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One of my favorite parts of having my in-laws here is the food. My mother-in-law is an amazing cook. I always feel guilty since she’s here on vacation and then we sort of expect her to cook, but she loves it, and I try to steal as many of her recipes as I can, even though I can never repeat them quite as well.

Last night my father-in-law made burgers on the grill, which were excellent, and boy, is it nice to have a night off from cooking. This morning, Mags made a huge breakfast for all of us - eggs, bacon, sausage, pork & beans (for those who wanted it - not me), and fried bread, which is basically white bread fried in bacon grease. In other words: heaven. Of course, it’s totally unhealthy and will kill you if you eat it on a regular basis, but it sure is nice to have once a year.

Tonight we’re having shepherd’s pie, and believe me, whatever impressions you might have of shepherd’s pie, you don’t know it like this. I’ve been daydreaming about her shepherd’s pie ever since they booked their flight over here. I can’t wait.

I need to take more pictures, but Roger’s been taking a lot with his camera, so I’ve been sort of lazy about it. Unfortunately, his camera is not digital, he’s using 35mm rolls of film. I know! It’s like the stone age! So strange. Anyway, here’s a few good ones that I’ve gotten so far.

Catie’s pointing out her favorite ornaments to Grandpa Roger, which I’m pretty sure are the Sesame Street ones. (There’s an Elmo, a Cookie Monster, and a Big Bird.)

I snapped this one on our way out to go buy a Christmas tree. I just love her big blue eyes.

This is my favorite of Catie snuggling up on Mags. So sweet.

Tomorrow we’re planning to drop Catie at my next-door neighbor’s house (since Catie is comfortable with her and loves her kids) so we can go see the new James Bond movie. We haven’t done something like that since our anniversary back in May (when we went to see Indiana Jones), so I’m very excited.

Hope y’all have a great weekend.

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My in-laws got here last night, and they’ll be staying with us until the 18th. Since they come all the way from England, they typically stay for a while when they come to visit. But it’s fun, since we usually only get to see them once a year. And Catie has changed so much since they saw her last December, it’s been a hoot so far. She’s kind of figured out how to say Grandma already, although “Grandpa Roger” is a mouthful and she hasn’t even attempted that one yet. She seems to have decided they’re both pretty fun people, though, since all of their attention is focused on her.

Today we went out for lunch and to buy a Christmas tree. You wouldn’t think that would take a very long time, but somehow it ate most of the day. We did manage to get the tree decorated when we got it home, which is cool, and one more thing I can cross off my to-do list.

The only downside of having the in-laws here is that I did so much cleaning beforehand that I pulled something in my back and I’ve been in unbelievable pain for the past day and a half. I don’t really have to clean that much, but you know, it’s that Southern hospitality gene of mine, I can’t have people come visit me when the house is a mess. So I overdid it, which is dumb, and now I’m popping ibuprofen like M&M’s, because this 30-pound toddler of mine won’t stop demanding that I pick her up. Oy.

Anyway, things are sort of hectic here with the company, but I’ll check in with pictures and whatnot over the next week or so.

P.S. The subject line is what Catie said when she saw the Christmas tree in our house. It’s pretty awesome when they’re so little and everything about the holidays is still magical and fun.

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Here’s my child explaining all the various animal sounds:

The dinosaur is my favorite, although I forgot to ask her about the pig in this video. She doesn’t say oink, she makes this unbelievable snorting nose that sounds like an old man snoring. It’s hysterical.

Oh, you’ll also get to see her do her “I don’t know” thing, complete with very exaggerated shoulder shrug, which never ceases to crack me up.

About halfway through, we got sidetracked into some “Wonder Pets” reference that most people probably won’t get (unless you’ve seen the episode where they save the baby kangaroo 10,000 times like we have), then she made up her own song, which… huh. Yeah. No idea where she came up with it, although I definitely heard the words “Wonder Pets” in her song, so maybe it’s her interpretation of the theme song? Who knows.

