PooBou.com

Cate is 18 months old today. She had her well-baby checkup on Friday, and she’s still solidly in the 75-90th percentiles for height and weight (33 inches tall, 26.6 pounds), while her head circumference is still off the charts. That’s my girl, ever consistent.

This is normally when I would write a post about her latest development milestones, but I don’t really know where to start. She blows our minds with some new word (or sentence!) every day, and it’s really hard to keep track of all of her latest cool tricks. She’s also starting to enter into the “terrible two’s” phase where she tests our limits and throws unbelievable meltdowns when we say no, but as awful as those moments are, they’re pretty rare. For the most part, she’s just lovely, fun and delightful, and we can’t get enough of her.

Because she’s so aware of her environment and so consistent with her routine, I am a little worried about how this move is going to affect her. I know she understands a lot more words than she can say, so I keep telling her that we’re going to move to a new house this week, but it’ll be ok because Mommy, Daddy, the kitties, and all her toys are going to be there. I don’t know if she really gets it or not, but hopefully some of it is sinking in.

Speaking of the move, this is how things are going so far:
* Last night was my last girls’ night with my Seattle girls. Kind of sad, but I know I’m going to see a few of them at Kris’s wedding next March, so it wasn’t a “good-bye forever” kind of scenario. I didn’t even cry.

* The pet movers are coming to take the cats tonight. They have a 6 a.m. flight tomorrow morning, and there’s no way the transport people can get here to the boonies to pick them up and back to the airport in time. (We live about 30 miles from Sea-Tac, not an easy drive.) So they’ll board them tonight, fly them out first thing in the morning, and board them in Raleigh until we get there. I’m really going to miss them while they’re away.

* Monday morning, Dave is leaving for his cross-country drive, and the movers are coming to help me pack. We’ve gotten most of our stuff packed already, but this last stretch is sort of overwhelming, so we’re paying for help.

* Tuesday, the movers are loading up everything and starting their drive. My sister arrives around noon. She’s getting a rental car (with a toddler seat) because the movers are taking my car. Tracy, Cate and I are going to check into a hotel that night.

* Wednesday is our official closing date. Dave and I already signed our part of the paperwork last week (we signed early so Dave could leave on Monday), so the only thing on the agenda that day is to get the empty house cleaned, and get the keys over to the realtor. Hopefully, after how crazy the past week has been, Tracy, Cate and I will get some downtime in the afternoon to just hang out and have fun. I’d like to enjoy our last day in Seattle.

* Thursday, we fly to Mississippi. I know my parents are super-excited already. And considering the stuff my mom has already bought in anticipation of our arrival (fingerpaints, sidewalk chalk, an inflatable wading pool, countless toys), I know Cate is going to have an absolute blast there.

We’ll be in Mississippi for a week, then Cate and I fly to Raleigh on Thursday, August 7th. I can’t wait.

More updates when I can, but the blog might be pretty sparse over the next week or so.

2 Comments »

If you tried to click over here this morning and got some funky “install WordPress” screen, I apologize. No idea what happened to my site, but it seems to mostly be fixed now, although there’s still some weird issues with my permalinks and archives, which I’ll be investigating as soon as I get a chance. (Ha! Moving in 5 days! Free time = FAIL.)

Last night, I took Greta over to her new home. She’s gone to live with a very nice family, and they have a farm with a horse and everything. It’s a pretty remote area, so she’ll be able to run around outside and hunt mice to her heart’s content and there won’t be any worries about her getting hit by a car. So that’s great. I hope she’ll be very happy there.

This morning I took Beaumont and Teenie - our two remaining cats! Just two! How totally reasonable and sane that seems! - to the vet to get their vaccines up to date and a copy of a health certificate that they’ll need so they can fly next week. They both did well and are totally healthy, although Beaumont now seems a bit spooked by the fact that both Cleo and Greta are gone. (Teenie couldn’t care less. She’s all, “Ha! Good riddance, bitches!”)

Funny coincidence about the vet appointment today: tomorrow is Cate’s 18-month well-baby checkup, so apparently I’ll get the honor of restraining small creatures while they get shots two days in a row. Lucky me.

Packing is still coming along, and we’ve rented a dumpster to get rid of the guest bed (the one that was drenched in cat pee) and a few other random things. Do we need five garden rakes, four of which are totally rusted from being left out in the rain? No. No, we do not. Thank you, dumpster rental company for taking all this crap away so I don’t have to think about it. (As for the landfills where this stuff is going to end up: um, sorry? Oops.)

Not much else going on, we’re just getting into that frantic “I don’t care what it is, throw it in a box!” phase. Watch, we’re going to get to North Carolina and have like 20 boxes labeled Miscellaneous. It’ll be like Christmas opening everything up. “Ooh, I wonder what’s in this one!” Good times.

