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Cate woke up yesterday with some phenomenal sneezes. You know the kind of sneezes that shoot clear across the room? Or cover the child’s entire face? Yeah, those. So apparently it’s Cold Time again. Fun fun fun.

The one perk is that she’s now old enough that when she sneezes, she doesn’t immediately try to wipe it away with her hands (thereby spreading the mess around even worse). Now she waits for me to come running with a tissue. She’s trying to figure out how to blow her nose when I hold up the tissue, but… yeah. Not so much with that milestone just yet. We’re working on it, though.

I’m a little brain-dead from dealing with a sick kiddo, but here: this article is kind of fascinating. I’ve never really understood why some Americans (um, mostly Republicans, I think) are so anti-France, but most of their system sounds pretty good to me.

I should probably do a political post at some point and expand on my thoughts about our American government and the upcoming election, but I think I’ll save it for when I’m a little more coherent. Good night, y’all.

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I don’t really know how to sum up our weekend, so here are some of the 100 or so pictures we took.

First, Cate got some new toys from my parents that she really, really loved.

And she was generally loved on by everyone.

The musicians in our family kept us entertained.

We also had a playdate with Cat, Tony & Elizabeth.

Later, we went out for dinner, where my sister took this fantastic picture of Cat & Elizabeth.

The girls sat in their booster chairs next to each other and were pretty well-behaved for the entire meal.

More than any other activity this weekend, though, Cate ran in circles playing peekaboo with everyone. It kept us all laughing, and made her hysterically happy, so that worked out well.

It was a good weekend. (You can see the whole set here if you want.)

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If you read my cousin Cat’s blog, you know that they’re doing a massive house renovation and expansion to make room for baby #2 (arriving in February!). So to keep themselves from having their daily routines disrupted - and to keep e-baby from trampling through construction dust every day - they’ve moved into an apartment for the next three months.

Today was moving day, so Dave, Cate and I headed over to help. In the middle of a tropical storm. I’m not kidding; Hanna blew through here this morning, and we had some really crazy winds and pouring rain. The good news is that it cleared up by early afternoon, so we didn’t get too terribly soggy.

Cat hired a baby-sitter who took both girls to the children’s museum for a few hours. (The original plan had been a playground, but the rain sort of ruled that out.) Poor thing, she’s a teenager and after trying to wrangle two toddlers in a very crowded public place, we’ve probably put her off the idea of ever having kids. If I had half a brain, I would’ve just brought the sitter and e-baby over here to our house; they could’ve been indoors with easy access to snacks, TV, and whatever else they needed. Unfortunately I didn’t think of it until after the fact, but I guess we’ll know next time. In any case, it was nice to have a break so the grown-ups could get the moving done. I think they’re mostly settled at the new place now, and we got a little unpacking done too.

So it was a fun, although pretty tiring, day. And I still get such a kick out of watching Cate and Elizabeth play together. They seem to be noticing each other more and more - I wouldn’t exactly call it interacting at this point, but there’s definitely some interest there. And Cate’s picking up on more words and signs from being around another kid who talks and signs so much, which is pretty neat.

That reminds me: Cate now seems to understand threats. Last night I was sitting next to her crib waiting for her her to fall asleep (still doing the sleep-training thing), and she was squirming and chatting and not settling down. Finally, I said, “Catie, you need to go night-night right now or mama is gonna go bye-bye.” She said “noooo!”, but almost immediately lay down and went to sleep. I know it’s kind of mean to threaten abandonment, but it’s really a nice trick to have in my arsenal.

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Apparently Cate’s love of the YMCA drop-in daycare was a one-time occurrence. Today I tried to go to a morning yoga class. Operative word there is tried. I got through the first twenty minutes of the class before one of the daycare ladies came to get me because Cate wouldn’t stop screaming.

My theory is that the first time we went to the daycare, there were only a couple of other kids there, and today the room was packed full of toddlers, which was probably overwhelming for her. Also, the last time it was both Dave and me dropping her off, which may have diffused some of her tension about freaking anytime mommy is out of her line of sight. But really, who knows?

The ladies in charge of the daycare were super-nice, and encouraged me to just hang out with her in the room (I had time, obviously, since my class had been cut short) so Cate could play and kind of get used to the other kids. And they encouraged me to keep trying, because they said that a lot of times it takes a while for kids to adapt to the new environment. After about 5 or 10 minutes of me being there with her, she was fine, running around and having fun.

There’s an aerobic dance class tomorrow (cardio-funk, holla!), and I’m thinking about getting there a half hour or so early so I can just hang out with her in the room until it’s time for my class. We’ll see how it goes.

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Yesterday, a few things happened that made me decide that it was time to start transitioning Cate to going to sleep on her own again.

1. I realized that we’ve been here for three weeks, which seems like a long enough time that she should be somewhat familiar and comfortable with her bedroom.
2. She only took a 15-minute nap (in the car on the way home from Target; she woke up when I was trying to move her from her car seat to her crib), so I knew she’d be too tired to put up much of a fight.
3. The previous two nights, she had woken up at some point in the middle of the night and spent the remainder of the night in between Dave and me in our bed, and that was like a flashback to her sleeping patterns when she was 10 months old, and we are not going back to that routine, no ma’am, no way.

So when she was obviously starting to fade at around 6:00 (remember, virtually no nap), I gave her a lightning-quick bath, put on her pj’s, and gave her a cup of milk. She fell asleep on her sippy cup, so I tried to quietly move her to her crib. As soon as her head touched the mattress, she woke up and started to scream. This is normally when I’d retrieve her, put her in our bed, wait for her to go back to sleep, then try to move her crib again. And lather, rinse, repeat until I finally managed to get her in bed without waking her.

