when Lucy met Santa

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Back in 2007, it was Catie’s first Christmas, and Dave and I had this idea (or maybe it was only my idea, I forget) to take her to get her picture taken with Santa. Because, you know, that’s what kids are supposed to do. Or something. Who knows, I barely slept the first two years of her life, I don’t really remember much.

The visit to Santa? It… didn’t go well.

Cate's not sure what she thinks about Santa
Nailed it.

And that is the last time that Catie ever sat on the lap of a professional mall Santa. She’s been terrified of the big guy ever since. She likes the videos he sends through the Portable North Pole website, but the computer monitor is as close as she’s willing to get. (Btw, that’s not a promo for that website or anything, but if you have a Santa-believing-aged child, you can send them a custom message from Santa and it’s pretty awesome. My girls love it.)

But, you know, Catie and Lucy are very different personality types. I mentioned to Lucy that we could go to the mall, and she could meet Santa in person and tell him what she wants for Christmas. She flipped out with excitement.

“I go see Tanta Ho-Ho! I sit his lap! I tell him I want a mermaid!”

(Side note: she used to call him just “Ho-Ho,” so the fact that she’s now added something that vaguely sounds like Santa is… an improvement? And I don’t know what happened to the 3rd “Ho,” you can make up your own dirty joke there.)

Anyway, yesterday we went to the mall, but of course we got there when Santa was just about to go on his lunch break.

We killed some time by going on the merry-go-round at the mall.

On the merry-go-round at the mall.
One thing they do have in common: they’d rather ride on the benches of the merry-go-round than the horses. I don’t know why.

Then, since there were already a few people in line waiting for Santa to get back from his break, we got some snacks, made a coat pile, and waited for Santa’s return.

Camped out in line eating cookies while we wait for this mall Santa to get back from his break.
Lucy: “I think Tanta Ho-Ho had to go potty.” Probably so, baby girl. Probably so.

Finally, Santa came back, and the few kids in front of us had their pictures taken while Lucy said, “It my turn yet? It my turn yet?”

When it was her turn, she marched up to him, shook his hand, told him her name, told him that she was 2 years old, and sat on his lap for a picture.

when Lucy met Santa

The funny thing is that while she was totally cool with meeting Santa, she was actually a little bit scared of the guy who was taking her picture, which is why she wasn’t really smiling. But she was so excited, and she talked about meeting “Tanta Ho-Ho” the whole way home.

Meanwhile, when Lucy was having her picture taken, Catie refused to go anywhere near the guy, and Chris had to walk her away from the “Santa’s workshop” area, to keep her from completely freaking out.

And hey, that’s not a criticism of Catie at all. Mall Santas can be sketchy. And Catie is a cautious kid who is sometimes shy around new people. (Although, that depends on the person. Last month at my sister’s wedding, she met my cousin Cici for the first time, and she immediately hugged her and sat on her lap. When I asked her about it later, she said, “She felt like somebody I knew.” Who knows, maybe that’s just the magic of that bond that I have with my cousins that she felt.) Honestly, I think it’s TOTALLY FINE that Catie doesn’t want to meet Santa. But I think it’s kind of fun that Lucy does.

It’s not the first time they’ve shown me the contrast in their personalities, and I know it won’t be the last. But it still amazes me every time. They are so similar and so different at the same time, they just blow me away.

trying to work with cartoons as my background soundtrack

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Catie is still sick. This is fourth day in a row of school that she’s missed. Her fever was only 100.1 this morning, so I’m hoping that means that she’s moving in the general direction of recovery.

I’m extremely fortunate that my job is so flexible about allowing me to work from home. I don’t know what other single moms do in this position. How do you miss four days of work? I mean, really, what do you do?

And honestly, Catie is a pretty easy kid to take care of, even when she’s sick. I keep pushing fluids on her, and giving her Tylenol or Motrin to keep her comfortable, but she’s mostly content, as long as she has either a movie on TV or her iPad to keep her busy. She whines a little when she’s really miserable, but mostly she’s been ok. (If it had been Lucy that got this virus? WHOLE OTHER STORY.)