Oh hey, want to see a cute toddler after she’s been playing in the sprinkler? Sure you do!

You’re welcome.

No Comments »

Oh my hell, y’all: the movers are coming a week from today. One. Week. Gulp!

We’re actually doing ok progress-wise, to the point where almost everything on my to-do list has been crossed off. But the things that remain - like, oh yeah, PACKING - are pretty huge.

So yeah, I’m wigging out. It’s gotten to the point that I’m now getting a whole flock of stress zits, which are starting about 10 feet below the surface of my skin and are coming up like big purple bruises on my face. Sex-ay.

And as much fun as I’m sure it is for people to read about my little mini-nervous breakdown over here, I’m going to change the topic to two funny and random Cate stories:

* The other night during her bath, I held up her little toy dolphin and say, “What is this?” I was trying to get her to either say or sign “fish.” (Yes, I know dolphins are mammals. It’s the closest thing to a fish that we’ve got among her bathtub toys.) Instead, she said, “BLUE!!” Shocked the heck out of me. When did she learn colors? I haven’t been able to get her to repeat it since then, but it was pretty cool.

* This morning, I was trying to get her out the door and into the car so I could take her to Patsy’s house. She insisted on carrying her ball outside with her, which fine, whatever gets you to move in that direction. Once we were in the driveway, she threw her ball, and it rolled under my car and got stuck near one of the tires. I sighed and muttered, “oh shit,” because I knew that meant I was going to have to get down on all fours and shimmy myself halfway under the car to retrieve it. And Cate, happy as a clam, parroted back, “SHIT!!” Umm. Uh-oh.

Looks like it’s time for Mommy to clean up her language, because we’re going to have a lot of explaining to do when we see the grandparents next week if she pulls that one again. Luckily, Cate can also say “sit” (since I’m always telling her that she can’t stand up in her chair, she has to sit down), so maybe I can pretend that’s what she’s saying and that her enunciation makes it sound like there’s an H when there really isn’t? Here’s hoping.

5 Comments »

This weekend has been a combination of mundane and fun stuff. The mundane: mowing the lawn and a trip to the supermarket. Ho-hum.

The fun: Linda and Taiki’s wedding! Dave caught the crud that Cate and I had last week, so he stayed home while Cate and I went on our own.

I didn’t mind that it was just the two of us - Dave didn’t feel well and I’m not the type to get uptight about not having a date for these types of events. But it would’ve been a lot easier if there had been two of us on Kid Duty. Trying to eat my meal at the reception was a challenge, to say the least.

But lord, Cate had so much fun. She ran all over the place and flirted with everybody, which kind of surprised me because she’s usually gets clingy in large crowds, but yesterday she seemed to have no qualms about not having mama within her line of sight at all times. (As it turned out, I was the one who had issues with her running off, because dude, where the heck do you think you’re going??) She played really well with the other kids there, and she just ran and ran all over the place. I’m kicking myself for not taking pictures of her because she looked so cute in her little sundress, but I’m hoping Linda’s wedding photographer got a few and that they’ll be online eventually.

She basically looked just like this for about three hours. Only in a pink sundress.

See what I mean? Girlfriend was on the move.

Her nap schedule on Saturday had been all messed up and I was really worried that she was going to be all tantrum-y at the wedding, but she did great. The only tears that were shed was when I went to the bathroom and I asked Kris to watch her. According to Kris, she was fine and happy the entire time I was gone, but when I came back, she realized that she hadn’t seen me for two minutes, and she flipped out. She buried her face in my neck and wouldn’t let me set her down for the next several minutes. But that was really it, and I’m pretty sure Kris and I are the only two people who witnessed it.

Other than that, the wedding was absolutely beautiful. The weather couldn’t have been nicer, Linda was an absolutely beautiful bride, everybody looked great, and it was just a generally fantastic event. I know she and Taiki had been looking forward to the big day for a long time, and they’re such a terrific couple. I’m so happy for both of them.

1 Comment »

* Linda’s getting married tomorrow! And can I just say, I am so glad she’s a July bride and not August, because this is going to be one of the last times I get to see most of my favorite Seattle people in one place.

* Guess who’s pregnant? Woo-hoo, more baby cousins!

* Lizardbreath’s baby girl won’t sleep. Moms of toddlers (or former toddlers): head over and give whatever advice you’ve got.

Oh, and thank you Angie for telling me about FailBlog. This made me laugh so hard last night that I snarfed milk out of my nose while I was eating a bowl of cereal.

see more pwn and owned pictures

(Apparently my blog columns are too narrow because the whole picture won’t fit there - same problem I have with embedded YouTube videos. Oh well, you get the idea.)

Happy weekend, everybody.

