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This was an actual conversation tonight at bathtime.

Me: Hey Catie, did you have fun at daycare today?
[Note: I ask her this probably half a dozen times in the evening, because each time she tells me about a different part of her day.]

Catie: Yeah. I kissed a boy.

Me: What? You kissed a boy? Which boy?

Her: Um… (long pause while she tries to remember his name)… Roman.

Me: (thankful it’s a kid from her class that I know, not some random stranger-kid) Oookay. So, did you kiss Roman on the cheek?

Her: No. On the lips. And on the nose.

Me: Really?

Her: Yeah. And Miss Meeko say (mimics stern finger-wagging gesture), “You gotta stop all that kissing!”

That’s my girl. Also? Come 2022, when Catie is about 15 or so, I have a feeling that I am gonna be in for a world of trouble.

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There’s a lot that I want to write about, but I haven’t really had a chance with all of our traveling, me being sick, iffy wifi connections, and getting all caught up in Christmas celebrations.

So, merry Christmas to all of you from the Butchee-Wilkinson gang. Dave, Catie and I did a little choreographed dance just for you. No, really. It’s all for you.

My brother Chris and my sister Tracy even made a special guest appearance, which is no small feat since they’re currently in Mississippi and we’re in England.

(A big thank you to my sister for creating this. It is the greatest thing I have seen in a LONG time.)

Merry Christmas and happy holidays. Hope you all get exactly what your heart desires.

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I had an idea for a blog post in my head, but then Catie got this stuffy nose that woke her up (and hence, woke me up) no less than six times last night, and now I can’t remember what I was going to write about. So until I get a decent night’s sleep and get my brain back, here’s some other stuff that may (or might not) interest you.

First, I had a post published over on Aiming Low! It’s something that I wrote three years ago, back when we were trying to get pregnant with Catie. Anyway, I love the ladies who write over there, they are a freaking hilarious group of women, so I’m honored to have my little guest post featured as part of their Three Day Weekend series.

Second, since I have no brain today, here’s another round of “Cute Things My Kid Has Said/Done Over the Past Few Days.” With pictures!

1. The Fashion Consultant

Catie’s recently become fascinated with playing dress-up, which is something she’s typically been indifferent about in the past. She suddenly has very big opinions about what she’s going to wear each day, which is also sort of a new development. I knew this was coming eventually, but it’s still surprising when it actually happens.

And then there’s the mimicking of the things that I say. The other day, she ran her hand down my chest, and said, “Mommy, I love this shirt on you.” Like she’s my own personal Tim Gunn or something. And it’s totally the kind of thing I say to her when she gets dressed in the morning, it just sounds doubly hilarious when someone three feet tall says it back to you.

2. Halloween

This is the first year that Catie has picked out her Halloween costume. And she picked a dinosaur.

I cannot say how happy this makes me. I know that she most likely will have a princess phase, and that’s fine. I’ll deal with it when the time comes. But I’m also happy to put it off as long as possible. For now, I love that she has this balance of the super-girly – like, she adores pink and purple, she picks out clothes that have butterflies and flowers and hearts all over them – with the regular kid (or stereotypically “boy”) stuff. Like, she loves Thomas the Tank Engine, she has a weird sort of obsession with lizards, and when presented with aisles full of girly Halloween costumes – princesses, fairies, and ballerinas – she picks the dinosaur.

(FYI, the dinosaur costume looks great over yellow flowered PJs with a hot pink hat and mittens, and furry brown winter boots.)

And for those of you keeping track, last year she was a spider.

And the year before that, her first Halloween…

…she was a cat. My mom made that costume. And that picture still cracks me up to this day.

3. Social Butterfly

We’ve been going for walks to explore our new neighborhood. She likes the new playground here a lot.

It’s about ten-minute walk each way, although it’s more like 20 minutes going at a two year-old’s pace. There’s also a pool there, which is closed for the year; it’ll be fun next summer.

What amazed me was that one day when we went out for walk, we passed a group of kids (maybe 8 or 9 of them) that were playing freeze tag in their front yard. Catie ran over and said, “Hi, kids! I Catie!” And she just joined in the game. Of course she has no idea how to play freeze tag, but she ran all over the place with them and had a great time. She found two little girls (who were both a lot older than her; I’m guessing one was around 7, the other was probably 10) and she was holding their hands as they ran within about five minutes.

