Tag Archives: Catie

Just us three

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My mother-in-law flew back to England yesterday. And I finally managed to get a picture of her with her (for now) only grandchild, just a few hours before she left.

Grandma & Catie

Nothing like waiting until the last minute, but at least it’s a really cute picture.

Overall it was a lot of fun. Except for the whole “coming down with the Plague” part of her visit, and then her catching the Plague from me (um, sorry?), it was lovely. Catie completely ignored Dave and me in the mornings and went straight into Grandma’s room to snuggle. Most mornings when I got up, I’d find the two of them already downstairs, curled up on the couch and watching Scooby-Doo. Kind of nice to have a little early morning reprieve.

So now it’s back to being just the three of us. For the next week. Then my family all descends on our house for Christmas. I have to admit, I’m really excited. I love the holidays.

Monday morning ramblings

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Since the Plague wasn’t going away quickly enough, my doctor gave me a prescription for prednisone to help with the coughing fits. And it’s working, I feel SO much better. But the other part? Prednisone makes me HYPER. Like, oh hey why don’t I go run five errands and then come home, knowing full well that everything is finished, but still feel like I need to go-go-GO doooo soooomething! Hey, there’s 20 minutes until dinner’s ready, maybe I should put the crib together? You know, just so I don’t have to think about it for the next 6 months until this baby is due?

So, yeah. Fun with medical science over at our house, clearly. I’ve gone insane.

Other stuff: My mother-in-law has been here for over a week and I’ve taken a shameful amount of photos. Meaning, um, zero. I’m blaming it on my bronchitis, I just seem to keep forgetting to take pictures when Catie is all snuggled up on her Grandma.

But, on Saturday, we went to see “Toy Story 3 on Ice,” and my mother-in-law remembered her camera for that, so we actually got a few cute pictures there.

Dave & Catie, wearing her alien hat

Family pic!

(Of course, none of the pictures have my mother-in-law actually in them. Which would’ve been nice. But oh well. She was there, I promise!)

Toy Story 3 on Ice

And I have to say, we have been to a lot of kid-oriented concerts and shows – Thomas the Tank Engine Live, Sesame Street Live, Nick Junior Live, and of course, the Wiggles – and I must say, the Disney on Ice franchise put the rest to shame. That show was amazing. Those ice skaters were absolutely phenomenal. I’d highly recommend it to anyone with age-appropriate kids.

Other random stuff:
* We now have two Christmas trees, which feels a little bit pretentious, but I have to say that I kind of love it. I put our (fake) tree up in the living room, which faces the street, because it’s our pretty formal room and it’s the most logical place to have a Christmas tree. But Dave pointed out that we never actually hang out in that room, so he wanted to get another tree (a real one, not another fake one) to put in the family room. It didn’t take much to convince me – he just had to say that he’d be responsible for handling it and I was sold. It’s a very pretty tree, I really like having both of them.

(Also? The tree in the family room can’t be seen from our stairs, which makes it the more logical place for Santa to drop off his loot, to avoid little early-risers who might try to sneak a peek.)

* I haven’t cooked dinner since my mother-in-law arrived. It’s been heaven.

* Catie has decided that the Elf on the Shelf book is pretty much her favorite bedtime story ever, but she’s largely indifferent to the elf himself. I’m just rolling with it – if she’s fine with it, I’m fine with it.

* I’m finally healthy enough to go back to work! And I’m so excited about it! God, I’m a dork.

* The title of this post is a lie because I’m actually typing it on Sunday night. Thank you, WordPress scheduling feature.

Elves on Shelves and other stuff

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I don’t really want to write about how I’m siiiiick and I don’t feeeel good, but yeah, that’s basically what’s going on here. I went to the doctor on Wednesday and got some (pregnancy-safe) antibiotics, so I’m starting to feel a little better. Hooray for that.

I honestly would’ve gone to the office today, except I still have these frequent coughing fits (thank you, bronchitis!), and that just seems sort of rude when you sit in an open cubicle environment, no? I mean, the guy who trims his fingernails in his cubicle makes me want to claw my eyeballs out of my face, so I imagine that this whole lung-hacking noise that I make every few minutes would be, uh, somewhat distracting for my co-workers, to put it mildly. Anyway, I have a remote desktop connection to my office PC, so I’m still getting all of my work done, even though I’m not physically there. It’s fine.

