Author Archives: Cindy

NaBloPoMo Day 27: 10 months

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Today is Cate’s 10-month birthday. Time for some baby milestones!

1. She said her first word. Only it’s not really a word, and I have no idea if this counts. Every time she sees one of the cats, she gets all excited and she says, “Beh-baaah!!” It’s like she’s calling them a baby, which doesn’t really make any sense, since I always say “kitty-cat” when I point out the cats. But she’s consistent in calling them “beh-baaah” every time she sees them, so I think that’s her first official word. She’s not very good at K and T sounds, I’ve only heard her say them a few times sporadically, so I think she just made up a multi-syllable name for them that she can easily say.

She can also say “uh-oh,” and has used it appropriately a few times (i.e., after throwing her sippy cup off her high chair), but I’m not sure that she really knows what it means.

2. She understands a few words. She’s definitely got “no,” “stop,” and “uh-uh,” although usually she just laughs and keeps on doing whatever it was I just told her to stop doing. Most of the time it just gives me an extra two seconds to catch up with her and remove her from whatever situation she’s gotten herself into. Also, sometimes if she’s freaking out because I walked into the next room, I’ll say “come here” and she seems to know that means to follow me. We’re still working on some of the other basic words and signs – milk, eat, more, water. She seems to understand them, but so far she doesn’t have any interest in signing back.

3. Her singing and dancing never ceases to crack us up. I don’t have a good video yet of her doing her Ray Charles rock-back-and-forth dance, but I’m working on it. (She gets distracted every time she sees me with the video camera.) She does it pretty much anytime she hears music that she likes. And now that she can clap her hands, she has a whole new way to express her happiness with music.

4. Her new favorite game is to sit in the hall, I sit a couple of feet in front of her, and I roll a ball to her so that it stops in the V of her legs. She laughs and laughs, and flails her arms so excitedly that she ends up knocking the ball back to me. It’s a riot.

5. She is so active. We’ve been joking that she’s like one of those perpetual motion desk toys – if she’s awake, she’s on the move. Last night she got fussy around 5 in the morning, so I brought her into bed with us and got her back to sleep. She woke up at 8, pulled herself up to a stand on our headboard, and started jumping up and down. She’s not exactly the most subtle alarm clock, she was just! so! happy! because! morning! Yippee!

6. Probably because she’s so active, and also because she’s gotten so tall, I’ve noticed that her little fat rolls are starting to disappear. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I’m glad because I don’t want her to be an overweight kid. I know what that’s like, and it’s no fun. Of course I’ll love her and think she’s beautiful no matter what, but I know firsthand how cruel kids can be, and I would feel so guilty if I passed that on to her. The last thing I want is for her to inherit my “fat gene.” On the other hand, I love her little fat rolls, and it makes me a little sad that she’s turning into a (gasp!) toddler, and she’s not staying a teeny-tiny widdle baybee.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally excited to see her turn into her own little person, and I can’t wait until she can really talk and we can have conversations with each other. I often wonder what kind of personality she’s going to have, what kind of things she’ll like, what kind of hobbies she’ll take up (my guess is dancing or gymnastics), and I really can’t wait for all of that stuff. My excitedness about the stuff that’s coming far outweighs the sadness that I feel for the babyhood that’s leaving. I just have to remember to keep kissing all of her little fat rolls as long as they’re still around.

NaBloPoMo Day 26: random stuff

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1. My mom is having her lumpectomy a week from tomorrow (December 4th).

2. I think I’ve been more worried about my mom than I’ve been letting on, because I’ve been grinding my teeth in my sleep. As a result, my jaw is killing me, and ibuprofen isn’t touching it. I’m not sure what to do about that, short of sleeping with a bite guard in my mouth (sex-ay!).

3. Work is slowing down. I’ve finished all of my projects, so I’m just working on edits right now. Which is kind of nice, since the in-laws arrive next week and I don’t want to be frazzled with work stuff while they’re here.

4. Cate has been doing all kinds of new, groovy tricks lately, but I’m saving them for her 10-month birthday tomorrow. Finally you’ll have a blog post worth reading.

NaBloPoMo Day 25: Playhouse Disney

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I mentioned recently that Cate is really loving My Friends Tigger and Pooh on Playhouse Disney. It’s more the theme song than the show itself, I think. Yesterday at Target I caved into the powerhouse that is the Disney marketing machine and bought her the Christmas special DVD, and eh… not so much. They don’t do the theme song at the beginning of the movie, so she was bored and crawled off after about five minutes. I’m guessing she might like it more next year.

