…and now, she’s 6

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Catie turned six years old yesterday. Which… ok, I know a lot of people get all sappy about numbers and milestones and whatnot, and I typically don’t fall into that category. I normally have more of an attitude that, yes, of course, time marches on. That’s how it’s supposed to go.

But I admit, six has thrown me for a loop a little bit. I mean, six is the age of a FIRST GRADER. How is that possible?

And in my mind, she still looks more or less like this:

power-walker

I still think of her as this little soft-bodied, pudgy toddler. But there are no kissable fat rolls on her thighs anymore. No pudgy little wrists. Her soft little curls have turned into a thick, straight bob (which, for both its color and shape, is the envy of many adult women I know).

Sometimes I look at her and I do a double take. Who is this tall, skinny kid in front of me?

Catie's first time on roller skates.

She is so smart, she blows me away. She picks up on everything. It’s starting to get to the point where I can’t even spell words that I don’t want her to hear because she knows so many of them.

This year, she asked for a birthday party at Monkey Joe’s (the bounce house place) again, just like she had last year. It was a much smaller party this year (which my wallet is very grateful for), and a lot of fun.

For one thing, last year, Lucy spent the entire party strapped into a Baby Bjorn. But this year, got to enjoy the bounce houses herself.

Lucy loved the bounce house

Although she has a pretty… unique?… way of going down the slides. Which she did about 10,000 times, and she laughed harder and harder every time.

Lucy has her own unique way of doing the slide at the bounce house.
The orange sticker on her back is her ID bracelet. She wouldn’t wear it on her wrist, so they stuck it to her back so she couldn’t pull it off. Kind of genius, really.

(Btw, major shout-out to my sister for crawling into the bounce houses with Lucy to keep her from getting trampled, while I was making small talk with the other parents.)

Catie with Monkey Joe

It was a really great party, and everyone had a fantastic time. Well, the kids did. The adults mostly felt like we’d been run over by a steam roller by the time it was over.

One random aside: a friend who obviously doesn’t know Catie very well gave her a Barbie doll as a present. Catie was very gracious and happy and thanked her friend, but I know for a fact that Catie has absolutely zero interest in Barbie dolls. (Believe me, I loved Barbies as a kid, so I have tried to get her interested in Barbie, to no avail.)

Last night, she asked my sister to open the Barbie’s box. I asked her if she was really sure she wanted to keep it, because we could take it to the store to exchange it for something else if she didn’t want it? She said, “No, my friend gave this to me, I want it.”

She took the Barbie doll’s shoes off, put on one of the other pairs of shoes, and looked at her for a minute.

Then she said, “Well, this is boring.”

Yep. That’s my girl.

Fortunately, Lucy LOVES the Barbie doll, and has already decided that Barbie should start working on potty training.

Lucy apparently wants to potty train her friends. (Poor Barbie.)

(Poor Barbie.)

Happy birthday to my sweet six year-old Catie-bug. You are the most wonderful, glorious little weirdo I have ever met, and I could not love you more for being exactly who you are.

karate kid, week 1

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On Tuesday, I picked Catie up after kindergarten and we headed to the karate studio for her first lesson. She was nervous, as I expected, and said that she wasn’t going to do it, she was just going to sit and watch the class instead. I gave a noncommittal, “Uh-huh, we’ll see,” and kept driving.

There’s a very sweet lady at the front desk, and she was expecting us. She got Catie a uniform and showed her around. The dojo itself, the dressing rooms, the bathrooms, the area where the parents can sit and watch the class. There was something about her, she just had kind of a grandmotherly vibe, and she immediately put Catie at ease. She got into her uniform, and I snapped this picture of her.

Catie's first karate lesson. The uniform is killing me, she's so cute.
(That’s the front desk lady standing next to her smoothing her hair. Like I said, just a really sweet lady who is obviously great with kids.)

We met the instructor, and when he said, “Ok, Catie, come on over here with the other kids,” she did it without prodding. Sometimes it pays to have a kid who likes to please authority figures.