Instead, this time I sat on the floor next to her crib, reached my arm through the slats to rub her legs, and talked very calmly to her about how much Mommy & Daddy love her, and I know she doesn’t like this, but it’s time to go night-night in her own bed like a big girl. She was standing up, biting on the crib railing and shrieking like her life depended on it. (I tried standing next to the crib so I could reach over and rub her back, but she grabbed my neck and tried to climb up me, so I figured that sitting next to her was better. But from that angle, the only part of her I could reach to rub reassuringly were her legs. Which, you know, whatever works, right?) I turned on her Baby Einstein lullaby CD, figuring that the music could only help her calm down - and if nothing else, it helped drown out the screaming.

She stood up in her crib and screamed for probably the first 20 minutes or so. Then she sat down and screamed for another 10 or 15 minutes. She spent the next several minutes sitting and just staring into space, tear-stained cheeks and pouty bottom lip. Finally her eyelids started to get heavy and she started swaying back and forth from the weight of her head wanting to nod off. A few minutes of that and she finally flopped forward with her head as close to the crib slats as possible. I kissed the top of her head through the slats, rubbed her back for a few minutes until I knew she was all the way asleep, and then left the room.

Of course, because she crashed before 7:00 p.m. and she’s used to going to bed around midnight, she woke up a little over an hour later. So after a diaper change and another cup of milk, we had to do it all over again. It sucked, and it took just as long, if not longer, to settle her down the second time. And I have marks on my forearms from reaching them through the crib slats as far as possible.

The thing is, even though not swooping in to pick her up when she cries goes against every single protective Mommy Instinct that I have, I know this is for the best. It’s not stressing me out like it did when we left her to cry it out. I mean, yes, she’s still screaming a lot, but I’m sitting right there next to her, comforting her as best I can without picking her up. She might not like it right now, but I don’t worry about her developing any abandonment issues since I’m sitting right there next to her the whole time.

Now I just have to commit to sticking with this, so I can get her back into the habit of going to sleep on her own.

Today, though, I loaded Cate into the stroller and walked to the grocery store, since it’s less than a ten-minute walk, and lord knows I need the exercise. We only needed a few things - enough that it would easily fit in the little storage compartment under the stroller. So we went and had fun, and Cate fell asleep in the stroller on the way home. I decided to just move the stroller into the dining room where I can keep an eye on her and let her take her nap there. No point in waking her up just to move her to her crib and do the 45-minute screamfest again. You have to pick your battles, right?

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Cate is 19 months old today. I feel like I need to write a milestone recap, but at the same time, I think I’ve been writing an awful lot about her lately and how she’s been coping (or not) with the move. So instead, just a few quick & random funnies:

* She’s starting to put words together to make complete thoughts, which is pretty awesome. Like, when Dave picked her up and she wasn’t in the mood to be picked up, she said, “No no no! Go down!” And yesterday, I was buckling her into her car seat so we could go to the grocery store, and it was drizzling. She said, “Mommy, wa-wa!” I’m not sure if she was saying, “hey mommy, look at the water [rain]!” Or she might’ve been pointing out that mommy was getting covered in water, which I was. Either way, she was accurate and it was pretty cool.

* I mentioned a while ago the story about how Cate said “doggy” over and over when getting out of the bathtub, and I thought it was just some sort of imaginary play? Well, she’s been doing it every night after her bath, and she usually points at some empty space on the bathroom wall when she’s saying “doggy.” I couldn’t figure it out - imagination? a spot on the wallpaper that looks like a dog? can she hear one of the neighbors’ dogs outside?

Last night it clicked. She’s pointing at the toilet paper and saying doggy, because she loves the puppy on the toilet paper packaging. Every time she follows me into our bathroom, she always goes straight for the cellophane package of T.P. and talks to the little doggy on it. I was pretty impressed by the fact that she figured out that the roll of toilet paper on the wall comes out of the package with the puppy on it. Smart girl.

I mean, I’m not thrilled that the folks over at Kimberly-Clark Corporation have figured out how to market their products to toddlers, but you know, whatever. At least she isn’t asking me for Bratz dolls yet. (And if she ever does: sorry kiddo, no way.)

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Last week, Dave signed us up for a membership to our local YMCA. We both want to work out, plus they have a pool, and all kinds of classes (both for us and for Cate when she gets older). The gym also has a drop-in nursery, which is convenient so Dave and I can work out at the same time.

We decided to try it out last night, but based on how clingy and mommy-centric Cate’s been lately, I was fully expecting her to wig out the second we tried to leave her in the nursery. I told the ladies in charge of the nursery what part of the gym we’d be in, and we snuck out when Cate was distracted playing with some toy cars.

Dave walked on the treadmill while I did the elliptical cross-trainer, but the entire time I was working out, I kept looking around for gym employees (they wear red t-shirts, easy to spot). I was sure that they were going to come find us and tell us to collect our inconsolable, distraught toddler. They never did.

After our workout, we went back to the nursery, and although Cate was obviously really happy to see us, they said that she had been totally happy and fine the entire time. Not a single tear was shed when she realized we were gone. Huh. Whaddya know. I guess the combination of other kids plus unfamiliar toys plus pretty, young nursery attendants (have I mentioned that Cate has a fetish for teenage girls? It’s kind of hilarious) equaled one heck of a good time for her.

Oh, as for me, this was the first time I’d worked out in a gym since I was pregnant, and I am soooore today. Carrying Cate up and down the stairs is probably going to kill me before the day is over. But I’m proud of myself for doing as much as I did. Now let’s see if I keep it up.

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