As much as my parents help out, they can’t really do much when the kids are sick. My mom is so susceptible to illnesses ever since she had chemo (btw, I realized I didn’t mention it, but she recently passed the “5 years cancer-free” point, so YAY MOM!!). The last time my parents took care of one of the kids when they were sick, my mom ended up in the ER after she caught it because it hit her so much harder. So I’m just not willing to risk it. My parents are getting up there in years, and I’d like to keep them around as long as possible. Keeping my kids quarantined when they’re contagious seems like an easy trade-off.

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Chris’s birthday is next week, and then Christmas is the week after that. I have no idea what to get him for either occasion. I’m normally pretty good at gift-giving, but with him, I’m just stumped.

And although The Bloggess’ latest post about best and worst gifts has had me cackling, it still hasn’t helped me figure out what I’m going to get. Dang.

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Also next week: Dave is flying in to visit with the kids for the holidays. The kids are really excited to see him. I, as usual, am looking forward to sleeping a lot while the kids are with him.

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Aside from Chris, I think I have almost all of my Christmas shopping done, and I mailed out my cards today. This is surprisingly punctual for me.

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Nothing else new, really. I’m just over having a miserably sick kiddo, and I’m ready for some downtime.

I’m like an extreme couponer but not as crazy or organized

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So. The past few days. Where to start?

Ok, backing up a bit: Target had this deal that if you spent $75 on Black Friday, you’d get a coupon for 20% off at a future shopping trip (the coupon was good from 12/1 to 12/7). I generally avoid shopping on Black Friday because that much open hostility among my fellow shoppers makes me nervous.

stampede2
What I imagine Black Friday shopping looks like. I would be Simba in this scenario.

Chris had hit up Target on Thanksgiving night to get some Christmas stuff for his kids, so he told me about the coupon deal. I went to Target on the night of Black Friday – long after the crazy storm of shoppers had looted the good deals and the crowd had died down – and dropped $75 in about 5 minutes. I mean, really, two big boxes of diapers is $50. Add in some eye drops and a bag of cat food, and I was basically done.

So, I had this 20% off coupon. And I also have a Target Red card so I get an extra 5% off when I shop at Target. And 25% off your entire purchase is a really good deal, right?

Last week, I cleaned out my garage and dumped two carloads of stuff at Goodwill. Then, Saturday night, I got my parents to watch the girls, I borrowed my mom’s minivan, and Chris met up with me at Target (because this was going to be a BIG trip and I needed help juggling multiple carts). We joked that our “date night” was going to be at Target, and that’s basically what it was. We met up at 8-ish on Saturday night, and we were there until the store closed at 11:00 p.m.

I filled up four carts. Four. Entire. Carts.

Major_Target_Trip

I basically have enough diapers and Pull-Ups to get Lucy the rest of the way through potty-training, and probably at least a year’s worth of paper towels, garbage bags, detergent, and toilet paper… all things that I can store in my garage and not worry about any of it going bad.

I have never shopped like that in my life.

And as much as I love shopping at Target – and I do, I often refer to Target as “my happy place” – after 3 hours there, I was done. Chris was double-checking the list and going, “wait, do you want to get a couple more boxes of cat litter?”

And I was all, “No. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m thirsty. Six boxes of cat litter is enough. I wanna go home and lie down now.”

nap_or_cry

Safe to say that the extra bit of money I had put aside in my budget for Christmas expenses is pretty much gone now. And this little shopping trip was (obviously) after I got the girls their Christmas presents. I still have a little wiggle room in my budget for teachers’ gifts and whatnot, so it’s ok and we’re fine. But still, damn, that was a lot of money all at once, even with the 25% off.

But hey, if the zombie apocalypse happens to hit in 2014, I am going to be SO prepared for it.

Stop by my place if you need me to wash your clothes during The Rapture. I have plenty of detergent hanging out in my garage.

