Just to move on from the whole poop topic, today is Cate’s 8-month birthday, so it’s time for yet another milestone recap:

* Crawling, crawling, crawling. She crawls everywhere, and I’m quickly discovering just how very unchildproofed our house really is. We’re working on correcting that. Oddly, her favorite place to crawl seems to be our bathroom. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s a linoleum versus carpet issue, or maybe it’s because Teenie usually hangs out in there. (Teenie likes it because the bathroom has a skylight, so there’s lots of sun to bask in, plus none of the other cats bother her there.)

* Speaking of which, Cate really loves all of the cats – and she doesn’t just want to pet them, she wants to rub her face on them. Which I must say is pretty hilarious to watch. The cats are not so into it, but they can get up and walk away from her, and she isn’t fast enough to catch up with them. Yet.

* Standing up!

The first time she did this, I was on the phone with my mom, and not totally paying attention to Cate because I was preoccupied with our conversation. Then suddenly I realized she had pulled herself up on the coffee table, and I thought “holy crap, she’s never done that before!” She was quite proud of herself, and she tries to pull herself up on everything now. It’s pretty funny when she tries it on me, because she usually ends up just stretching my t-shirt and pulling it down to her level rather than her rising up to me.

* Now that she’s mastered all of this crawling/standing stuff, sitting up on her own is no big deal. She can sit for ages, and is totally content to do so. However, I think it’s time to retire her Bumbo chair, because she managed to flip herself out of it and land on all fours. And it just happened to be when the Bumbo was on the kitchen counter. It scared the bejeezus out of me, and I’m really glad I was right there when she did it so she didn’t get seriously hurt.

* More foods that she likes: peaches, applesauce, spinach, potatoes (she hasn’t had them on their own, just as part of veggie blends), chicken and beef. Oh, and she’s decided that bananas are a-ok now too. I guess she’s finally warmed up to the idea of fruit.
Dislikes: prunes. Can’t say I blame her on that one.

She’s at daycare today so I could have some more house-cleaning time. Which is great, although I was just getting on a roll when I got a call from the guy who will be my boss when I start back to work. And he wanted to know if I’m available to start working tomorrow. Yikes!

It’s good because it means money, I’m just having a minor freak-out over whether or not I’ve forgotten everything I need to know about my job, and worrying about how I’ll deal with taking Cate to daycare more often, when it almost killed me to leave her there this morning. She was crying and reaching for me, and I had to leave. Awful. I’m sure most working mothers feel this way, but there’s just something that feels vaguely unnatural about leaving your baby in another woman’s arms when she’s crying for you. Patsy called me ten minutes later to let me know that Cate was fine and happy (she put her in a stroller and took all the kids for a walk, which apparently worked for her like it does for me). I really appreciated that because she didn’t have to take the time to call me, and it makes me feel even better about choosing her for our daycare provider.