The class starts off with a lot of basic exercises – running, stretching, jumping around, basically just burning off their energy – before they start teaching any actual karate techniques. And since Catie loves P.E. at school, that was right up her alley.

They separated the kids into small groups for the instruction, and it was just Catie and one other little boy working with a teacher. At the end of the lesson, they both got a stripe on their belts for doing the technique well.

She was so excited and proud of herself, and immediately started whining about wanting to go back. We went to my parents’ house to pick up Lucy, and she ran around in her uniform and showed my parents the new moves she learned.

So? First lesson was AWESOME. I was all proud of myself for how awesome I am at this parenting thing, and I was thinking how fantastic this was going to be for her.

You can all stop here to laugh at me now.

Thursday (last night) was her second class. She was all excited, couldn’t wait to get there and get her uniform on. We were a little bit early and she was all squirmy asking how much longer until class started because she just! couldn’t! wait! for karate to start.

Class started and the warm-up was the same as the previous class, and she seemed to be having fun. When they divided up the kids for the instruction, again it was just Catie and one other child, but instead of the main instructor (who she worked with on Tuesday), they put her with a teenage girl (who is a black belt and obviously incredibly gifted at what she does). But I could tell by watching Catie’s face that the lesson just wasn’t registering with her, and she was getting really frustrated.

At the end of the class, they do a run-through of the techniques they’ve learned to see if the kids are proficient in it. And Catie was… not. She wasn’t terrible, but she kept forgetting what to do with her left arm while her right arm was moving, and vice versa. She’s not a particularly coordinated kid (which was part of the motivation for getting her into martial arts in the first place), and you know, she’s new to all of this. It takes practice.

When it was all over, the little boy standing next to her got a stripe on his belt, and Catie didn’t get one. She wasn’t the only kid who didn’t get a stripe (I think that one little boy may have been the only kid in the class of eight who did get a stripe), but she saw him get his, and then she saw the instructor walk past her.

She ran over to me, buried her face in my chest, and burst into tears.

I took her into the dressing room to help her calm down, and also to change out of her uniform and back into her street clothes. She cried and cried. She said, “I just wanted to be better than all the other kids so you would be so proud of me, and I just did dreadful!”

(Don’t ask me where she picked up the word “dreadful.” I’m going to blame that on her British father. Or maybe she’s been watching Downton Abbey when I’m not looking.)

I told her that I was, in fact, SO SO proud of her, and that she wasn’t dreadful at all, she did really well, but she just needs to practice a little to learn these new things.

She said she hates karate and never wants to go again.

Sigh.

We got in the car, and even though it was pouring freezing rain with ridiculous wind gusts, I stopped and bought her an ice cream on the way home. I don’t typically believe in encouraging food as a comfort technique, but damn. Poor kid was having a rough night, and it really did seem to help.

When I was putting her to bed last night, I told her that I don’t want her to try to be better than all of the other kids, I just want her to do the best she can and have fun, and not to worry about how everyone else is doing. I said, “When we go to the bounce house, do you worry if the other kids can jump higher than you, or do you just go jump and have fun? And when you’re playing with dinosaurs at school, do you worry if the other kids know the names of more dinosaurs than you? Or do you just play with dinosaurs?”

I also reminded her that she was the only kid in that class who had been to only two karate classes in their whole life, all of the other kids had been going to karate for a long time, and it was because they practiced that they understood what to do better than she did, because it wasn’t all new to them like it was for her.

Now I’m second-guessing myself and wondering if I should have signed her up for one of those sports where all the kids get “participation trophies” just for showing up. She’s such a reward-focused kid, maybe that would work better for her? But I also believe that in the long run, rewards based on actual merit have more meaning, even to a 5 year-old.

I got her to agree to go to at least one more class. I’m going to try to practice some of the moves with her between now and then. Hopefully she’ll get her stripe next time and it’ll encourage her to keep trying. That was the whole point of doing this in the first place.

my parenting gold star(s)

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Courtesy of Erin…

Did You Earn Your Gold Star?

I actually have 3 gold star-worthy moments:

1. Last week, Lucy barfed up her entire dinner and I managed to catch 99.9% of it in a Tupperware container. Like a boss.