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Completely unrelated topic jump:

On Sunday, Catie was whiny and clingy and generally not acting like herself. We were out running errands on Sunday afternoon, and she fell asleep in the car, which really should’ve been a red flag, since she never naps anymore. Chris carried her into the house (I carried Lucy, who had also fallen asleep in the car), and she slept on the couch for another hour.

When she woke up, she said she wasn’t feeling good. I checked her temperature and it was 99.6. I gave her some Motrin, and she seemed to perk up and feel ok after that.

After her bath, though, she was freezing cold (even with the space heater in the bathroom) and couldn’t stop shivering. She got under a fleece blanket on the couch and her teeth wouldn’t stop chattering.

I checked her temperature again. It was 102 degrees. Crap.

I kept her home from school on Monday, and she lay on the couch and moaned pitifully and watched TV while I tried to work. (If you’ve ever tried to write a software manual while listening to “Star Wars Episode III” in the background? Hats off to you, because that crap is impossible.) The only time she left the house was when she put on her shoes and coat with her PJs because we had to take Lucy to/pick Lucy up from daycare.

She still had a fever of 101.7 this morning, so I kept her home again. And she threw up in the driveway when we were leaving to take Lucy to daycare. It wasn’t much, I think she just drank some water too fast. And really, it’s raining today, so of all the places she could’ve barfed, the driveway was kind of an optimal location from a clean-up perspective. (God, my neighbors must love me.)

My mom brought me these gel pack things that are supposed to help bring fevers down, so I put it on her after we got home from dropping off Lucy.

be_kool_pack

I had never heard of these things before, but I swear, they really work. Within 20 minutes, her fever had come down, she was eating, and she was obviously feeling better because she was talking my ear off. So I’ll be stockpiling those gel packs for future reference. They’re amazing.

Fingers crossed that she’s well enough to go back to school tomorrow, and that nobody else in this house catches her germs. We were all sick last Christmas, I don’t need a replay of that.

toddler-speak

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Toddlers all seem to have their own unique dialects, and I’m learning that Lucy’s is very different than how Catie talked at this age. Catie had an odd little half-British accent (thanks to her dad), but Lucy’s is just straight-up Southern. Which is funny, because I don’t think there are that many people in her life with thick Southern accents. My dad, maybe, and some of the ladies at daycare.

She calls milk, “MEE-uhlk,” and when we go to my parents’ house, she says, “I ring the doo-uh bay-ull.” Turning a simple 2-syllable word like “doorbell” into four syllables seems VERY Southern to me. There are times the way she talks reminds me of my Grandmother.

And not necessarily Southern, but she always says “OK” as “Oh-tay,” which reminds me of this:

eddie murphy as buckwheat
Ahh, back in the days when Eddie Murphy was still funny.

More random 1970s pop culture references. If she’s hurt or upset, and she wants a hug, she yells, “HUGGY!” Which makes me think of… well…

Huggy_Bear
Huggy Bear, utterly pimptastic.

Yeah, it’s terrible, I know, but once you make that connection in your head once, you’ll never be able to not think of it.

She has a very two year-old way of arranging her words. She still says, “Take you!” when she wants me to pick her up. (I think Catie’s version was “carry you,” but Lucy got this one from my dad. When she raises her arms for her him to pick her up, he says, “Here, I’ll take you.”)

That little “you” vs “me” reversal happens a lot. This morning, I fussed at her for acting up, and she said, “Fine, I not you mama ANYMORE!” and flounced out of the room. It was very dramatic. Her teen years are gonna be awesome, I can see it already.

Little Miss Movie Star. She's preening, "You like my dress? You like my sunglasses?" Yes, baby, you're gorgeous.
Yeah. No flair for the dramatic here at all.

One morning when she woke up early, I told her to stay quiet to let Catie sleep, and she said, “Oh-tay, I not wake up her.” It’s the way she gets most of the correct words in the sentence, but putting them in the wrong order, that slays me.

It’s a temporary stage, and I know that in a year, the same sentence will be “Ok, I won’t wake her up.” But I’ll miss the way she talks now.