Btw, if any of you watch that show, you know the turtle? Did you know that Mark Hamill – as in Luke Skywalker – does his voice? Um, WTF?

Anyway, since we’ve been watching a lot of Playhouse Disney in the mornings, I’ve started noticing a couple of thing about the little segments that they show in between the regular shows to fill in the time.

First, Feeling Good with JoJo is a little segment based on the show JoJo’s Circus, which comes on at ridiculous o’clock in the morning, so we’ve never watched it. Basically, in these little segments, JoJo (a clown) shows kids how to do one yoga pose, which is a nice idea in theory. However, at the beginning, she says something along the lines of:
“Hi, I’m JoJo, and today I’m going to show you how to do something with your body that’ll make you feel really good.”
And I giggle at how completely inappropriate that is for children’s programming. Because apparently I’m a 14 year-old boy.

Also, JoJo has a pet lion named Goliath, and the first time Dave saw him, he almost fell off the couch laughing. It’s all done in claymation, so Goliath’s mane is rather well-coifed. Dave says he looks like Christopher Walken, and well, he sort of does.

One of their other segments proves that I clearly need to get out of the house more often, because I think the DJ on Choo-Choo Soul is kinda hot. Dave thinks that the singer (Genevieve) looks like a stripper. There is something sort of Fergie-esque about her, and the train conductor’s uniform that she wears is a little costume-y, so I can see where he gets that idea. But I like their music, and Cate seems to dig it too, so no complaints about that.

And as much as I despise the Happy Monster Band, and I can’t decide if Go Baby is really cute or really creepy, I still think it’s nice that they don’t show tons of commercials in between shows.

Like I said, I need to get out more.

NaBloPoMo Day 24: shopping

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Under normal circumstances, I avoid shopping the first few days after Thanksgiving like the plague. I usually feel like the bargains aren’t worth the pain of dealing with the hordes of people, and trying to manage it with a baby in tow? Ugh, no thanks.

In spite of that, today Cate and I headed off to Target, because we had reached crisis levels of formula. I normally stock up on Similac at Costco to save money (it’s one of the few products that you can really save a ton of money on by buying in bulk), but not this time. I don’t know if this applies to all Costco locations, but the parking lot at ours is a nightmare on any weekend, nevermind this particular weekend. So I opted for the lesser of two evils and went to Target.

And it was not so bad. I was pleasantly surprised. I found a parking spot easily enough, retrieved a cart, and the checkout was not nearly as crazy as I was expecting. I got more Christmas presents, stocked up on various baby and household items that we needed, got a few things we didn’t need (hello, York peppermint patties! I’ve missed you all year), and just generally had a nice time getting out of the house for a while. We’ve had kind of a lazy holiday thus far, so this was a very welcome little outing.

Sorry this is boring. Just keeping up with the whole NaBloPoMo thing. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

NaBloPoMo Day 23: more about the cats

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I’m sorting through your suggestions about what to do with childproofing a house with cats, and here’s what I’ve got so far:

1. Buy a different type of non-toxic cat litter.
Likelihood that this will happen: Possible. It’s a lot more expensive than the stuff I use, and would require a trip to a whole other store, which is very tedious with a baby in tow. I’m putting it on the list of things I could do if I absolutely had to.

2. Switch them to twice-daily feedings and not leave cat food out any other time.
Likelihood: Probably not. A couple of our kitties are pretty food-aggressive, and I could see that turning into a source of unnecessary fighting.

3. Buy new baby gates with pet doors in them.
Likelihood: God, no. The gates we have were such a huge pain to install, the last thing I want to do is start over from scratch. And at least one of our cats (read: Beaumont) is not that bright, so I have a feeling that Cate would figure it out before he does.

4: Buy a house with a basement, so I can put the litter boxes down there.
Likelihood: Duly noted for next time, since we’re planning to move in 2008.

Since we have four cats, we have three litter boxes. Here’s how it breaks down:
* The first litter box is in the laundry room. I’m not worried about Cate getting into that one, since she’d have to crawl through Dave’s office in order to get there. And she isn’t allowed in Dave’s office unless she’s being closely supervised. There are too many computer cables and other potential sources of electric shock in there. If Dave or I aren’t with her, the door stays shut and she can’t go in.