No Comments »

I mentioned a while ago that with the move, we were going to try to re-home Cleo and Greta. We’ve been overwhelmed with four cats, and scaling back to just two felt a lot more manageable. My initial instinct was to keep Cleo and Greta together because they get along with each other really well, but their personalities are so different that it really just isn’t possible.

We found a new home for Greta almost immediately, which surprised me. She’s so skittish around people, I didn’t think anyone would be willing to take her on. But the realtor who sold our house lives here in Duvall and she said she needs a barn cat. Since Greta loves to hunt and isn’t very big on human interaction, Dave and I agreed that arrangement would probably be a really good fit for her. Kim, the realtor, hasn’t taken her yet, but we’ll set that up sometime in the next couple of days.

Cleo proved to be much trickier. She’d be miserable as an outdoor-only cat, she likes to be inside most of the time and she’s a total cuddle-bug. But nobody we knew was in the market for a cat; and with it being kitten season right now, there’s an awful lot of kitties available for adoption.

We asked our friends, family, neighbors, the vet, and then finally I put ads on both craigslist and PetFinder.com. I got a couple of responses from the ads, but they always fell through for one reason or another. I even contacted the no-kill shelter where Dave originally adopted Cleo from, but they’re overfull with cats right now and couldn’t take her back. I was really starting to freak out about what we were going to do with poor Cleo. She’s such a sweet kitty, I figured it would be a breeze to find someone who’d fall in love with her like we did.

On Tuesday, I got the email from the shelter saying that they couldn’t take her back, and I was pretty upset, practically in tears. A few minutes later, I happened to look at my cell phone and saw that I had a voicemail. A lady had called me responding to my craigslist ad for Cleo. She came over to meet her yesterday, and decided to take her home with her.

I’m so relieved and sad at the same time. The lady seemed really sweet; she and her husband lost a cat recently and their other cat was lonely. They also have a dog, but the cats have their own room where the dog can’t bother them if they want to get away from her. And they live in a rural area where Cleo can continue to go outside when she wants to, and no worries about her getting hit by a car. So it’s a great arrangement, really. I couldn’t have asked for better. But we loved her and we’re going to miss her pretty little face, and her giant thumbs, and the way she’d drool on us when she was happy.

I hope you have a happy life, baby girl. I really, really do.

Sorry to get all maudlin here, I think I’m just starting to feel sort of emotional and overhwelmed because this move stuff is all really starting to sink in. It’s a good thing, and I’m really excited about it, but major life transitions are scary and stressful, and there’s just no way around that.

As for the cats, I suppose I just need to keep reminding myself that my litter box duties are about to get cut in half, and that should keep me from getting too mopey about it.

2 Comments »

I have this theory that Cate can say a lot more than we think she can. She says so many things with obvious intent, the only problem is that Dave and I don’t understand her, so a lot of times we chalk it up to babble, when I think she actually is trying to tell us something.

Last night, I was chopping zucchini for dinner and she came in to the kitchen with her little beach ball and threw it to me. Since I was in the middle of making dinner, I couldn’t stop to play with her, so I tried to gently kick the ball toward her. And of course, since I have zero coordination, I missed totally and the ball rolled right past her, several feet away.

Cate turned around and ran after the ball, yelling clear as a bell, “I GO GET IT!!”

And my head exploded. The end.

She did it again this morning. She has another ball that’s really small (about tennis-ball size, but very soft and bouncy), and she threw it to me. I rolled it back to her, and she grabbed it and proudly announced, “I GOT IT!”

I told Patsy about this, and she said this is because Cate and her little daycare friend Mason play with balls in her backyard all the time, and I guess she learned it from him. Still, I am impressed.

Also, my theory that she understands a heck of a lot for someone who doesn’t talk that much? Yeah. Two examples to prove my point:

A. Yesterday evening, we were going to take her outside to play for a while, and Dave was trying to get Cate’s shoes on. He sat down in the dining room chair with her shoes, and she ran away from him to follow me into the next room. I said to her, “Go back to Daddy so he can put your shoes on and we can go outside.” Before you could even blink, she was in Dave’s lap getting her sneakers velcro’ed.

B. We were in the front yard, and she headed for the street to go see the neighbor’s horse. And that’s fine, but some safety issues are non-negotiable, so as we got close to the end of the driveway, I told her she had to hold my hand to cross the street. Normally this isn’t a problem; she definitely understands “hold my hand” and usually doesn’t mind doing it. But on this particular occasion, she was in a mood, so she proceeded to have a huge meltdown and threw herself onto the ground. I sat on the driveway next to her and said, “ok, you need to calm down, or we’re going to go back inside.” A few more gratuitous sniffles and she was fine. Huh. Whaddya know, even threats are starting to work at this age.

So yeah, it’s pretty awesome. Now I just have to figure out what the other 95% of the stuff she says means.

2 Comments »