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I have to admit, it’s been kind of nice for the past few days to not feel pressured to post something just for the sake of posting, but at the same time, I find myself constantly thinking “gee, I should really write something.” I guess that’s the point of NaBloPoMo, to get yourself in the habit of writing on a regular basis, so you don’t end up posting once a year (hi, DaveM! I totally just called you out!).

Anyway, while Catie and I were in Mississippi, Dave mentioned that Teenie had some bald spots on her back. She tends to groom excessively when she’s stressed out; she actually has permanent hair loss on her belly because she licked herself bald every time I moved (which was once a year for a few years in my early 20’s). I figured that she was just upset because I was gone, poor kitty. I felt bad, but I didn’t worry about it too much beyond that.

When I got home, however, I realized that Dave was actually making light of the situation. She has two huge bald spots on her back. I started to freak, and Dave said, “yeah, it seems like something’s wrong with her skin too, we’re probably going to need to take her to the vet.” Now, it was 1 a.m. and we’d had a hellishly long day, but I still sat down on the floor and called her to me to try to check her out. And I realized that her skin wasn’t just bumpy, it was… moving. My cat is quite literally infested with fleas. Besides all the fleas crawling all over her, she was also covered with these tiny black grains of sand, which didn’t take me long to figure out were flea larvae. Oh my lord, I wanted to vomit.

Our cats never go outside, so I really don’t understand how they got fleas in the first place, except that we must’ve brought them in somehow. But Ive never seen anything like this before. I’ve seen cats that had a flea or two, but nowhere near this level. The poor thing must’ve been in absolute misery. It’s probable that Beaumont has them too, but his hair is so long and black, it’s impossible to tell. We’re treating him as if he has them too.

There wasn’t anything we could do about it in the middle of the night, but the next day we trooped off to PetSmart and stocked up on anti-flea stuff. We got both the spray to kill them now, plus the maintenance anti-flea stuff to use in the future.

Today I went to re-wash everything in the laundry room, since Teenie’s been sleeping in the laundry basket for the past several days. The basket and the floor surrounding it are also covered with black sand/flea larvae. So. Unbelievably. Gross. I would take pictures, but seriously? Y’all don’t want to see this. I’m about to go scrub the whole laundry room down with bleach, because that’s the only way I’ll actually believe that it’s clean.

Here’s a question: any of y’all know what we’re supposed to do next? I’m sure there must be other fleas in the house, and I have no idea how to get rid of them. Do I call an exterminator? I thought about getting one of those foggers, but both Dave and Catie have asthma, so I’m sure that even if we leave the house for hours, it would still mess with their lungs when they come back to those fumes. Surely there must be some sort of “natural” way to get rid of fleas? Anyone? Help?

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The 6 p.m. flight home yesterday was indeed a very bad idea on my part. Our flight from Jackson was a little delayed, but not too major. We had an hour and a half to make our connection in Atlanta, so I wasn’t worried. But then we sat on the tarmac for half an hour because the Atlanta airport was apparently shut down due to bad weather. And once we finally got going, we circled Atlanta for over an hour, since the weather had caused a huge traffic backup. I couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or not that Catie took the opportunity to fall asleep - on the one hand, it’s nice that she wasn’t awake and cranky on the plane, but I also knew that her dozing off at 8 p.m. was going to cause us some major problems later on.

We should’ve missed our connecting flight in Atlanta because of the delay; we landed a few minutes after our next plane was scheduled to take off. I had been making a backup plan in my head, trying to decide what I was going to do if we were stuck in Atlanta for the night - try to get a hotel, call my uncle and cousin (who live in Atlanta) to see if we could crash with them, or rent a car and drive the rest of the way to Raleigh, praying that Catie would sleep in the car. Fortunately (I guess?) our connection was also delayed, so we made it. We got home a little after midnight. Blargh.

