Category Archives: Friends & Family

Mother's Day weekend recap

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Mother’s Day at our house was kind of a non-event. Dave forgot that it was Mother’s Day, I guess because he doesn’t notice any sort of advertising on TV, radio, or the Internet. He felt bad about it, but it really isn’t that big a deal to me. I got to spend a good portion of the day playing with Cate, and that made me happy.

Mother's Day happy girl

(I also shot a bunch of videos, which you can see here if you feel so inclined. I don’t want to be the annoying blogger who embeds a YouTube video of her kid in every single entry.)

We also spent a good portion of the weekend cleaning, which was not so fun. The carpet cleaners came today, so we had to make sure that the floors were cleared off so they could do their thing. You might think that I would gripe and grumble about cleaning the house on Mother’s Day, but the truth of the matter is that since it got me feeling a tiny bit closer to having our house ready to sell, I didn’t mind it one bit. It felt really good, and since Dave was feeling guilty about forgetting Mother’s Day, he helped a lot, which was really nice.

Um, that’s not to imply that Dave is ordinarily unwilling to help with housework. He does the dishes for me almost every night, he’s really great with a lot of the day-to-day stuff. But things like cleaning out our closet and sorting through which of our books we should keep and which ones to trade in at the second-hand bookstore? Yeah, that’s not really his scene. But he did it, and I’m very grateful.

Besides, cleaning out the closet led us to dig up this gem from one of Dave’s old Halloween costumes.

Cate wearing a Bill Clinton wig

It’s a baby in a Bill Clinton wig! You don’t see that every day, now do you?

So yeah, we had fun. And I suppose I should write something really profound about motherhood and how great it is, but… meh. I’ve written about that a few times already, so there’s probably no need for it. And right now, I have to go try to put our furniture back into its proper place and make sure the cats don’t pee on the carpet again until this house has a “sold” sign out front.

how to ruin a Saturday night

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Best-friend Kris’s birthday was earlier this week, and she wanted to get everyone together for dinner last night to celebrate. She started planning it weeks ago. A bunch of us were supposed to meet up at a Japanese restaurant in Lynnwood, which is close to where she & her boyfriend Tony live, but it’s about 25 miles from us. Normally a drive like that would be enough to make me flake out, but you know, special occasion, best friend, and all that.

Dave and I did a lot of work on the house yesterday, and Dave hurt his back lifting too many heavy boxes, so he had decided to stay home. He offered to keep Cate at home with him, but Kris had specifically requested that I bring Cate along, since it’s been ages since she’s seen her. I told Dave that it was fine, I’d bring her with me, I’d just take Dave’s car, since it has the flip-down DVD player for the backseat, and I thought that might help keep Cate happy for such a long drive. (Cate’s normally fine in the car, but we rarely go for drives longer than ten or fifteen minutes.)

So I loaded up the diaper bag with snacks and toys for the restaurant, grabbed her “My Friends Tigger & Pooh” DVD, and we set off. About halfway there, she started to get fussy, but I thought it was just because she was tired of being in the car. She wasn’t overly distraught or anything, she was just mildly crying off and on.

At this point I should back up and explain that I always had terrible motion sickness when I was little, and Dave still can’t so much as read a map in the car without getting nauseous. So the kiddo definitely has a genetic predisposition toward carsickness, I just didn’t think about it before this. And it really didn’t occur to me that maybe watching the damn DVD player (a stationary object while you’re in a moving object) might make her sick.

When we were about three miles from the restaurant, I heard an “urp” followed by the sound of liquid splashing. I turned around just in time to see Cate barf the contents of her lunch all over herself. She heaved a few more times just for good measure.

I, predictably, freaked. I pulled over in the first parking lot I could find, and I stripped her barf-soaked clothes off of her, getting quite a bit all over myself in the process. (And oh god, the smell. It was awful.) I cleaned her and the car seat up the best that I could with the baby wipes in the diaper bag. (Of course I didn’t have any extra clothes or towels or anything with me.) Cate was absolutely hysterical by this point, so she and I sat in the backseat of the car with the engine running (and the heat cranked up to “high,” since she was almost naked) for about 10 minutes until she calmed down.

