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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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I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this or not, but my job back in Seattle technically moved out here with me. As in, they still consider me one of their freelance employees. But because my projects were all tech writing assignments for Microsoft, I don’t qualify for the projects where I might be required to go on-site. Which sadly, is… well, most assignments. It’s not like I can just hop in my car and be there in 15 minutes, right? So I haven’t had any work from them since sometime around June.

The move hit us pretty hard financially, so I’m now looking for another job to help us make up the difference. I know I don’t have to, we’d be ok in a few months either way, but I really miss using my brain every day. I’m overdosing on Noggin here. (I think when you form an opinion about whether you prefer Joe or Steve on “Blue’s Clues,” you’ve probably been watching it too much.) (And for what it’s worth, I like Joe, but Dave prefers the episodes with Steve.) So now I’m spending a whole lot of time browsing job sites. Which is a bit of a time-sucker.

And I feel guilty saying this, but I’m actually looking forward to Cate going to daycare again. She’s much happier when she gets to run around and play with other kids (and the energy she burns at daycare really seems to help with her sleeping, because she conks out), and I’m much more patient when I get a break from her, even if it’s just for a couple of hours.

Of course, everything you see on the news about the economy is not so great, so it’s entirely possible that my job hunting will prove useless and won’t turn up anything. And really, we’ll be ok if I don’t get a job. I’m just kind of hoping that I do.

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Ok for real, how long does it take a toddler to get on a normal sleep schedule after a huge event like moving to a new house? Because we are seriously about to lose our minds here.

Cate seems to think that midnight is her new bedtime. And she can’t fall asleep on her own at all, we have to cuddle with her until she’s sound asleep, then quietly transfer her to her crib. Same goes for naptime during the day. I’m so tired that I’m having trouble finishing a train of thought or even a full sentence.

I know I said that I was going to wait on letting her cry it out, but sometime after midnight the other night, I gave up. We had cuddled with her on the couch for over an hour, we had tried lying in bed with her in between us, and nothing was working. So I put her in her crib, turned on her Baby Mozart CD, and left the room. She was standing up in her crib wailing for me, and I walked out and closed the door. Way to feel heartless. Then I lay down next to Dave in our bed and cried. I felt completely helpless, and totally incompetent as a mother. She only cried for maybe 10 or 15 minutes before she fell asleep, but it was awful.

(For the record, I know I’m not incompetent. These are just the thoughts you have when you’re exhausted in the middle of the night.)

Last night ended up working out rather well. Cate had only taken a 20-minute nap yesterday (no fun for mama, I assure you), so she collapsed at the not-quite-but-almost-normal time of 9:45. And she didn’t make a peep until after 8:30 this morning. So that was lovely.

But this had better not mean that she’s weaning herself off of naps altogether. My mom says that my brother and I both stopped napping when we were about 18 months old. (We were sleeping 12 hours a night, so we were getting enough sleep, but we were done with naps totally.) And right now, naptime is the only time of day that I get any productive work done around the house, so I’m not ready to give it up just yet.

Speaking of which, I have seriously got to get back to work. My current job has sort of dried up lately, they haven’t had a new project for me since June, and I am not cut out to be a full-time stay-at-home mom. Also, judging by the way Cate explodes with utter glee anytime the neighbor kids are outside, I think she misses being able to play with other kids on a regular basis too. So I’m going to be looking for some more part-time work-from-home tech writing gigs. I think it’ll be good for everyone.

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Sorry to leave the barf story at the top for so long, I hope nobody was too grossed out. I’ve been trying to think of something to blog about, so here’s the latest on What We’re Doing:

House Stuff:
1. I think I mentioned that my realtor’s husband might be a teensy bit unreliable when it comes to helping us with our home improvements? Well, he gave me at least five different dates for when he expected he would be done with everything, and not only did he miss every single deadline (self-imposed deadlines, I might add! It wasn’t me asking him to have it done by X date, he was the one making empty promises!), but 90% of the time, he never even showed up. So whatever, we’re done with him. I still like Renee (our realtor) and I know that she’s been mortified by all of this because she’s been in the hospital having her spleen removed (stupid horse with its giant powerful stupid hooves) and she hasn’t been able to keep up with what’s going on with us. So I called our contractor guy to come give us an estimate to finish up the job that Scott didn’t do, and we’ll consider this a lesson learned about mixing friends and business. This is also why you shouldn’t pay people for work in advance. (Don’t ask. Just don’t.)

[Oh, have I ever told y'all that our contractor guy's name is Paul Newman? He spells his last name slightly differently, but it cracks me up. The first time he called me and said "hi, this is Paul Newman," I thought it was a prank call. (I knew his name was Paul, I didn't know his last name.) I always have the urge to ask him what it was like to work with Robert Redford, or how the salad dressing is coming along, or something completely stupid like that. But my guess is that he's been hearing those jokes for the last 30+ years, so I try to leave it alone.]