* The second litter box is upstairs, in my office (technically an extra bedroom that’s been converted into an office). I don’t know why, but a long time ago, one of the cats decided to start peeing in there, and then the rest of the cats got a whiff of it and were like, “oh hey! Is this where we pee now? Whee!” That’s reason #1 on the list of why the carpet has to be replaced before we can sell this house, because man, you can NOT get rid of that smell completely. I finally gave in and decided that you know what? You guys want to pee here, then here’s a box. Go nuts. I put one of those room divider screens around it, so it’s sort of hidden, and I don’t really worry about Cate getting into it. I don’t leave her alone in my office (she likes to turn my pc on and off – fun buttons!), and even if I took my eyes off of her for a minute (because after all, that does happen), I don’t think she could crawl back there without bumping the screen and making me aware of where she was. So I’m not too worried about that one.

* The third and final litter box is in our bedroom. I realize that this is not ideal, but when I first moved in with Dave, Teenie hid in the master bedroom for weeks (months? I forget). So to prevent any little accidents brought on by her stubborn refusal to leave the room, we put a box in there for her. She still doesn’t go far – she might occasionally explore the rest of the upstairs, but she never comes downstairs. She and the other cats don’t get along, and since she’s 11 years old now, I think that’s just the way it’s going to be. I’ve lived with this cat long enough to know that if I move the litter box, she’ll just keep going in the spot on the carpet where she thinks the box should be, so there’s really no point in trying to wean her off of it and make her use the litter box in my office instead.

So that’s really the only litter box I worry about. It isn’t hidden at all, and I don’t know how I can put up a gate to keep Cate out of our bedroom, since she’s in there all the time. The box is in a far corner, and so far she hasn’t shown any interest in crawling in that direction. I’m just worried that she will as she gets older, and I don’t really know what to do about it.

Fortunately, she’s now old enough that she understands “no” and “uh-uh,” so hopefully if I see her heading toward a litter box, I can stop her before she gets there and reinforce that that’s one of those things we don’t touch, sort of like Daddy’s computers and the oven. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that that’ll be all it takes.

NaBloPoMo Day 22: happy turkey day

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I was going to write a little post about how thankful I am for my family, but I already did that a few days ago.

Other things I’m thankful for:
* The rest of my family (you know, outside of Dave and Cate) and my friends, who continually give me a better perspective on life and who can make me laugh until I have a coughing fit.

* That my mom’s cancer was caught early and that she’s going to be absolutely, positively, 100% fine when this is all over.

* My job, which I really do enjoy most of the time. I know that I’m incredibly lucky to have the flexibility that I have and the option to work from home, because a lot of new moms would kill for this gig.

* Sugar snap peas, which I eat in mass quantities every day. And Diet Coke.

* That Dave cleaned up for me today (while Cate and I took a nap together) so I could cook our big Thanksgiving meal in a nice, tidy kitchen.

* That Cate is such a little grown-up that today we pulled her high chair up to the table while we ate Thanksgiving dinner and she fed herself English peas and mashed sweet potatoes. Also, that she started clapping her hands, which is just about the cutest thing ever.

* That she will hopefully be tired and ready for bed soon, because good GOD, child. It’s almost 11:00. Go to freakin’ sleep already.

NaBloPoMo Day 21: babies and cats

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I’m sure that some people who read this site must have dealt with this issue before, so help me out here: how on earth do you have pets and babies in the same house?

Since Cate has started crawling, I have had to swipe cat food out of her mouth on at least three occasions. (I only successfully retrieved it two of those times, the other time it went down the hatch too fast. Oh well, a little extra protein in her diet won’t hurt, right?) And twice in the past week, she’s overturned the cats’ water dish onto the floor and all over herself. She hasn’t yet discovered the litter boxes, but I know it’s only a matter of time before they become her own personal sandbox. And oh my god, eww. I don’t know if there’s enough soap in the world.

So what do you do? I thought about baby gates, but the problem is, our cats haven’t figured out that they can jump over the gates, they just stand at them and yowl for us to come open them. (I now prop the gate at the top of the stairs open at night because I got so sick of Beaumont’s four a.m. wake-up calls.) I have no idea what the next step is, short of keeping Cate on a leash. And I have a suspicion that most parenting books would frown on that. Help?