Btw, I know that toddlers are often quite literal, but I really have to start being more careful about how I talk to Catie. At some point during the flight, I had told her that after our ride on the airplane, we were going to see Daddy. She got down, grabbed my hand, and led me to the back of the plane. I thought she was just exploring, and at the back of the plane was the restroom, of course. I figured, what the heck, might as well go while we’re here, so I brought her into the bathroom with me. She proceeded to pound on the back wall of the bathroom, screaming, “Daaaaaddy!!! Where aaaaare youuuu?!?!!!” So yeah, she thought that “after the airplane” meant that Daddy was literally behind the plane. Oops. Poor kid, I have to figure out a better way to explain the concept of time to her.

Oh also, our descent into Raleigh was really bumpy, and Catie got sick. I could tell she didn’t feel well because of the way she was burying her face in my chest, then she coughed, then sort of cough/gagged, and I knew I had about 0.2 seconds until she barfed. I quickly aimed her head over my arm into the middle of the aisle, and just in time. She only heaved once, but still, poor baby. The lady sitting behind me tore up her SkyMall magazine to basically wallpaper over the barf so all of the other passengers wouldn’t have to walk through it on their way out. I was grateful, I knew I needed to cover it up somehow, but the magazine idea never would’ve occurred to me.

Catie and I were both thrilled to see Dave at the airport; her face positively lit up the second she saw him. I drove home so he could ride in the backseat with her. They talked and giggled the whole way home.

As I expected, Catie was all well-rested from her nap, so she ended up not going to bed until close to 3 a.m. She woke up at 8:30, and Dave (God bless that man) got up with her and gave her some milk, then brought her to bed with us. It didn’t take long for her to go back to sleep, and we all slept until noon. I couldn’t believe it, she has never done that in her life. Since she slept so late, I figure that we’ll just push through her nap today and hopefully get to bed at a decent time tonight. Fingers crossed.

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I almost can’t believe we’re flying home today. After being in Mississippi for the past 12 days, it almost feels like, “wait, you mean we don’t live here now?” Catie and I have sort of settled into a routine at my parents’ house over the past couple of weeks, and now we’re about to throw it out the window to get back to our real life.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be very happy to get home to Dave and our house, even though I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting any affection from Catie at all over the next few days, because I expect it’ll be a while before she releases her grip around his neck. Poor kiddo has been talking to her Daddy on the phone while we’ve been gone, which has helped a lot, but I know she really misses him.

(Oh, I’ll also be happy to get back to my two kitties who actually want me to pet them. My mom’s cat hisses at me every time I come within four feet of her. Her name is Blanche, but I call her Evil.)

The part that sucks is that the only flight I could get today that didn’t cost a ridiculous amount leaves at 5:50 p.m. and gets us home around 11 p.m. on the east coast. Which means we probably won’t be home until at least midnight. Faaabulous. I’m sure that’ll do wonders for Catie’s sleep schedule and overall mood.

Next post will be from our living room, composed on my lovely, lightweight laptop and not my parents’ enormous desktop computer with its freakishly ginormous text (you know, for the old people with bad eyesight). I can’t wait!

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It’s getting a little difficult to keep coming up with blog posts every day, especially while we’re out of town. So here are some random notes:

1. Catie turned 22 months old yesterday. I meant to write a milestone recap for her, but I was cooking for most of the day. I’ll owe a post on that later, especially since her verbal stuff is exploding all over the place.

2. Thanksgiving food. So good. Ate too much. Yum. Also, urgh.

3. Today my sister and I posed Catie at my parents’ house to try to get a picture of her for our Christmas card. We got a few that turned out really cute, I hope we can get a good card out of it.

4. Tonight we’re going over to our friends’ Mike and Nicole’s house for a little playdate. Should be a lot of fun, I can’t wait.

5. We fly back to North Carolina tomorrow. I know my parents will be sad for Catie to leave, and she’s going to be heartbroken without her constant audience, but I’m really looking forward to being home. Besides, we’ll see them all again in a month, when they come to NC for Christmas. So that’ll be good.

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