Of course, I do still have Catie who calls the weapon in Star Wars a “light saver,” and says “anywayses” instead of “anyway,” so maybe Lucy will hold onto some of those cute little quirks for a while longer. Either way, it’ll be “oh-tay.” Ha.

on mediation

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Dave and I had to go to mediation yesterday, which probably sounds very dramatic, but in reality, it wasn’t at all. We’ve been using a temporary order for custody and child support since we separated, but we needed to make some minor changes to it, and since Dave lives on the west coast, it’s a lot easier to hire a private mediator to sort this stuff out, rather than get a court date, which would likely occur when he isn’t in town for it.

So, we found a mediator. I sat in his office, and we had Dave on via video conference. And we hashed things out.

And it occurred to me that, for all of the stuff we’ve been through, we’re sort of… fine now. Sure, there’s a lot of bad stuff that happened in the past, and I doubt we’ll ever be what you’d qualify as “friends.” But we’re alright. That was kind of a startling realization to have, believe it or not. I think it’s because we both know enough people (through friends, family, and co-workers) who’ve had really terribly ugly divorces, and we’re both trying our best to not end up like that.

And really, even with these very minor changes that we made to our agreement, there were some very hard conversations that took place yesterday. Which I knew was going to happen, and I sort of went into the mediator’s office ready for a fight. But even though there were times when we vehemently disagreed, we stayed respectful. We never yelled. We never said anything nasty to/about each other. I’d say, “Well, no, I don’t think that’s right because… (whatever),” and he’d counter with his side, but it never got ugly or mean-spirited.

And even though his parenting style is totally different than mine, and we disagree on a lot (oh man, A LOT) of things as far as how the kids are raised? I do know that we’re both doing what we feel is best for the girls and we’re trying to work together for their best interests. And I have to think that even though we approach these issues from completely opposing viewpoints, the fact that he and I both love Catie and Lucy, and that we want what’s best for them? That’s going to be the thing that helps our girls most, in the long run.

So, hey, maybe we won’t ever be friends. But we’re ok. And that’s a hell of a lot better than I ever thought I’d be able to say.

Thanksgiving recap

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Our Thanksgiving was both fun and exhausting in the way that only “four days of no childcare” can be. The kids had a blast, I need a nap.

I prepped my side dishes for Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday. I contributed the sweet potatoes & the dressing, I baked some rolls, my mom did a couple other veggie side dishes and a fruit salad, and that was basically it. (The ham & turkey come from Honey-Baked Ham because ain’t nobody got time for that. Oh, and there were cupcakes, but those were also store-bought. My mom and I are basically saving our energy for Christmas.)

On Thursday morning, I dropped the girls with my parents, as well as my brother and his girlfriend (who drove over from Charlotte for the holiday), and then Chris and I headed over to his mom’s for Thanksgiving lunch.

Headed to Thanksgiving lunch with Chris's mama & family, then dinner with mine. Really wishing I still had my old maternity pants for the day.
Gratuitous “heeeeey I escaped my kids for a few hours!” selfie.

His mom lives in a tiny little town about an hour or so from here, and it felt like the area where a lot of my family lives in Mississippi. (For those of you who know the Meridian/Lauderdale County area? It’s a lot like that.) There’s something familiar and comforting about that, and I liked it. I also appreciated that all of Chris’s family was very friendly to me and made me feel welcome. I’d met his mom a few times before, but I didn’t know anyone else there.

And the food, good lord. SO. MUCH. FOOD. I forgot how much old Southern ladies like to cook, and between Chris’s mom and her sister, there was basically enough food to feed a small town. I ate way too much, and while I was sitting at the table, sweating and trying to decide how awkward it would be to faint right there at the table, that’s when his aunt Mary leaned across the table to me and said, “So are you ready for dessert now?” OMG.

ate-too-much
This cat = how I felt.

Chris has a theory about old Southern ladies and their food: they really like to have company over to visit. And they figure that if they keep feeding you all of their food that’s loaded with butter and sugar, eventually you won’t be able to fit out the door to leave. He might be right.