2. I also talked with a guy who owns a power-washing company about getting the deck and siding power-washed, so the house will look all shiny and spiffy. He’s working on an estimate for us too. We actually rented a power-washer from Home Depot, got it here, then figured out that it was waaaay too big a job for Dave and me to tackle on our own. So we’re calling in the pro’s.

Work Stuff:
My current project is turning into a huge pain in the butt, but it’s fine. I’m going to end up with a whole lot of billable hours, and I really can’t complain about that.

Baby Stuff:
Nothing really to report, just that she’s awesome and hilarious and we’re having so much fun right now. Oh, and this:

(The camera adds ten pounds, shut up.)

Other Stuff:
Dave and I will be celebrating our three-year anniversary a week from tomorrow (the 15th). I’ve made that our target date for listing the house on the market, so we’ll see how that works out.

And a week after our anniversary, the new Indiana Jones movie comes out. I’ve already talked to Patsy about baby-sitting (she sometimes does after-hours stuff for extra money) so Dave and I can have our anniversary date night then. I can’t wait.

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Work is picking up the pace, and things are about to get super hectic for the next few weeks. This is a good thing, since I’m generally enjoying what I do, and the Home Improvement Fund needs some serious donations so we can get this house ready to go on the market by spring.

I’ve already arranged for Cate to start going to daycare every weekday to accomodate the new crazy schedule. It’s funny, I used to think how I would hate to have her in daycare five days a week, and now I don’t even bat an eye. I think it’s mostly because she loves Patsy so much, she has so much fun there with the other kids, and she almost always comes home in a great mood. Sort of kills the Mommy Guilt right there, you know?

Oh, also, I think Cate might already have found her first boyfriend. There’s a new little boy going to daycare at Patsy’s house. His name is Mason, he’s 18 months old, and he’s just about the cutest little boy I’ve ever seen. (Except yours, of course, if you have one.) Patsy said that the other day, Cate was playing with a toy, and Mason walked over and stroked Cate’s hair. She smiled and seemed to like it. Then Mason noticed that Patsy was watching, so he got embarassed and walked away. How adorable is that?

Yesterday at pick-up time, Patsy showed me a picture she had taken of Mason and Cate playing together. There was going to be some sort of preschool/childcare fair at one of the churches here, and she wanted my permission to use the picture on her booth to help her drum up some business. I told her it was fine, of course. Heck, I think I might have to sneak my camera in there someday to try to get a picture of them together too.

In other news: four days from now, my baby is going to be one year old. I cannot begin to tell you how weird that feels. I could almost swear that we just got her home from the hospital few weeks ago.

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Hey, wanna hear about a fun part of my job that I didn’t really think about when I signed on?

So, I make these pretty little presentations, and the accompanying script that the presenter would read. I honestly enjoy that part. Playing with PowerPoint can be a lot of fun when you start fooling around with custom animations and stuff like that.

But then - THEN! - after that’s all done, I get to make an audio recording of myself reading the presentation so that any potential presenters can listen to it and get an idea for context and flow. Now, why anyone would need this, I have no idea. You’d think that they could just read the script and understand how to speak it. My guess is that it’s for the non-native English speakers, who might need some assistance. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, there just happen to be a lot of non-native English speakers in my chosen industry.)

And oh my lord, I haaate doing this. As soon as I start talking into my little microphone, my mouth dries up and I feel like I’m talking with a mouthful of cotton. And I loathe the sound of my own voice when it’s recorded. Heck, I didn’t even record the outgoing message on our home voicemail. I made Dave do it.

Also? I talk really fast. So the presentation is supposed to be an hour long, and when I did my initial read-through of it, it was barely 30 minutes. So I have to go back and do it again and focus on talking more s-l-o-w-l-y.

Oy. Hate.

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1. My mom is having her lumpectomy a week from tomorrow (December 4th).

2. I think I’ve been more worried about my mom than I’ve been letting on, because I’ve been grinding my teeth in my sleep. As a result, my jaw is killing me, and ibuprofen isn’t touching it. I’m not sure what to do about that, short of sleeping with a bite guard in my mouth (sex-ay!).

3. Work is slowing down. I’ve finished all of my projects, so I’m just working on edits right now. Which is kind of nice, since the in-laws arrive next week and I don’t want to be frazzled with work stuff while they’re here.

4. Cate has been doing all kinds of new, groovy tricks lately, but I’m saving them for her 10-month birthday tomorrow. Finally you’ll have a blog post worth reading.

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