So! Onto other stuff:
1.) Tomorrow we’re taking Catie to see “Toy Story 3 on Ice.” None of us have ever been to an ice show, so that should be exciting. I’m curious to see if the ice show makes me weep like the movie does. (And remembering how Catie tends to get anxious in crowded theaters, just like her dad, I bought nosebleed seats way in the back. Which is actually kind of lucky, since it’ll also ensure that I’ll be far enough away that I won’t distract any ice skaters with my hacking cough.)

2.) In the spirit of good-behavior motivation, my sister bought us The Elf on The Shelf. I know it’s really popular and a lot of parents say that their kids love it (and I appreciate the gift – THANK YOU, TRACY!), but… does anyone else find it creepy? The whole “there’s a dead-eyed elf doll watching everything you do & reporting it back to Santa while you’re asleep” thing? And then he’s in a different location every day? I admit that I have issues with dolls (that most recent episode of “Hoarders” where the woman had collected over 5,000 porcelain dolls? I’m going to have nightmares about that house for the rest of my life). And I tend to think elves are a little creepy too. So combine the two and make an elf doll? That’s basically a potential horror movie to me.

Catie likes the book a lot, but she seems a little bit scared of the elf himself. I’m going to see how it goes the next couple of days, but if she continues to be nervous about the elf, I think Santa Claus is going to be short-staffed and have to call some of the elves back to the North Pole to help make toys, and our elf is going to go away. Christmas is supposed to be all about fun and magic, not anxiety-provoking or scary.

And for the record, when I described it to my mom, she had the same “NO NO NO THAT IS CREEPY AS HELL” reaction that I did. So maybe there’s a genetic link there with the elf doll thing.

3.) It’s been really nice having my mother-in-law here this week, especially while I’ve been sick. Catie goes to climb in bed with Grandma first thing in the morning, rather than coming to see me or Dave, so it’s nice to have a little reprieve. Plus, my MIL has been making dinner every night, so that’s been fabulous, just to have one less thing to worry about.

4.) It’s freaking cold here this week, way colder than a typical North Carolina December (although, to be fair, it’s only our third winter in this state, and we spent most of last December in England). It kinda makes me wish I were in Las Vegas with some of my favorite people right now, but alas. Pregnant ladies with tight Christmas budgets don’t get weekends in Vegas. Oh well. Maybe next time.

Bad Track Record

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My mother-in-law is flying in from England today. I know that the stereotype would be to have a difficult and strained relationship with a mother-in-law, but I honestly don’t. She’s funny, she’s an amazing cook, and I find her very easy to be around.

At the same time, though, I do feel a teeny-tiny sense of Impending Doom about her upcoming visit. But it’s not for any of the reasons you’d think. The reason is because every year since Catie was born, we’ve seen her at some point during the month of December, and every year, somebody gets really horribly sick.

To recap:
* 2007 – We all got the flu. And let me tell you, trying to take care of a sick baby when you’re sick yourself? Oh man. That was hideous.

* 2008 – Catie ended up in the hospital with a major asthma/flu episode. Because nothing says “Happy holidays!” like continuous albuterol treatments.

* 2009 – We went to England. Catie was spared, this time it was just me and Dave who got sick. Because of that trip, I have vowed to never go to England during the winter again. (It had more to do with the epic snowstorm than my bronchitis-that-was-almost-pneumonia, but still. Not fun on any counts.)

[Oh, there was also the visit – NOT during the month of December, oddly enough – where my mother-in-law herself wound up in the ER with a concussion after falling in the grocery store and hitting her head. That was fun too.]

And now she’s on her way here for 2010. *dun dun duuuuuunnnnnn*

It’s already starting. Dave got sick with some sort of nasty cold a couple of days ago, and today I woke up with a scratchy throat. Which is great, since you know, pregnancy keeps me from being able to take any of the good drugs. I’m basically limited to my Zyrtec and my neti pot. Fabulous.

Let’s just hope we can avoid any hospital visits this time, yes?

Thanksgiving Wrap-Up

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So… Thanksgiving happened. Here’s the mad-dash recap.

* Thursday – Went to my cousin’s house and had a lovely Thanksgiving meal with her family. Catie had a blast getting to play with her cousins all day, and we left feeling full, tired, and happy. I’d call that a win.

