Dancing to this song is one way that I can almost always reset Cate’s mood if she’s grumpy and make her start giggling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV2pxaHH5t4I don’t know if any of y’all loved “Ice Castles” as much as I did when I was a kid, but I still have a soft spot for that song “A Fifth of Beethoven” from the movie. Since this song samples it, I kinda dig it too. Even if it is by Robin Thicke, a fact that I only discovered when I uploaded the video today. Yikes.
Cate’s 9-month pediatrician visit was today. Her stats:
Weight = 22 pounds, 2 ounces (same as a couple of weeks ago); 95th percentile
Height = 28 3/4 inches; 90th percentile
Head circumference = still off the charts – I forget the number because they tell you in centimeters, and my brain doesn’t do metric.
Ok, 9 month milestones:
* Crawl, stand up, crawl, stand up, crawl-crawl-crawl, stand up again. Seems to be an ongoing theme in our house. She’s figuring out that because she’s mobile now, she doesn’t just have to sit and scream when I walk out of a room, she can follow me. And she does. Screaming the whole time.
* The cats are all now terrified of her. I keep trying to explain “gentle” and demonstrate it by lightly stroking her hand and forearm to show how she should pet the cats. I don’t know if it’s a lack of motor skills or if she just isn’t interested in my explanation, but she continually grabs a fistful of fur and yanks as hard as she can. They were tolerant of her at first (when she was tinier and her grasp was a bit weaker), but now they see her coming and head for the hills. Or the top of the bookcase. Whichever.
* I can actually see two tiny little teeth on her bottom gums. It’s so cute, I can’t wait until they come in all the way so I can get pictures of her little two-toothed grins. In honor of this new little milestone, I’ve started trying to brush her teeth with a little baby toothbrush, and man, she is not a fan of that. She screams like I’m trying to rip her face off. I don’t know how to make it any easier, I guess it’s just something she’ll have to get used to.
* Cheerios, oh, cheerios. How did we ever live without ye?
* Baby girl loves leather. Seriously, I don’t know why, but she’s got this fixation on belts and watches. She loves to chew on anything leather. I’m not sure what that’s about, but it’s kind of amusing. Earlier today, we went out to run a few errands, and after a long time in the stroller, she started to get fussy. So I took off my watch and gave it to her to play with. It chilled her right out. Go figure. She is such a lovable little weirdo sometimes.
* She has found her voice, and screeches for the fun of it all the time. I think she’s probably done it for a while, but it’s just recently gotten really loud. Like that “wow, everyone in the entire grocery store probably heard you” kind of volume. One second she’s hanging out in the cart, the next it’s “AYE-YA-DA-GUY-DA!!!” It cracks me up, but I still try to shush her if we’re out in public, because I know not everyone is a fan of screaming babies. Unfortunately, she usually thinks it’s funny when I shush her, so I get even louder happy squeals. Yikes. I try to shrug it off and figure that at least they’re happy yells, it’s not like she’s crying or anything.
* We’re working on baby sign language, but so far she has yet to sign back to us. I haven’t been very good about consistently signing, so that’s probably partially my fault. But she likes the Signing Time DVD that Cat loaned us, so maybe she’ll learn it more from that than from her spacey sign-forgetting mama. Patsy also borrowed the DVD so she can practice the signs with her at daycare, which I thought was cool of her. It’s funny, I occasionally send DVD’s with her to daycare because they’re the ones that I know chill her out (read: Baby Einstein), but Patsy says that all the older kids like watching them too. They call them “baby movies,” and ask for them every time Cate is there.
Speaking of daycare, I had the weirdest moment the other day when I walked in and one of the kids announced, “Baby Catie’s mommy is here!” (There’s an older girl named Katie, hence the need to differentiate: Big Katie and Baby Catie.) It’s very strange to be addressed as someone’s mommy rather than just me. Kind of threw me for a loop to hear that.
Nine months seems like a big landmark age because it marks the point at which your baby has been on the planet longer than you were pregnant with him/her. And that is a pretty big deal. I wonder if it’s why I keep having dreams about having another baby. They’re kind of disturbing because I never seem to have a “holy crap, how am I going to have two babies at the same time?” meltdown – and believe me, if I found out that I was pregnant right now, I’d probably have to be sedated. (As soon as the sedative wore off, I’d be filing a lawsuit against the manufacturer of my IUD.) No, in my dreams, I’m always freaking out over what we’re going to name the baby. Which seems like such a tiny, inconsequential thing compared to all of the other things that I would be freaking out about if this were to happen in real life.