It’s just astounding to me, I don’t know that I was ever that brave when meeting new kids when I was little. I hope she keeps that ability and doesn’t get shy as she gets older. Because I think it’s awesome.

I think she’s pretty awesome, too. You know, not that I’m biased or anything.

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* Diet/exercise update: I’ve been doing pretty well so far. Trying not to eat at night has been about as difficult as I expected, which is to say, VERY. I’m drinking a lot more water, although I’m probably still drinking too much Diet Coke. One step at a time, people. For me, Diet Coke is more addiction than habit, so that one’s a little tougher.

My sister talked me into trying out The Daily Plate to track my calories, and I guess I should’ve expected to be appalled by the amount of junk I was eating, but it still caught me by surprise. The website has its pros & cons: it doesn’t strike me as the most user-friendly, but on the plus side, it does have pretty much every food item imaginable in the database (even menus at chain restaurants). My main gripe with it, or any type of food journal, is that it’s just tedious to keep a log of every single food item you put in your mouth. (Of course, I also see the benefit, that it makes you think twice about it when you know you’re going to have to see the calories on the screen right in your face later.) I’m still debating on whether or not I’ll use it long-term.

I’ve worked out the last three days in a row. On Friday, I did pilates. Saturday, I did the first couch-to-5K workout (which was hard, but I survived), and then today I did the Biggest Loser Weight-Loss Yoga. Tomorrow it’s back to the couch-to-5K, and so on & so forth.

* We went to Target today and it was insane. We shop there all the time, so I didn’t account for the traffic increase on Sunday afternoon. That’s a mistake I won’t be repeating. But listen, I get that it’s August in North Carolina and it’s insanely hot outside, but y’all: wearing a teeny-tiny swimsuit cover-up and a pair of flip-flops (and nothing else) is not appropriate shopping attire. What happens if you have to bend over to pick up that 12-pack of soda? Lord help us all. And I’m not talking about one person, there were many women that I thought, “oh wow, she really should’ve put on a bra before leaving the house.” I saw lots of kids running around the store barefoot too, which, eww. Yuck. Seriously? Really, really not ok. I think we needed the fashion police up at Target today, is what I’m saying.

* Catie continues to be almost 100% successful at peeing in the potty (she had an accident in her Pull-Up at Target today, but it was her first mistake in 5 days, & she was distracted by the toy aisle, so I’m overlooking it). Still no poops in the potty, but I think she’ll get to it soon. I’ve been shaking her Pull-Ups into the potty so she’ll have the visual “this is where it’s supposed to go” clue. And she’s been acting out scenes in which one of her toys poops its diaper and she tells it, “no no, poop goes in da potty!” (my favorite was when Molly, one of her Thomas the Tank Engine trains, pooped her diaper; I can’t even begin to wrap my head around how that’d work).

* Random kid funny: Last night Beaumont climbed across Catie, trying to get within head-scratching distance of me. Somehow part of his giant cat self ended up on Catie’s foot, which made her irate. She screamed at him, “No, Bun-bun! It’s MY foot! It’s Catie’s!” I can’t explain why that made me laugh for the next 10 minutes, but god, it really did.

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Isn’t that what you crazy kids call a video blog entry? Anyway, here’s mine.

I mainly got the idea for this because I wanted Dave to hear the psychotic Elmo singing, but he’s at work, so I needed a way to record it, because no way in hell am I keeping this thing in the house for Catie to find and want to play with later. Watch the video & you’ll see why.

Also, side note for those of you going to BlogHer: this might help you recognize me in the crowd. Although I’ll hopefully remember to put on some damn lipstick then.

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Since I think the mood is in dire need of lightening around here:

1. This post of Sally’s from 5 years ago. Read the comments. Had me laughing until tears ran down my face.

2. This video, no matter how many times I see it.

3. Oh, and while I’m linking videos, let’s really hope that this isn’t the house we’re buying. (Thanks, Angie. I love this one.)

4. Catie, who in the past couple of days:
4a. Has started trying to sing the alphabet song, and OMG I have to get a video of that, because it’s hilarious.

4b. Was really good at the gym’s nursery while I worked out yesterday, so as a reward we went to the pool afterward. We haven’t been to the YMCA’s pool yet this year, I forgot how nice it is. They have a “splash zone” which is basically just an area of fountains that shoot water out of the ground in various formations. Watching Catie run around sticking her hands and feet in the water was so much fun. (She never jumped into the fountains, she’s way too cautious for that. And she got pretty mad when she stuck her hand in one fountain and it splashed water in her eyes.)