* Friday – Bummed that since we did Thanksgiving at someone else’s house, we’d have no leftovers of our own, I roasted a chicken and made some Thanksgiving-y side dishes, and we had our own little mini-Thanksgiving, just the three of us. It was fun, even though I had a really awful headache most of the day. (I have an OB appointment this afternoon, and I WILL be asking for a prescription for something I can safely take while pregnant, because there are some things that Tylenol can’t even begin to handle.)

Also on Friday: Catie and I put up our Christmas tree. I never thought I’d be one of those people who puts up their tree the day after Thanksgiving, but apparently this is what motherhood has done to me. We even listened to Christmas music the whole time! And I don’t even like most Christmas music, I just thought it’d be fun for Catie. What has happened to me?

(I didn’t put up the outside lights yet, just the tree. I might make Dave do that part.)

We also tried to take pictures for our Christmas card, with… mixed results.

big mug for the camera
I think that CHEESE was a little bit too hard, baby girl.

Frog Jump #1
Frog jump. Alternate title: Holy crap, look at ALL THAT HAIR.

(We actually do have some great pictures for our Christmas card, but you’ll have to wait to see those until the cards are shipped out.)

* Saturday – Catie cleaned up all of her toys all by herself (usually I have to help her), and by doing so, she filled the last square in her reward chart, which meant that I owed her a prize. Her request? She wanted a toy Rudolph and Clarice (Rudolph’s girlfriend from the movie). We have a Rudolph & Clarice Christmas ornament, but it’s a cheap piece of junk and the legs keep breaking off, so that wasn’t going to cut it. My sister insisted that she saw Rudolph and Clarice plush dolls at some drug store – she couldn’t remember which, but she thought it was CVS – so, we set off to hunt them down. Five drug stores and a trip to Wal-Mart later, we had a Rudolph, but no Clarice. Catie wasn’t happy because Rudolph would be sad without his girlfriend, but we found Rudolph another friend (a tiny plush cat wearing reindeer antlers that I found for $2 at Walgreen’s), so that worked as a consolation prize.

Besides, I hear that Santa may have found a lead on Rudolph and Clarice plush dolls on eBay, so no worries there.

* Sunday – I worked on my Epic De-Clutter Operation. My big Christmas gift to myself is that I’ve hired a housekeeper to come clean our house, and I am so excited I could cry. (She’s coming on Tuesday – TOMORROW. It also just so happens that my mother-in-law arrives on Thursday, and then my entire family will be here for Christmas, so it’ll be a huge relief to have a clean house before the family visits begin!) But before the housekeeper and her crew get to my house, I needed to get all of our junk out of the way, so they can actually… you know, clean.

The de-cluttering wasn’t too bad. Some rooms (like the kitchen) took longer than I expected, and some rooms (like our bedroom) took almost no time at all. I don’t know if I have adequate words for how happy it makes me to have someone other than myself clean the bathrooms and vacuum the stairs. But, OMG I AM SO EXCITED, I CANNOT WAIT.

On Sunday afternoon, Catie and I went to see Tangled. I thought it was a very sweet and clever take on the whole Rapunzel story, and I like that both Rapunzel and the guy/love interest actually have personalities. (Disney’s been getting better about that with their more recent movies; not so much in the really old princess tales.)

So, yeah, Tangled was cute. Catie liked it, but some of it scared her a little, which is unusual since she’s typically impervious to that stuff. (Case in point: she recently asked to watch Scooby-Doo before bedtime, and I said no because I didn’t want her to have nightmares. She gave me this exasperated sigh and said, “Mommy! It’s just pretend!”) So when she climbed into my lap during the movie and tried to hide her face in my shoulder, I whispered in her ear, “Remember, it’s all just pretend.” And it worked, she turned back around to face the screen and she seemed to enjoy the movie a lot.

Overall: it was a great holiday weekend. And I already can’t wait until Christmas.

two gross-ish tales

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Here are two of those “TMI Mommyblogger” stories that Catie will probably hate me for when she’s a teenager.

1.) Catie’s been fully potty-trained since early this year. She’s had zero accidents for… I don’t know, at least six months, I guess? It’s been so long that I’ve stopped bringing extra clothes with me everywhere I take her, because she’s so reliable about always using the potty.

But in the past week, she’s wet the bed not once, but twice. I know she’s stressed out because of my new job and my pregnancy and all of that, but I guess I kind of expected this to start after the baby got here, not before. True, both of those accidents happened on nights when she didn’t go to the bathroom before bedtime, but she’s done that dozens of times in the past and never had accidents, so… ? I don’t get it.