I finally got her to drink a little bit of water from her sippy cup, which I think helped a little bit, and I was able to put her back in the carseat and head home. She conked out and slept most of the way home.

carsickness: 1. Mama's planning ahead with extra clothes & supplies: 0.

Thankfully, Kris was very understanding when I called her to tell her what had happened. And Cate and I were both showered and in our PJ’s – and the car seat cover was in the washing machine – before 7:30 p.m. Yeah, I tell you, this motherhood gig sure does leave room for some wild and crazy times.

more gravelly fun

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Not much to report here, really. This cold is still kicking my butt, and I’m spending an awful lot of time in a Sudafed-induced haze. Which is unfortunate, since my work project suddenly started and I’m supposed to hit the ground running and start writing about a subject I’m totally unfamiliar with. And studying documentation while all fogged up on over-the-counter cold meds? Not so easy, as it turns out.

But this afternoon, for a couple of hours, the weather was beautiful, the fog on my brain briefly lifted, and the three of us sat in the driveway to revel in the joy that is playing with rocks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNJ6CPWYf7I

I love how Cate is so serious about sorting her little pebbles, and how she’ll stick her hand out – not to give us one of her rocks, mind you, but just to show it to us briefly and then take it right back.

We also went for a walk, and found out that one of our neighbor’s horses is clearly familiar with toddlers, because he leaned his head over the fence and licked the snack tray on her stroller. Funny, yes, but also really gross. Surprisingly, Cate was not at all freaked out by the giant horse face looming only a few inches in front of her. She just laughed and laughed at him. Pretty awesome.

She was totally indifferent about the chickens, though. Can’t really blame her. They don’t do much of anything that’s super-interesting to watch.

another reason to dislike farm animals

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I know I’ve mentioned before that our realtor and her husband have been helping us out with a lot of our home improvements. Mostly the yardwork – Renee and I made a couple of trips to our local hardware store together and bought all sorts of plants, and she made a very pretty little flower bed in front of our house. (For those of you who’ve seen my house: you know the place where the weeds used to be? There are actual, real plants there now! They’re going to have pretty little flowers on them and everything! I know!) Anyway, it’s been a tremendous help and they’ve just been awesome.

Last week, Renee and I emailed each other a couple of times, and she said they were going to come over on Saturday to work on the yard. Then Friday night, Scott (Renee’s husband) called and said that Renee was in the hospital. She works with horses a lot, and while she was at the stables on Friday afternoon, her friend’s horse kicked her. So she has a few broken ribs, a punctured lung, and her spleen was bleeding. Um, holy crap?!

Scott wanted to let me know that he’d still be over to work on the yard on Saturday, but it’d just be him, not Renee. Which, dude! Priorities! I told him that if he needed to hang out with his wife in the hospital, of course that was fine, but Renee is pretty hardcore and I’m guessing she told him to get his butt over here and get some yardwork done. (Scott is a bit… hmm, how to say it nicely? He sometimes tends to be a little unmotivated.)

Yesterday, I left Cate with Dave at home and I went to visit Renee in the hospital. She seemed to be doing pretty well, and they’re probably going to let her go home in a couple of days. She was really lucky, because the horse could’ve gotten her in the spine or the kidneys, and things would’ve been much worse. Still, it just kind of reinforced why we only have cats. There’s only so much damage a 12-pound animal can do, you know?

And not that it’s a huge issue when your friend is hurt, but obviously this is going to put another crimp in our moving plans. Renee is going to be immobile for a while, so I don’t think she’s going to be able to do any more yardwork for us. Looks like we’re going to have to call in an actual landscaper, which is fine. I kind of figured we’d have to do that at some point anyway. (The blackberry bushes around the perimeter of our house are going to need some professionals to cut them back; those thorns will slice you to ribbons if you’re not careful.) I just hope Renee will be up for her basic realtor stuff soon, because I really want her to get the commission for our house, rather than a stranger.

more pics and videos (as usual)

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This is going to be short because Cate is (finally!) asleep, and I’m right behind her. But first, I got all of the pictures from our trip to Raleigh online here.

My favorite picture of Cate and Elizabeth

Seriously, how cute are those two girls? Couldn’t you just bite both of them?