4c. Bashed me in the face with the back of her head during a particularly overzealous toddler bounce and split my top lip open. When I told her that she hurt me, she wanted to kiss it to make it better, which was sweet, but my lip was gushing blood at the time, so, NO. I let her kiss my lip when I finally got the bleeding under control, and she said, “All better now?” I said, “Thank you, sweetie, but no, it still hurts.” She said, “No. It all better now.” Well, thanks for setting me straight then. Guess there’s no need for this ice pack I’m holding to my face.

4d. Got irritated with me for getting too interactive during our bedtime routine. We lie in her bed together and read books, and the Curious George alphabet book has a line about “C is for a crab with two clamping claws,” and I tried to do a crab claw and tickle her tummy. Usually she thinks that’s funny, but I guess she was particularly tired and grumpy on this night, because she pushed me away, sighed exasperatedly and said, “Mommy, go to bed.” Nice.

4e. Has started calling me “Mom” as well as “Mommy.” It’s cute because using “Mom” makes her sound like a grown-up, but I thought I’d be Mommy for a few more years. I’m not sure I like it so much.

4f. Sang “Do-Re-Mi” in the car this morning on the way to daycare. I didn’t realize that she knew all the words, but she does – complete with holding her hand to her chest during, “me, a name I call MYSELF.” It was so cute I almost cried.

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In case you missed the drama about my website last week, here’s the short version: my website went down for 3 days, and when it finally came back online, all of my data was gone. Every last entry since I started this blog 6 years ago? Gone. So I was a tiny bit distraught, as you might imagine.

While I was freaking out, I wrote about it on Twitter, and within a few minutes, I got a response from a web hosting company called PinchHost offering to help me. They’re a new company, and didn’t have much of a proven track record that I could find online, but I appreciated how fast they responded. Especially considering that the customer service at my old (then-current) web hosting company, Globat, was always somewhat lacking. It’s basically impossible to get anyone on the phone, they take an extremely long time to respond to email support tickets, and while yes, they do have support via live chat, the techs aren’t exactly helpful. Usually the only response I get is, “We’re so sorry for your inconvenience, and thank you for your patience.” Not exactly top-notch problem-solving.

But really, my main problem with Globat is the availability. They were fine when I first signed up a few years ago, but over the past year or so, my website crashed a lot, because I seemed to always be under Denial of Service attacks by spammers. So that’s my main beef with them – if you can’t keep my website running, I’ll go host it elsewhere.

Meanwhile, during that whole incident where I had no blog entries at all? I threw a temporary WordPress blog here that you might’ve seen if you happened to click over here. On it, I mentioned that my last manual backup of my website was from May 2008, hence my panic. (So all the entries about selling our house, moving to North Carolina, the holidays, Catie’s 2nd birthday? GONE.) Then the tech from PinchHost – the same guy who responded to me on Twitter – left me a comment telling me that he had gone through Google’s cache of my archives and found about 100 entries from May 2008 to now, and saved them to a zip file for me to download.

Which, DUDE. I wasn’t even a customer of his, and he did all that legwork for me? Yeah ok, they’re a new company, but with that type of customer service, I’ll take a chance on them. So I switched over yesterday, and it was basically seamless. I might be imagining it, but my website even seems to load faster now. Obviously, I am very happy with them so far.

Of course, the hard part now is cancelling my account with Globat. They’re notorious for having a crappy billing department, so I know I’m in for a fight. Example: over the past few years I’ve gotten over 100 emails from them telling me about new offers, and unless I clicked the link to opt out, they automatically charged my credit card for the upgrade, regardless of whether or not I wanted it. If I called afterward to say, “hey, you billed me for this, and I don’t want it, so give me my money back,” they’d try to hem & haw and squirm their way out of refunding me the money for a service I’m not using. So, yeah. I’ve gotta get my Don’t You Dare Try to Eff With Me, Buddy hat on and let them have it.

But the fact that I’m now basically done with them and have a cool new hosting company that actually responds to my problems promptly and seems to give a damn about my user experience? It kind of makes me feel like one of these dancers.

(If you haven’t seen that yet, you’re welcome. I’ve watched it about four times already and I smile like a moron at my computer and get all misty-eyed every time. What can I say, I’m a sucker for “The Sound of Music.”)

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