The thing is, if I have to get up at 6:30 a.m. to get ready for work, I do not have the energy for these middle-of-the-night sheet changes. So I’m implementing a new rule: if she doesn’t pee before bed, she’s going to have to wear a Pull-Up. (And no, just sitting on the potty and telling me that she can’t go doesn’t count.) I have a feeling this might be enough to snap her out of this phase, since she’s very entrenched in that “only babies wear diapers” mindset. Or at least it might convince her to just go ahead and pee before bedtime already. Sheesh.

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2.) Last night, when it was time to head upstairs for bed, she wanted to bring her stuffed reindeer with her to bed. Fine with me. But suddenly, she threw her reindeer on the ground and burst into tears, saying, “I don’t want my reindeer, he’s got white dirt on him!!”

I picked up the toy to check out what this “white dirt” was all about… and pulled two HUGE boogers off of her reindeer.

Me: Oh, eww. Catie, did you pick your nose and wipe it on the reindeer?

C: No.

Me: Then whose boogers are these?

C: Um… I think they’re Daddy’s?

Nice way to throw your father under the bus, kid. We went to tell Dave goodnight, and I repeated the story to him.

Dave: Catie, I did NOT put boogers on your reindeer!
[Aside: y’all should hear how Dave pronounces the word “boogers” with his British accent. It’s completely adorable and hilarious.]
[Aside #2: File THAT quote – “I didn’t put boogers on your reindeer” – with the other million sentences you never thought you’d say until you had a kid.]

C: *giggles because she knows she’s busted*

Me: So, whose boogers were they?

C: Fairy boogers! *falls over laughing*

If that’s true, Tinkerbell really needs to get herself to an ear-nose-and-throat specialist, fast. Yuck.

P.S. I think calling something “fairy boogers” is going to be my new kid-safe way of saying that something is bullshit. It sounds so much more G-rated that way.

Pregnancy Low-Down

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Two major topics I didn’t mention in yesterday’s post:

* Despite the fact that we waited for what feels like AGES for this baby, the timing with my new job could be better. For those of you keeping track, I applied for this job back in August (before I got pregnant), and I found out that I was pregnant sometime around my third interview. Then they waited another five weeks to actually hire me. So I started working here when I was already 10 weeks pregnant. And I’ve been praying that nobody would figure it out right away, and that they’d think I’m chubby with an unfortunate way of carrying my extra weight around my mid-section. But I’m already mostly in maternity clothes, so I think it’s going to be really obvious very soon.

(This is the burden of having a short torso. Nowhere to expand except outward.)

I mean, I just didn’t want to walk in here on Day One and be like, “Hey, thanks for the job and all, but BTW I’m gonna need some maternity leave in a few months.” It seemed… tacky. I wanted to establish myself as a valuable employee first. So, I’m working on trying to figure out a graceful way to handle that one. Obviously, this is not my first time at this particular rodeo, so it’s not like I’m going to be quitting when the baby arrives. I know that I still want to (need to) work, so I just need to make sure I explain that very clearly to my manager when I tell him.

(Oh, that’s the other weird part. My manager is based in the Colorado office, so he has no idea what I look like. I could theoretically wait until a week before my due date to say anything. I mean, I won’t do that, because that would be horrible. But I probably could get away with it.)

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* Catie is pretty aware of what’s going on now. We’ve talked about how she’s going to be a big sister “someday,” since it’s hard to explain timelines to an almost-4 year-old. I tried telling her it’ll be next summer, but I don’t know if she understands that or not.

I showed her the ultrasound pictures from yesterday and explained that it was her baby sister and that the doctor took a picture of her in my tummy (she found her own ultrasound pics once and I explained to her that it was a picture of her before she was born, so she’s familiar with that). I told her that it’s going to be a long time before the baby is here, and my tummy is going to get reeeeeally big in the meantime. She said, “Wow, I’m so excited to see a picture of my baby sister! [3-second pause] Mommy, can I play with Daddy’s iPad?” So… yeah. I’m not sure how much she really understands about this whole thing.

But she IS excited to help me decorate the spare room. So there’s that.

Oh, also? Now I really, really, REALLY want my parents to hurry up and sell their house to move up here. I’m going to need their help more than ever, no doubt. Anybody need to buy a 4-bedroom/2-bath house in Ridgeland, Mississippi? Anyone?