Halloween wrap-up

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Cindy

I could not seem to get a single photo of my two girls together, but here’s how Halloween went down.

Catie the T. Rex.

And Lucy the baby leopard.

(If that outfit looks familiar, it’s because I’m a fan of recycling.)

Last night was cold and rainy, but we lucked out and the rain let up for about a half hour. It was just long enough for Catie to run around to almost every house on our street and get all the candy she could grab. I wore Lucy in the Baby Bjorn, and she smiled at every zombie, monster, and witch that we passed.

Pretty accurate representation. I love it when they’re too little to understand that anything is supposed to be scary or spooky.

The weather seemed to keep a lot of kids from coming out. We have so much leftover candy today that I think we’re probably all going to be diabetic before Thanksgiving. Oy.

But we had a fun night, although Catie was bouncing off the walls on a sugar high until almost 11:00 p.m., which was considerably less fun. And then Lucy decided to be wide awake, happy, and chit-chatting until almost 1 a.m. So mama has a little bit of a Halloween hangover today, even though I haven’t had a drop of alcohol in weeks. Hopefully the tiny leopard and T. Rex that live in my house will ease up on me tonight and let me recover.

taking a deep breath

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Cindy

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have witnessed my tweeting of a major family crisis that happened. If you missed it, well… I’ve deleted everything about it, because I decided it was probably inappropriate to share online. I was in a state of panic, and I reached out for support. That’s what I use social media for; however, I also don’t want to cause any additional distress to my family. So that’s the last I’m going to say about it.

Except this: we are all ok. It was really bad and scary and awful for a while, but it’s starting to gradually get a little better, and I can see that things are going to turn out ok.

I mean, come on. How could they not?

baby pattern baldness

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Cindy

Somebody explain this to me…

Here’s Lucy’s hair when she was 3 weeks old.

(It’s terrible that this picture makes me laugh, isn’t it? TINY FURY!!)

And this is what her hair looks like now, at almost 19 weeks.

WHERE DID HER HAIR GO?!?!!

I remember that something similar happened with Catie, so I went digging through the archives and found this.

Catie at 2-ish weeks old:

Same full head of dark hair that Lucy had when she was born, right? But by the time Catie was 4 months old:

Her blonde hair was well on its way.

So, I’m just baffled. What is with Lucy’s head? How can a baby go from a full head of hair to almost zero hair? Isn’t it supposed to go the other way?

Luckily, she’s cute enough to pull off the look, but I have a feeling that when she’s older, she’s not going to like that one of her nicknames is Captain Baldy.

weekend recap

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Cindy

This past weekend, my mom took Catie to Charlotte to visit with my brother and sister. Seeing as how my siblings are two of Catie’s favorite people on the planet (and my sister’s best friend was there too, who Catie also adores), we thought this sounded like something she’d enjoy. And she did, for the most part. They took her to a children’s museum, she got to meet my sister’s new kitten, and she was generally indulged in ways that would never happen if I was around (like being allowed to stay up WAY past her bedtime, eat junk food, etc.). Sounds like heaven for a four year-old, right?

But she also had a lot of meltdowns, in which she cried that she missed Mommy and Lucy. On the trip back home, she told my mom in the car that she never, ever wanted to go on a trip again.

Last night, when I was snuggling with her at bedtime, I said, “So, you had a lot of fun this weekend, didn’t you?”

She quietly said, “Not really.”

I said, “No? Why not?”

She said, “Because I missed you.” And burst into tears.

It got me thinking that even though she was around people she loves and doing fun stuff, it was probably too soon for her to be on an overnight trip away without me. I think she still feels like the ground is shifting underneath her after the separation, and it’s already hard on her to be away from Dave, so being away from me too was just too much for her. I feel bad that it didn’t even occur to me to consider that, before we planned this trip for her.

To help calm her down, I told her that no matter where she goes, she’ll always come home to me, and that I’ll always be here waiting for her.

And I said that maybe, in a few months, when Lucy is a little bit bigger and sleeping through the night, then we can all go to Charlotte together, and she wouldn’t miss me or Lucy, because we’d be there with her. She seemed to like that idea.

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On the other hand, Lucy and I had a pretty fabulous weekend. Compared to the usual craziness of having two kids in the house, having just one little baby to deal with felt like a breeze. (There’s the difference between kids #1 and #2 – with Catie, I was terrified to be left alone with the baby. Now, I’m like, “Just one baby? Pshaw!”)

Also, you know what’s great about only having a tiny baby in the house? You can watch R-rated movies and not worry about traumatizing them! I finally caught up on a few movies that have been sitting on my DVR for ages, which was great.

[Side note to George Clooney: I love you, but “The American” sucked. All scenes in which you were shirtless = WINNER. Everything else? Not so much.]

But it was a really nice weekend with my baby girl. We went to Target and Whole Foods, we went for a walk around the neighborhood, we experimented with solid food (she seems to like baby oatmeal), and we played. All in all, a very good weekend.

(Check out the hand placement there. Nice one, kiddo.)