and crawled straight toward him. It was awesome.

We spent the next several minutes sitting in the hall trying to get her to crawl toward each of us, which she did. (Although we usually had to bribe her to come forward with a toy, or a cat, or a roll of toilet paper. Whatever works.) I’m going to have to try to catch it on video, because it is seriously adorable. I know all parents think that about their babies, and I don’t care because I think she’s just about the most brilliant thing on the planet. Trite and cliched, perhaps, but true.

Oh, and happy birthday, Dave. I love you so much, and thank you for giving me that fantastic little girl. And thanks for always being a few years older than me, so I can continue to feel good about my age.

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