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It’s been really funny to see how much of the whole Christmas thing Catie has absorbed this year. First of all, “snowman” is her new favorite word. And she has to scream “SNOWMAN!!” every time she spots one: at home, driving down the street (I’m talking lawn decor, we don’t have any snow here, so no real snowmen), in the grocery store, wherever. That was the first Christmas-oriented term she figured out, and it’s definitely her favorite.

To that end, I bought a DVD collection of old Christmas cartoons, and she is currently obsessed with Frosty the Snowman. Now, I love Frosty (the original 1969 Frosty, not that weird 90’s “Frosty Returns” thing with John Goodman - WTF was that about?), but I mainly bought this set for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Catie doesn’t care one bit about the claymation classic, she just wants Frosty. Over and over again. And I must say, I’m starting to lose my love for Frosty just a wee bit. Even though it’s awfully darn cute when she tries to sing “Hosty [her version of Frosty] the Snowman”.

She’s also learned to say reindeer (”da-deer!”) and Santa (”Tanta!”), and she’s very excited about the Christmas tree with its multi-colored lights (”bun-bows” is her word for rainbows). She even knows “candy cane,” although I’m not sure how she learned that one since she isn’t old enough to eat one yet. We do have candy canes on our Christmas tree, but still, I don’t recall making a point of teaching her the terminology.

And since her two favorite shows are the “Wonder Pets” and “My Friends Tigger and Pooh,” we’re watching the special Christmas episodes of both of those shows a lot. She gets very excited when the Wonder Pets save the baby reindeer, or when Tigger and Pooh meet Santa Claus. So it’s cool to see that it’s sinking in somewhat.

But as far as Santa Claus being the guy who brings presents at Christmas? Or any of the baby Jesus stuff? Yeah, I don’t think that’s on her radar at all. This afternoon, a clerk at Rite Aid asked her if Santa was going to come visit her, and Catie just looked puzzled. Then the clerk gave her a “ho-ho-ho!” which made her laugh, but I think it’s because she got it confused with Tigger’s “hoo-hoo-hoo!”

I imagine that next year, she’ll really understand all of the magical Santa Claus stuff, but this year she’s happy just to spot all of the various characters involved in Christmas wherever we go. And that’s fine, it’s pretty fun to see her get so excited about store decorations and things that I’d usually just breeze past without noticing. Although, I have a feeling she’s going to be really bummed when the pretty Christmas tree and its rainbow lights go away in a couple of weeks.

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My in-laws left yesterday, and we were all pretty sad to see them go. It was such a nice visit, very laid back and easy. We didn’t do a whole lot, but it was great to have them around. It’s been a blast watching Catie bond with her Grandma, giving her lots of cuddles and snuggles. And even though she’s sort of skittish around most men, she kissed her Grandpa Roger goodbye before he left. So that was cool. Plus, as I mentioned before, I know that I’ve been totally spoiled by having my mother-in-law cook breakfast and dinner nearly every day.

On Tuesday night, we had our pre-Christmas celebration. We did this last year and enjoyed it, so we did it again. We basically just do the whole big meal and gift exchange as if it was Christmas, since they won’t be here on Christmas Day. It’s pretty fun, especially since this way, we get to do Christmas twice. Mags cooked all day, the most amazing stuff that I can’t even begin to recap. I think Catie ate about two bites of the meal; meanwhile the rest of us gorged ourselves to the point that all we could do was lie around and moan. (Or was that just me? I’m not sure. The food was awesome, is my point.)

For the gift exchange, as you’d expect, all of the adults each got one or two gifts, but the focus was on Catie, who seriously cleaned up. She got some clothes, a set of bristle blocks (sort of like this, but not exactly), a toy laptop, a singing caterpillar, some Russian nesting dolls (perfect for my girl’s need to sort and organize everything), and a toy British double-decker bus that’s also a piggy bank. Oh, then she cleaned her Grandpa Roger out of all of his American coins because she needed some money to put in her piggy bank. Naturally.

(You can kind of tell in this picture that she’s still a little bit sick. Something about the droopiness around her eyes.)

