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Not much to report here, just that I absolutely cannot wait to take Cate trick-or-treating tonight. I don’t know if she’ll actually go up to people’s doors or not, but we’re going to let her run around with the other kids in the neighborhood, which should be fun. And I bought her a little trick-or-treating sack just in case she ends up getting some candy, even though I’m sure either Dave or I will end up carrying it the whole time. Actually, Dave and I will probably end up eating most of the candy too, since there’s very few things she can have that aren’t choking hazards. Mmm… candy.

I’ll try to have pictures up tomorrow. Happy Halloween, everybody!

P.S. Less than 100 hours until the polls start to close on Election Day. Yay!

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Warning: this post is all about politics. Feel free to skip it if you either don’t care or are going to leave me a nasty comment. Polite disagreement is fine, but this is my site and I like things to stay civil.

A while back, I signed up on Barack Obama’s website to be notified of any events that were happening in my area. They would send me things that were totally out of reach, like one email that told me that Biden was speaking somewhere in Virginia, which, um, no. Don’t get me wrong, I think Joe Biden is an ok guy and would probably be a really good vice-president, but I’m not going to drive for four hours to hear him speak for 45 minutes.

On Monday, I got a notice that Obama was coming to Raleigh. I debated on whether or not to bring Cate with me. On the one hand, I thought it’d be kind of fun - I could just pop her in the backpack carrier and off we’d go. I also considered asking one of the neighbors to watch her, since our neighborhood is chock full of stay-at-home moms, but that felt sort of awkward. (Hello, neighbor with a McCain/Palin sign in your yard. Want to baby-sit for me while I go root for the other guy?) I didn’t want her to interrupt Dave’s workday, but he said it was fine, he could watch her so I wouldn’t have to worry about keeping her happy for the entire duration. I decided in the end to go with that option. So Cate and Dave - the two members of our household who aren’t eligible to vote (for different reasons) - stayed home, and I went to the Obama rally all by myself.

It was seriously cool. Actually, the weather was seriously cold. I think it was in the low 40’s this morning, and there was a really crazy wind that was almost painful. I had to stand in line for over an hour, since it stretched out for over three blocks. The highlight was when the old man in front of me asked me if I was a student. I laughed and told him he was sweet, but I’m 32 years old. He said, “Well, we have a lot of graduate students around here who are in their 30’s…” Yeah, nice cover, grandpa. I’m just going to take the compliment that you thought I was 22 and run with it.

Anyway, once the TSA put me through a metal detector and searched my purse, I headed in to find a spot. It was a madhouse. It was still chilly by that point, but pretty soon the sun came out and then I was in a crowd of thousands of people crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder, so it started to get really hot. A couple of people actually fainted during Obama’s speech. Craziness.

I managed to get a couple of decent pictures while I was there.

It was great, I’m so glad that I went. You can see his speech in Raleigh here, if you want. (No way to embed it, unfortunately.)

Also, I’ve signed up to volunteer with the Obama campaign on Election Day. Nothing big, just calling voters and making sure they know where to go to vote. It’s only for a few hours, Dave can take care of Cate while I go do my part for democracy. Six more days, y’all!

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I realized that I never wrote a monthly update for Cate last month because she was sick on her 20-month “birthday,” so instead I was writing about her asthma treatments and all kinds of depressing medical stuff. Blah. As for my girl’s milestones over the past TWO months:

1) Her social development is out of this world. She loves-loves-LOVES the older kids in the neighborhood, and runs to give them hugs when she sees them. Oddly, this doesn’t seem to apply to kids who are closer to her own age. Like when e-baby tries to give her a hug, she just sort of looks at me like, “the hell?” It doesn’t upset her, she just seems confused. And yesterday a little girl down the street (who isn’t much bigger than Cate herself) tried to pick her up and carry her around. Cate was NOT having it, she squirmed away and when the little girl insistently grabbed her hand to lead her in a certain direction, Cate threw herself on the ground and screamed at her. I mean, not crying, just a full-on, angry “AAAHHH!!” at the little girl. I had to turn around so neither one of them could see me laughing. So, older kids who understand a certain degree of social boundaries? A-OK in her book. Kids her own age who have no concept of personal space? Not so much.