2. Catie found my black thong and asked if it was an eyepatch. I managed to not die laughing.
(File under, totally unrelated but since I’m over-sharing anyway: only a few hours before that, Lucy came into the bathroom as I was getting out the shower, walked up to me, poked me in my Most Sacred of Ladyplaces, cracked up laughing, and then walked out. I just kind of stood there, going, “Did that really just happen?”)

3. I opened the car door in such a way that the bottom corner of the door whacked me right in the shin. I jumped around and pounded on the wall of the garage a little bit, but I didn’t say the f-word, so I’m going to call that a win.

on trying new things

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Despite the crud that won’t die, the weather this past weekend was gorgeous, and we maximized it by trying to spend as much time outside as possible. Sure, global warming sucks, but getting to wear shorts and flip-flops to the playground in January is pretty awesome.

We spent Sunday at the park with my cousin and her family, and my mom came along too. It was kind of awesome because it was the first time that I wasn’t hyper-vigilantly following both kids around the whole time. Catie had a blast playing with her cousins, so I didn’t need to entertain her at all, and Lucy has decided that she has no fear of climbing on play structures and going down slides by herself. So I sat on a bench, talked with my family, and watched the kids as they ran around and played their hearts out. It was fantastic.

Both of them were filthy and covered in sand by the time we left – Lucy even managed to get sand and bark in her diaper, which? Don’t even ask me how that’s possible. But they were happy and exhausted and everyone slept really well last night.

Little flirt.
Lucy has no idea what I’m talking about with that whole diaper thing. She’s completely innocent. Just look at that face.

But! Before that! On Saturday, since the weather was nice, my parents and I decided to take the kids out on their new bikes that they got for Christmas.

I didn’t get a picture of Lucy on her “bike” (um, tricycle, but she calls it a bike, so whatever), but here it is on Christmas morning.

Lucy and her new tricycle

She doesn’t know how to pedal, but it has a handle that I can push/steer with, so it works.

As for Catie, some backstory first: Catie is cautious to an extreme. The first time you suggest she try something new (a type of food, an activity, whatever), her initial reaction is always to say no. So she was actually kind of upset that Santa brought her a big-kid bike (it’s a two-wheeler with training wheels on it), because she didn’t want one. When I had floated the idea of a bike to her, she said she was “too scared of bikes.”

Once the bike showed up on Christmas morning, she eventually decided that she was ok riding it back and forth across my parents’ kitchen, but she still insisted that she would never, ever ride it outside.

So, my parents put the bikes in their van and brought it to our neighborhood greenway. Catie took one look at the bike and balked. No way was she going to get on it. We tried to reason with her, and she started to have a tantrum about it.

Finally, I said, “Ok, you know what? If you don’t at least try, I’m taking away your iPad for the rest of the weekend.”

The ultimate threat to a nerdy child: that you’ll take away their gadgets.

So she got on the bike, and she immediately loved it. She rode her bike all the way down the greenway to where it ends (at a park with a lake), and after the girls played there for a while, she rode it all the way back.

OMG y'all, she did it! (If you know how cautious Catie is, you know this was a HUGE deal.)

I’m so proud of her. It used to take her a long time to warm up to new ideas, but she’s really getting a lot better about it.

And to that end – the whole “building self-confidence” thing (which has been a problem at kindergarten, too; she just freezes up when she’s asked to try something new for the first time) – I’ve signed her up for martial arts classes. (Huge thank you to Marty for the pass that’s allowing us to try this out for free!)

Her first class is tomorrow. She has said that she doesn’t want to do it, and that she’s just going to watch the first class. Which… um, no, she isn’t. Sorry, kiddo. I’ll hold the iPad hostage again if I have to.

The other motivation for the martial arts class is because I’ve noticed that Catie has a lot of quirks that look like attention deficit disorder, which is not surprising since it runs in both sides of the family. But rather than leaping ahead to getting her tested and on medication, first I thought I’d work on developing her concentration and focus skills this way. I’d rather give her coping mechanisms than drugs.