Anyway, we’ve been feasting on leftovers for the past two days, and I think it’s all just about gone, so I’m going to have to start cooking again soon. Sigh. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Oh, to follow up on that last post: I made and distributed the gift bags for the neighborhood kids today. Y’all are brilliant with the $1 bin suggestion, I never would’ve thought of that. What did people do before Target? Anyway, all the kids got a bunch of Hershey’s kisses, a couple of chocolate Santa’s, and two candy canes (one peppermint, one fruity). The girls got some Hello Kitty pens in fancy colors (green, purple, red) and a little compact with three lip glosses. The boys got a Slinky and a magnetic tic-tac-toe board. I hated to make a gender distinction, and yes, the girls would’ve been fine with a Slinky and tic-tac-toe, but these girls are all serious girly-girls, and I know them well enough to know that they most likely appreciated getting different stuff than their brothers got.

Of course, they mostly just freaked out about the chocolate. I was going to add some homemade cookies or something, but I didn’t really have time. And I think adults care more about the homemade factor than kids do; the kids just see “SUGAR!!” and they’re happy. So it worked out pretty well. Now if I can just get my Christmas cards in the mail…

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First of all, I have to say that I really appreciate all of the phone calls, emails, texts, etc. from you guys while Catie was in the hospital. Seriously, y’all are so sweet. That said, I think all of you got pwned this afternoon:

Yesterday afternoon, we thought Catie was going to be staying in the hospital for a second night, so Dave had told me to go home so I could shower and get a hot meal before I came back to spend another night in the hospital. Soon after I got home, I talked to Dave on the phone and found out that Catie was being discharged. So rather than trek back across town, Dave handled the discharge stuff and I met them both at the house when they got here.

Meanwhile, Rebecca, a little girl who lives two doors down from us, knocked to see if Catie could come play, and I had to tell her that Catie was in the hospital. I knew that by telling just one kid, soon all the kids in the neighborhood would know, but I was surprised by how fast this happened.

Today, during Catie’s nap, the doorbell rang. It was Rebecca, her older brother Nick (aka Catie’s first official true love, she absolutely adores this boy), another girl from across the street (Morgan), and Jillian, the 7 year-old next door. They each were holding a present for Catie. This is the text from the handmade card that was enclosed:

Dear Katy (sp),
We love you so much that we got all of are (sp) money together and bought you some toys. Love, the [last name]’s, the [last name]’s, and the [last name]’s, and mostly Morgan and Becka. Get well soon.

Seriously, how adorable is that? They got her a little baby doll in a toy stroller, a teddy bear, and a ball with Winnie the Pooh on it. But it was the card that almost made me cry. Later, Meredith (the mom next door) came over and said that as soon as Rebecca left my house, the kids sat in her driveway and literally pooled all of their money from their piggy banks to try to make a Catie Gift Fund. She said she’s pretty sure a few parents kicked in an extra buck or two, but it was really almost entirely from the kids themselves. Oh my lord, the sweetness, it kills me.

So besides writing out thank you notes (which obviously have to be from Catie, not me and Dave), I also need to come up with Christmas gifts for about 10 kids ranging in age from 4 to 12. I’m thinking some sort of candy-oriented goody bag might be sufficient? I hope?

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An update on that last post: we’re all home now. We thought Catie was going to have to stay a second night in the hospital, but since she hadn’t needed additional oxygen support since last night, and since we have the nebulizer at home to manage her asthma symptoms, they discharged her late this afternoon. I cannot begin to tell y’all how happy I am to have my baby girl at home, and to not have to spend another night in a hospital recliner.

The main problem right now is that we have to give her an oral steroid for the swelling in her airways, and it makes her crazy hyper. So she’s running around, which in turn makes her winded, which leads us back to square one with her asthma. We (meaning me, Dave, and the grandparents) are trying to contain her movements, with limited to zero success thus far. We’re keeping cartoons on the TV in the hopes that something will catch her attention and mesmerize her into sitting still for a while.

It sucks that this happened while the in-laws are here - last year when they came to visit, we all got the flu. This year, we end up with a sick kid in the ER. I can only wonder what’ll happen when they come next year. Broken bone? Small pox outbreak? Place your bets now, we’ll see how it goes in 2009.

But on the up side, it was really nice to have two extra sets of hands around to help out with Catie, especially when she was throwing up and I needed tupperware bowls, or cool wet rags, or whatever. And it was lovely to come back from the hospital to find that the kitchen had been cleaned, there was food in the fridge, and the laundry was switched from the washer to the dryer so it wouldn’t mildew (although that last one might’ve been Dave, I’m not sure).