2) I really cannot get over how much she can talk and sign. She’s learning colors, she’s making full sentences, and every day she seems to come out with at least two or three new words. It boggles my mind. She’s evolved from a simple little “bye-bye” to, “Bye! See you! We go now!” And she’s gone from “hi” to, “Hi, [insert name]! What are you doin’?” She slays me.

One of my favorite new phrases happened two nights ago: after her bath, I picked her up and she was saying hi to the baby in the mirror like she does every night. Then she pointed at the mirror and said, “It’s raining!” Um, what? She said it again. It took me a minute, but I finally realized that all of the little specks on the mirror sort of look like it’s raining. So, clearly she’s a genius, and I should maybe think about breaking out the Windex more often.

3) She’s starting to let up on the super-clingy stuff, which has made life so much easier for everyone. She’s gone back to thinking that her Daddy is the Coolest Guy Ever - I knew she’d come around eventually, but MAN it’s nice to have a break from the “all-mommy-all-the-time” stuff. She often sneaks up the stairs when I’m not paying attention to go “see Daddy!” in his office. She’s totally stealthy about it, I don’t hear her on the stairs and it’s not until I hear a distant, “hi, Daddy! What are you doin’?” that I realize where she is and have to go retrieve her.

I have to say, the first couple of months in North Carolina was really hard on me because I wasn’t used to having Cate home with me all day, and my job didn’t have any projects for me (hence no daycare). The whole “full-time stay-at-home mom” thing felt totally alien to me, and I really hated it at first. I felt housebound and stir-crazy. I’m looking for additional freelance work - and I’m still on the roster at my Seattle job, whenever things pick up there - but I’ve kind of gotten into the swing of the full-time mommy thing and I’m starting to really enjoy it. I know it’s temporary and I’ll have to put her back in daycare, at least part-time, when I start working again, but right now we are having an absolute blast.

Toddlers are a freaking riot.

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We interrupt your Saturday to bring you this unbelievable cuteness overload.

My mom & sister managed to get Cate’s hair in pigtails back in July, but she hated it so much that it was really a three-person job, and I never had the nerve to try it by myself. Her hair has grown a lot since then, so I thought I’d try it today, and she didn’t freak out nearly as much as I expected. I think this might be the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

Now I just have to get her bangs trimmed. They’re starting to hang into those beautiful blue eyes of hers, and I can’t have that.

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Guess what I did yesterday?

I like that caption, “I Made Freedom Count.” Made me laugh when they gave me the sticker.

North Carolina has early voting, which is pretty cool. I headed over while Cate was napping, since Dave was working from home. I had read all kinds of nightmare stories about long waits, screwy voting machines, whatever, so I went into it with great hesitancy. And really, it was totally undramatic. The wait was about 20 minutes, which was nothing (I had brought a book with me, so it went by quickly). North Carolina uses paper ballots, so no worries about computer glitches. And… yeah. That was it. Nothing to it, really. But it felt really good to fill in that bubble next to “Obama/Biden.”

[/end political talk]
Back to the toddler updates: we seem to have entered the Age of Elmo. I knew it was coming eventually - it seems to hit every toddler at some point - but it officially started yesterday. We were playing with Jillian, the little girl next door, and she had various Sesame Street characters on her sweatshirt. Cate pointed at Elmo and said, “MELMO!” Later when I was changing her diaper, she noticed Elmo on her diaper and said “Melmo, melmo, melmo!” It’s kind of weird since she only watches Sesame Street maybe once or twice a week at the most, but I’ve heard stories about how Elmo has sort of a magical gravitational pull on kids this age, so I’m not really surprised.

Today I took Cate with me to Target, and she started to have a total meltdown about halfway through the store. She wouldn’t ride in the cart, she wouldn’t walk, she didn’t want the Cookie Bribe, she didn’t want her sippy cup, she just wanted me to carry her, but when I did, she kept squirming because I wasn’t holding her at exactly the angle she wanted to be held. (Have you ever tried to hold a 28-pound toddler while pushing an overloaded shopping cart with one hand? It’s challenging.) Finally as I was making my way past the toy section, I spotted some Sesame Street toys. I grabbed a small Elmo doll, showed it to her, and it was like someone magically replaced my child with a new, happier model. For the rest of our trip, she walked happily through the store, holding onto “Melmo” and talking to him. I was thinking that I would just use the doll to distract her until we were done shopping, but I ended up buying it for her. Elmo only cost $5, and I figured it was worth it since he made her so happy.