After lunch, we rolled our stuffed selves out of his mom’s house and headed back to my parents’ house. Lucy was sound asleep on my dad’s lap (something about Pop-Pop in his recliner plus a football game on TV = night-night time for her), my mom was taking a nap, and Catie was watching Star Wars with my brother and his girlfriend. I always worry that when I leave my kids with someone else, all hell is going to break loose the minute I walk out the door, so it was really nice to see that things were so calm and peaceful there. I started cooking, and somehow Chris and I managed to eat again at dinnertime.

The rest of the weekend was nice: putting up Christmas decorations, a little shopping (no crazy black Friday stuff for me, I don’t have the patience to deal with the crowds), eating a ton of leftovers, visiting with my cousin and her family to meet their new dog, that kind of thing.

Lucy gives my sweet potato casserole two thumbs up.
Lucy gave the sweet potatoes two thumbs up. Catie, meanwhile, took one look at the Thanksgiving feast and asked for chicken noodle soup. Because, of course.

But now, it’s Monday, the kids are back at school/daycare, and I’m trying to get back into my work groove. And lord help me, after the insane gluttony of this weekend, I’m actually really looking forward to running today. Which is weird for me, but I’m kind of glad to have these new little habits in my life.

Now I just have to remember to set the daily reminder on my phone so I won’t forget to move the damn elf on the shelf every night…

purging

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Every once in a while, I get the urge to rid my life of all excess “stuff.” I’m not really a hoarder or a pack rat type, but with two kids in the house, clutter tends to build up fast. Especially with the kids’ stuff. There are tons of toys and books and things that Catie doesn’t play with or use anymore, but I find myself holding onto it all, just in case Lucy wants it someday.

This past weekend, I got rid of a lot of stuff. I cleaned out my closet and hauled out three large garbage bags of clothes, which I gave to Goodwill. A lot of it was stuff that’s now too big on me, but I had also been keeping all of my old “skinny clothes” that I thought I would wear again when I lost weight. The thing is, though, now that I’ve lost the weight? Those clothes aren’t my style anymore. I don’t like boot-cut jeans now, and I don’t wear shirts with long flowy sleeves because (a) I’m not Stevie Nicks, and (b) I still have to change poopy diapers sometimes and that’s just asking for trouble. So there was a LOT of stuff that I realized I really don’t need.

Then the girls’ clothes… well. I save all of Catie’s stuff so that Lucy can wear it someday. And that’s fine. But now I have boxes upon boxes of clothes that Lucy has outgrown, and I have no need to hold onto any of it.

Back in the summer of 2012, my mom and I had a yard sale and I sold a whole bunch of Lucy’s tiny newborn-size baby clothes, and it didn’t really faze me at all. (I got rid of my maternity clothes at the same yard sale, and I was downright gleeful about that – goodbye, belly-paneled pants!) But for some reason, getting rid of the toddler clothes felt like a punch in the chest to me. Maybe because I don’t have the same memories of my kids as babies that I do of them as toddlers – I’m not a “tiny baby” person, I’m a “18+ months” person. I think they’re so much more fun when they can walk and talk and show their personalities. So I guess that’s what made it harder.

And the thing is, I know I don’t want another baby – really, most days I feel like I’m barely hanging by a thread with the two that I have, and I honestly, truly, absolutely DO NOT want another kid. But there was something about the finality of it that got me. As I dropped everything off at Goodwill on Saturday, I had to look away really quickly from the pile I’d just set down so I wouldn’t cry.

I’m still cleaning stuff out. I’ve had a dresser sitting in my garage since I moved into this house, because I have no place to put it, and I finally listed it for sale on craigslist. (Note that we’ve lived here for two years now. That dresser has been there a LONG time.) And there are tons of toys in this house that both of my kids have outgrown, and a lot of families who do all of their holiday shopping at places like Goodwill and could really use them.

Plus, you know, my girls are both about to get a whole new pile of stuff for Christmas, so really, it’s not a bad idea to lower the current inventory in the toy boxes.

I’m not sure if it’s the holidays or what that’s given me this restless need to get organized. But it feels really good to offload a lot of this stuff.