Here’s hoping the post-steroid crash happens sooner than later so we can all get some shut-eye. At least we’ll be in our own beds tonight, which makes everything else seem like gravy.

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Catie got sick very suddenly on Saturday night. She had been fine; we’d met up with Cat, Tony and Elizabeth that morning for brunch, and we drove around downtown Raleigh with my in-laws, and she was fine during all of that. She took a short nap in the car, then played outside with some of the neighbor kids, and was still fine.

That night, she suddenly got really irritable and she seemed a bit congested. I gave her her steroid inhaler (Pulmicort, for those of you who know asthma) to try to fend off any pending asthma attacks. It didn’t work so well. I brought her to bed with me and Dave because she was waking up every twenty minutes or so. Around 5 a.m., I noticed she was wheezing a lot. Dave gave her some albuterol through the nebulizer, then I did it when I got up with her at 10.

Two more albuterol treatments, and at least five barfs later, we called the doctor’s office because I was worried about her getting dehydrated. (Every time she threw up, it seemed to be mostly phlegm. Poor thing was too congested to keep anything down.) They told us to bring her to WakeMed’s children’s ER, so that’s what we did. We’ve now been here 22 hours and counting.

Once we got here, they gave her multiple albuterol treatments, they gave her an IV for fluids (seriously, the IV was hands-down the worst part of the whole thing; I almost cried myself, it was so awful), they gave her lots of steroids to help reduce the swelling in her airways, and they gave her some Zofran for any nausea issues (since she had barfed so many times). Then they admitted us to the pediatric wing for the night. We finally got a room around midnight. (We first arrived at the ER around 4 p.m.)

Right now, her fever is down, she’s been drinking a lot of water and juice, and (most importantly) keeping it down, plus she doesn’t seem to be wheezing at all anymore. So I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to go home today.

Sorry this post is sort of scatter-brained; I’ve barely slept the past two nights, and I’m borrowing Dave’s laptop to write this while Catie is zoning out to “Wow Wow Wubbzy” on the hospital TV. I’ll post more as things develop.

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My in-laws got here last night, and they’ll be staying with us until the 18th. Since they come all the way from England, they typically stay for a while when they come to visit. But it’s fun, since we usually only get to see them once a year. And Catie has changed so much since they saw her last December, it’s been a hoot so far. She’s kind of figured out how to say Grandma already, although “Grandpa Roger” is a mouthful and she hasn’t even attempted that one yet. She seems to have decided they’re both pretty fun people, though, since all of their attention is focused on her.

Today we went out for lunch and to buy a Christmas tree. You wouldn’t think that would take a very long time, but somehow it ate most of the day. We did manage to get the tree decorated when we got it home, which is cool, and one more thing I can cross off my to-do list.

The only downside of having the in-laws here is that I did so much cleaning beforehand that I pulled something in my back and I’ve been in unbelievable pain for the past day and a half. I don’t really have to clean that much, but you know, it’s that Southern hospitality gene of mine, I can’t have people come visit me when the house is a mess. So I overdid it, which is dumb, and now I’m popping ibuprofen like M&M’s, because this 30-pound toddler of mine won’t stop demanding that I pick her up. Oy.

Anyway, things are sort of hectic here with the company, but I’ll check in with pictures and whatnot over the next week or so.

P.S. The subject line is what Catie said when she saw the Christmas tree in our house. It’s pretty awesome when they’re so little and everything about the holidays is still magical and fun.

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Here’s my child explaining all the various animal sounds:

The dinosaur is my favorite, although I forgot to ask her about the pig in this video. She doesn’t say oink, she makes this unbelievable snorting nose that sounds like an old man snoring. It’s hysterical.

Oh, you’ll also get to see her do her “I don’t know” thing, complete with very exaggerated shoulder shrug, which never ceases to crack me up.

About halfway through, we got sidetracked into some “Wonder Pets” reference that most people probably won’t get (unless you’ve seen the episode where they save the baby kangaroo 10,000 times like we have), then she made up her own song, which… huh. Yeah. No idea where she came up with it, although I definitely heard the words “Wonder Pets” in her song, so maybe it’s her interpretation of the theme song? Who knows.

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