Also: I really have to start bringing my camera outside with me more often. Cate is completely enamored with the older girls in the neighborhood, and the feeling is obviously mutual. Yesterday there were three girls serenading Cate with “Row Row Row Your Boat” over and over again to make her dance. And she did. For ages. They try to invent little games with her - they’ll say “ready, set,” which Cate knows is her cue to scream “GO!” and then they all fall down. It is seriously, seriously funny.

A few minutes ago, two of the girls, Rebecca and McKenzie (both of them are in the third grade, so they’re about 8-ish, I think?) knocked on the door to see if Cate could come out to play. I told them that she’s napping, but I’ll bring her out as soon as she wakes up.

In case I haven’t said it already: I love it here. I’m so happy that we moved when we did. I love this neighborhood, I love this house, I love that there’s a Super Target only a couple of miles from us, and I absolutely adore that there are so many kids around for my girl to play with. We are having so. much. fun.

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So, that happened. Lesson learned: don’t antagonize the evangelicals.

I’m starting to think that there really is no point to these conversations at all. It’s not as though I’m going to change anyone’s mind, any more than they’re going to convert me into a Scripture-quoting, pro-life, anti-gay, right-wing conservative. It’ll never happen. So why bother discussing it? Both sides are equally convinced that they’re correct in their thinking, so even trying to have a reasonable “hey, have you ever considered it from this angle?” conversation usually just devolves into name-calling and nastiness.

I mean, thank God I’m not Dooce and don’t have nearly the number of hateful commenters that she had when she wrote about abortion. Still, y’all should’ve seen my website statistics over the weekend. If only our economy would have such a spike in numbers.

The funny thing is, all the conversation did was make me realize that I’m actually far more to the left than I thought I was. I used to think of myself as fairly moderate, but the more I look at the way that the Republican party is going, the more it’s repelling me in the opposite direction. This year is the first time I’ve registered to vote as a Democrat rather than an Independent. If the Republican party keeps moving in the direction that it is, catering to its evangelical base and trying to legislate morality, by 2012 I’ll probably be a full-on Socialist.

As for the religion issue, I just want to end with a couple of things that I don’t think are all that controversial. First, a friend linked me to a blog post called The Politics of Jesus, which I thought was interesting. And unbelievably neutral toward both liberal and conservative viewpoints. Seriously, go read it. You won’t be offended no matter which side of the aisle you’re on. (Well, you probably won’t. Some people - not naming names - look for excuses to be offended at every turn, and there’s just nothing I can do about that.)

Second, my favorite quote from the late, great Kurt Vonnegut:

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. ‘Blessed are the merciful’ in a courtroom? ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

Ok, maybe not the most relevant quote, but you have to admit, he makes a good point.

Third, just to totally lighten the mood: a guy that I went to high school with created a blog a few years ago that I’ve been meaning to link to, and I just never could find a way to work it into the conversation. It’s called Crummy Church Signs, and it is friggin’ HIGH-larious. (Example: “Stop, Drop & Roll Doesn’t Work in Hell”.) Joel himself is a really good Christian guy, he just happens to have a wicked sense of humor when it comes to this stuff. Seriously, some of his captions make me laugh until my eyes water. Hope y’all read and enjoy.

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Hey, does anyone want to lighten the mood with a chorus of “Row Row Row Your Boat”? Yes? I thought so.

Apologies for my singing.

She kind of spaced out near the end because she saw the kids next door playing outside and she wanted to go join them. Still, I love when she throws in her own little “row row row”s. She did it for my parents on the phone last night and cracked them up. I’m starting to really enjoy this age.

(Btw, anyone else’s kids want to wear their coats ALL the time, even when inside? Just mine? I don’t get it, she isn’t cold, I think she just likes the color and the way it feels.)

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