Of course, I’m not judging and I’m not anti-medication. If it becomes apparent later on down the road that she needs ADD drugs, I’ll certainly give them to her. I just figure that if there are ways to avoid it (or at least postpone it), I should give them a try.

And I have to say, I already can’t wait to see what she looks like in her karate uniform.

New Year’s Meme for 2012

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Ok, hopefully this one will be less depressing than last year’s. Here goes!

1. What did you do in 2012 that you’d never done before?
Got divorced. It was a bit anti-climactic.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn’t make any last year, and I doubt I will this year. I mean, sure, lose 20 pounds and win the lottery, right? Same as everyone else in the world. Ho hum.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
A whole mess of bloggy friends had babies this year.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
The dad of the family that lived next door to me when I was little. That one tore me up.

One of my dad’s cousins passed away as well, but he and I weren’t close at all.

5. What countries did you visit?
I can think of exactly 3 trips I took this year. None of them involved leaving the US. Two didn’t even leave the state of North Carolina.

6. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012?
This was my answer last year…

Stability. Calmness. Serenity. Less drama. Two kids who sleep through the night in their own damn beds. Little things.

Yeah. That. I would still like that, please and thank you.

7. What dates from 2012 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
* March 18th – My first “real” date with The Guy.
* October 12th – My divorce was finalized.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I ran 2 miles without stopping. I can’t think of anything else I could file as an “achievement” per se.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I feel like I spent too much of my life zoned out in my own head, rather than interacting with my girls. I need to make a more conscious effort to close the laptop, put down my phone, get down on the floor, and play.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Two trips to the ER, but both for things that were relatively minor. (Thankfully.)

And one stupid injury: back when we went to the beach in August, a wave knocked me down while I was holding Lucy, and something about the way I twisted when I fell (trying to keep her out of the water), I ended up pinching a nerve in my shoulder. It’s one of those things that will get better and then start hurting again for no reason, and it is VERY. ANNOYING. (I’ve already tried acupuncture and it didn’t help. I suppose I should also see a chiropractor.)

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Technically, I didn’t buy it, but I did convince my parents to trade in their 9 year-old desktop for a new PC, and the lack of tech support I have to provide on a daily basis now is FANTASTIC.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Both of my girls have proven to be so resilient and adaptable to new situations, and they just astound me every day with whatever new thing they’ve just learned. Lucy is suddenly speaking in short phrases/sentences (“Get book,” “Want eat,” etc.), and Catie will rattle off some random science fact that I have to google to verify that, in fact, she’s right and I’m basically an idiot.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
I can think of a few Facebook friends who would fall in this category. Like those who joked about hiring an assassin after Obama won the election. Thankfully, nobody close to me fits in that category.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Daycare. Rent. Nothing fun. Sadface.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Catie started kindergarten.
Lucy started walking.
I fulfilled a dream from 30 years ago and finally saw Duran Duran in concert.
A few other things I got all spazzy and excited about, but which escape my memory right now.

16. What song will always remind you of 2012?
Oddly enough, probably “Eye of the Tiger,” because Catie became obsessed with it and played it over and over again until I thought I was going to lose my mind.

Also, I know it’s overplayed, but “Home” by Phillip Phillips. I will never forget the first time I heard both of my girls singing the “oooh-oooh-oooh” part from the backseat at the same time. It just made my heart happy.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder? Happier. THANK GOD.
b) thinner or fatter? Same.
c) richer or poorer? Same.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Same answer as last year: Traveling. Reading books. Doing fun stuff with my girls.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Same answer as last year: Moping. Yelling. Crying.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
In the ER. Boo. I want a refund.

21. Did you fall in love in 2012?
Yeah. I did. Hard.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Other than The Daily Show and random stuff like that, I have zero TV shows that I’m into right now. By the time the kids go to sleep, I just want SILENCE, not TV. It’s like my ears are exhausted and I can’t process anymore.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No.

24. What was the best book you read?
Most of the books I read fall under the category of “romance/smut,” and I am far too embarrassed to link to any of it. (In my defense, I need to read things that aren’t too plot-heavy, since I have almost zero attention span due to extreme sleep deprivation. So basically, let’s all blame my children for the fact that my reading tastes have deteriorated to crap.)