Also, earlier tonight I filmed a very quick video of Cate (about 1 minute long).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sELHeDhbidQ

We learned at Christmas that she loves musical greeting cards, so my parents send her musical cards for pretty much every occasion. This latest one is for Easter, and it plays “Disco Duck” (naturally). Her little boogie cracks me up every time.

Raleigh Recap

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We just got back from what feels like a whirlwind trip to North Carolina, and we’re all completely exhausted. We had such a great time, I don’t even know where to start. It’s so pretty there, and Dave really liked it too, so it looks like we’re all on board with the idea of moving there. Yay! So now all we need to do is finish the work on our house and (this is the tricky part) actually sell the damn place, and we’ll be on our way.

It was so much fun to get to visit with Cat and Tony, and it was an absolute riot watching Cate interact with e-baby. She surprisingly didn’t freak out at e-baby’s signs of affection; maybe because she’s a girl, maybe because Cate instinctively knew she was family, who knows. But it was totally easy, and Cate had a great time playing with her little cousin. It’s going to be so much fun watching them grow up together, I cannot wait.

Other weekend stuff:
* Househunting was great because we found some neighborhoods that we really liked, and Tony’s realtor friend was fantastic. Of course, most likely nothing that we saw this weekend will still be on the market when it’s time for us to move, but at least we have a pretty good idea of where we’re going to want to focus when we start searching for real.

* We got to have dinner with two of my friends from college, which was awesome. I don’t see or talk to them nearly enough, so I always forget how much I just adore them and how much fun they are until I see them again. But it was great, and I look forward to living closer to them so we can hang out more often.

* Oh, the southern food. Fried okra, hush puppies, yum. And did you know that there are Chick-Fil-A’s in North Carolina? And there aren’t any on the west coast? We didn’t have the chance to stop at one, so poor Dave has yet to experience the joy and wonder that is Chick-Fil-A. He was all, “Is it like KFC?” Oh, sweetie, it’s just so much better, you have no idea.

* The flights sucked, as it always does when you spend more than six hours on an airplane. But thankfully, none of the flights were nearly as bad as I was anticipating. Which is not surprising, since my anxiety level was pretty much focused on the absolute worst case scenario. Cate did amazingly well, and several passengers commented on what a good baby she was. In case you were wondering, this is my highly imaginative technique: pack tons of snacks, a variety of small toys, a portable DVD player for cartoons, and when all else fails, a half-dose of children’s Benadryl won’t hurt. There you have it.

raleigh trip

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We’re leaving for our trip to Raleigh tomorrow, and I’m experiencing a combination of excitement and dread right now.

The excitement is because I know that getting to spend time with Cat, Tony & e-baby is going to be so much fun. Also, Dave and I finally get to check out the area and make sure it’s really where we want to live. We’re spending most of Saturday with a realtor, and I’m really looking forward to that.

The dread: I’m not a good flyer to begin with, and flying with a 13 month-old makes it about a hundred times more stressful. Also, this trip means that the reality of moving is starting to sink in, along with all the details that go with it. Finishing the home improvements, listing the house on the market, praying for a buyer, packing, dealing with the million little details that are involved in any move and oh my lord I need to go lie down.

Other factors on my Stress List:
1. Making sure that everything is packed. When we went to Mississippi for Christmas, I packed Dave’s stuff for him, and I think I’ll probably do that again this trip. He tends to pack about 20 minutes before we need to leave for the airport, and I cannot begin to tell you how much that drives me crazy. I like to have everything packed the night before. Since I’m already packing for both me and Cate, what’s one more person?
2. I’m trying to get the house clean, because we’re going to have a friend stopping by to check on the cats while we’re gone, and you know I can’t have people in my house when it’s messy.
3. A dozen other tiny things on my to-do list that, trust me, y’all don’t really care about.

Earlier this week, Cate woke herself up coughing. I heard her on the baby monitor and panicked. She cannot, CANNOT get sick right before we have to fly 3,000 miles across the U.S. But last night I noticed just the faintest bit of white on her gums where her top two teeth are starting to break through, so I think that’s the reason for the coughing. Or at least I hope so.

Everybody cross your fingers that we have a totally dull, uneventful flight tomorrow.