So instead I’ll say Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I’ve picked up on a whole bunch of new music by listening to other people’s Spotify playlists. I think my favorites so far are either the Civil Wars or Fleet Foxes.

26. What did you want and get by year’s end?
… I have absolutely no idea…

27. What did you want and not get by year’s end?
… And again, no idea…

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
I think the only movie I saw in the theater was The Hunger Games, which was good. I really loved Beginners. I finally saw The King’s Speech and loved it.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 36. Greis was here. We went out for dinner, and then I got a sinus infection. Because of course.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
If my friends lived closer and I got to see them more often.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2012?
I’m trying SO hard to fight The Frump and to feel cute and stylish. I bought jeans that look good on my butt. I got cuter shoes. I wouldn’t exactly call myself fashionable, but I’m working on it.

32. What kept you sane?
Oh, my friends who let me text them to vent about whatever random stuff that’s driving me crazy. There’s only a couple of y’all. And you rock.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I can’t really think of anyone. I mean, Channing Tatum’s abs are pretty amazing, but I can’t think of anyone else who was particularly drool-worthy.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
The election was pretty major. Currently, I’d say the whole gun control thing is driving me insane. I’ve had to “hide” a few people on Facebook because I just can’t even deal.

35. Who did you miss?
The last month or so, I’ve missed The Guy. A lot.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
The Guy. No matter how things may have ended up. No doubt, it was him.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012.
Self-discovery hurts but is generally worth it.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
“Now I gotta get a move on
Fit for the sun,
I hear my baby calling my name
and I know she’s the only one.
And if I die in Raleigh,
at least I will die free.”
— “Wagon Wheel,” Old Crow Medicine Show

Happy new year, y’all.

Worst. Christmas. Ever.

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I feel like I need to try to sum up Christmas somehow, before the year is over. Only I’m not sure where to start. Be warned that I’m writing this under the influence of MANY over-the-counter cold medications. So. Just saying.

Dave’s been here for the past couple of weeks, and we had a pretty well planned-out agreement of how we’d divide up Christmas. I’d take the girls on Christmas Eve because that’s when we do most of the big stuff in my family (we go to church, have a big meal, etc.). And then after the Santa chaos died down on Christmas morning, I’d hand them off to Dave and they’d have a second Santa thing at his place and spend Christmas Day and night with him. Easy enough, right?

(cue foreboding…)

Last Friday (the 21st), while the kids were with Dave and I was happily in my PJs catching up on movies on my DVR, I started to notice that I felt a little weird. My throat felt scratchy. I shrugged it off as me being paranoid since one of the movies I had just watched was Contagion. Power of suggestion, whatever. I went to bed.

I woke up on Saturday and realized that no, I was really sick. Things got progressively worse.

Sunday, I ended up at a walk-in after-hours clinic.

Them: “Did you get a flu shot this year?”
Me: “Umm… I forgot. But I remembered get both of my kids theirs, so that kinda counts as me being a responsible adult, right?”
Them: “Yeah, not really. You have the flu. Go home and go to bed. Here, take this inhaler to help you breathe.”

The girls were with me on Sunday night, and I knew I was in over my head. My family stepped up and kept them at my parents’ house (since my brother and sister were also there to help). I quarantined myself to my house and tried to sleep it off.

Monday was Christmas Eve, and I spent most of the day sick and miserable. My family missed church services because of me, and my mom and sister made Christmas dinner (which is normally my thing). I also realized that our house was in no condition for any visits from Santa Claus. It was a mess, and there was no way I could get it ready in my current state. I told Catie (since Lucy doesn’t understand the Santa thing yet) that I had texted Santa and that he was going to bring her presents to her Mimi & Pop-Pop’s house instead of ours. I got them to bed at my parents’ house for the 2nd night in a row, barely managed to stay conscious long enough to set up the Santa layout at my parents’ house, then drove home and collapsed.

Christmas morning, I dragged myself out of bed before sunrise and got to my parents’ house at 6 a.m. so I’d be there when the girls woke up. They had a great time, and there are pictures of their beautiful happy faces, but they’re on my mom’s camera. I’ll get them someday. I basically lay on the couch having fever sweats while they opened their presents.

I barely managed to hand them off to Dave later on Christmas morning, then I immediately went to bed. Later that day, my fever spiked up to nearly 104, and I was… out of it. Somehow I called my mom, and she and my brother found me on the kitchen floor with my face pressed up against the refrigerator. Which in my head made sense, because my skin felt like it was on fire, and the fridge was cool. My brother picked me up and they got me to the car and off to the ER we went.

Oh, right, here’s the one picture I posted on Christmas Day. How unbelievably joyous, am I right?

Merry Christmas to me.

Chest X-ray and bloodwork showed… yep. Really, really bad case of the flu. They loaded me up with fluids (because I was dehydrated) and pain meds (which I was incredibly grateful for, until the rebound headache kicked in), and then they sent me home.

Btw, if you can avoid going to the ER on Christmas Day? I highly recommend that you do so. It’s not a happy place to be.

All that to say… I’m kind of ok-ish now. The flu part (fever, aches, etc.), that’s all gone, but the cough got worse and turned into a sinus infection/bronchitis combo. And of course, I am now unable to say that I have bronchitis without thinking of Sweet Brown.


Ain’t nobody got time for dat, indeed.

I have to say, Dave has helped out a lot with the kids while I’ve been out of commission. And yeah, ok, he’s the dad, that’s what dads are supposed to do, but whatever. Credit where it’s due. They’ve had so much fun with him over the past couple of weeks, and for that, I am grateful.

And my family just… damn. I don’t even know how I’ll ever be able to thank them enough. I mean, because of their help, we managed to keep the girls’ lives as normal as possible through all of this, and they’re FINE. Better than fine. Catie decreed that it was the “Best! Christmas! Ever!” Which is funny since that’s exactly what she said last year. And they’ve thought that getting to have sleepovers at their grandparents’ house – with bonus aunt and uncles included – was just an awesome treat. So they’ve had a blast.

As for me, I’m waiting for these antibiotics to kick in aaaaaany minute now, and 2012 can just see itself on out the door, thankyouverymuch.

So damn lucky

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(Apologies to Dave Matthews for using his song as a blog post title. It was the best I could do.)

I had plans to blog on Friday, and then… well. And then an elementary school in Connecticut got shot up and I spent the rest of the day crying in front of the news.

I don’t have any brilliant insight or words of wisdom here. I’m just as dumbstruck as everyone else.

These school shootings happen way too often, and normally they don’t get to me like this one did. I don’t know why. Maybe because this was an elementary school and the kids were all around Catie’s age. Self-centered worldview, I guess. It just really hit me in my gut.

On Saturday night, we were up late because we had spent the evening at my parents’ house. Lucy has a cold, and it took me a while to get her settled in bed. While she was waiting for me, Catie fell asleep on the couch. Rather than wake her up, I decided to just carry her upstairs to bed. My first thought was how big she is. She’s weighs about twice what Lucy weighs, and when I carry her, her feet dangle past my knees because she’s so tall.

But at the same time, I had this overwhelming sense of how little she is, because even though she’s heavy, she’s still little enough that I’m able to pick her up and carry her up a flight of steps. After I put her to bed, I went to my room and sat on the floor next to my bed, and I cried for all of the parents who don’t get to pick up their “really too big to be carried” babies anymore.

Last month, my friend Laura took some pictures of us for our Christmas cards. (Seriously, if you’re local and need a photographer? Go talk to her.) Today I’m looking at these pictures of my beautiful girls, who are still here with me, and I feel so, so incredibly blessed and lucky to have them.

Catie

Lucy

Lucy and me

me and my Catie-bug

Catie and Lucy

I mean, seriously. How did I ever get so fortunate?

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My lovely friend Victoria lost her nephew Noah Pozner in the Connecticut school shooting on Friday. For info on how you can help Noah’s family, click here.