But hey, I’ve been at this motherhood gig for 3/4 of a whole year, and I seem to be doing ok at it so far, so who knows? Maybe I’ll decide to give it another go at some point. Just probably not until 2010 or so.
I feel like I need to blog about something, but not that much is going on right now. I’m getting a new project at work – yay, money! Dave is over his cold, but he’s still a bit of a grump. The cats are driving me bonkers (nothing new there). I cleaned the house yesterday. Hmmm, what else?
Cate seems to be over both her ear infection and teething, and she’s even back to sleeping through the night. The last two mornings, she woke up around 7:30 a.m. I’ll take that over 4 in the morning any day. Other than that, you know, she’s completely adorable and funny, crawling everywhere, climbing on everything, and generally cracking us up on a regular basis. Her 9-month pediatrician appointment is on Friday, so I’ll have an update then of all her latest tricks and statistics.
Meanwhile: hey look! Diaper butt!
I’d like to thank both Shannon and Cat for the suggestions of yogurt and the BRAT diet, respectively, for Cate’s diarrhea. I tried them both at the same time, so I have no idea which one was better. But the two of them together worked like a champ, and she’s had no more poo-splosions all week. Hurray!
Cate says, “Normal poops! And no more ear infection! And teeth that have finally broken through the gums! Yaaaay for all of it!”
Daycare seems to be going a lot better. Cate hasn’t cried the last couple of mornings at drop-off time, which has made it infinitely easier for me. There’s a little 2 year-old girl there named Scarlett who Cate seems pretty entertained by, and who is a blog post in her own right (more about her some other time). Cate even seems to be liking Patsy’s dogs more and more. Until now, she only liked Patsy’s cats – she loves cats since she’s around them all the time at home – and the long-haired chihuahua named Buddy. And honestly, I think she thought Buddy was some sort of a weird-looking cat. But Patsy has two other dogs (a beagle and some sort of large yellow dog – a lab, maybe? Golden retriever? I don’t know) and Cate was pretty freaked out by them at first, but she seems to think they’re ok now.
Other stuff: I finished my first work project today, which was a lot of fun and I think I kicked major butt on it, if I do say so myself. Being finished means no more money for now, or at least until the editors get it back to me with any changes they want me to make. But that’s ok because I have racked up the billable hours this week, so our home improvement fund will be getting a nice little donation when I get my next paycheck.
Oh, and I still can’t believe we got through that storm without ever losing our electricity. Now I keep waiting for some other natural disaster to strike our house, because it doesn’t seem right that we would have that kind of luck, given how much our luck with nature has sucked in the past. I’m so relieved that there are no tornadoes in the Northwest.
Weather man says a windstorm is headed our way. Everybody please cross your fingers or say a little prayer or something that we keep our electricity, ok? If we have another nine-day power outage like last winter, I may not survive it.
Or at the very least, my credit card may not survive it, since Miss Cate and I will be checking our butts into the nearest hotel I can find. Dave can do as he pleases, he’s made of tougher stock than me and likes playing around with our generator and circuit breaker. But I’m declaring right now that my baby and I will not be freezing and miserable, thankyouverymuch.
Attention Mississippi residents: I booked our plane tickets for Christmas, so we will be visiting my family in Jackson from December 21st through the 30th. A couple of those days will be spent in New Orleans, but I’m not sure of the exact dates. But if you’re going to be around then and want to meet up, let me know!
Edited to add: Did any of you Jackson locals see the plume of smoke when my old high school burned to the ground last week? My mom said she saw it when she was driving down I-55. I’m a little sad that I missed it. Could’ve been a great opportunity for a little marshmallow roast. (Obviously, not too many happy memories associated with the place, as I mentioned when I saw the burned-out gym last spring. I try not to be bitter about it, but seriously, do we ever 100% get over all of the damage that’s inflicted during our teenage years?)
Things I’ve learned this weekend:
1) Baby Motrin is a gift from the Baby Gods. That is some fantastic stuff.
2) Giving Cate her medicine is sort of like giving it to the cats. It requires both me and Dave – he holds her head still long enough that I can squirt the stuff in her mouth. I tried doing it by myself, and she ended up with a big streak of orange goo across her cheek and into her hair when she jerked her head really fast.
3) Amoxicillin works quickly, however it seems to have given Cate explosive diarrhea. Fun! The past couple of days, it’s been so bad that we’ve had to stick her in the tub and hose her down with the shower nozzle. I’ve developed a whole new appreciation for our shower head on the five-foot extension hose, because man, that sure has come in handy for rinsing off her nether regions.
(On a side note, I am worried sick about sending Cate to daycare tomorrow when she has a massive case of the runs. I’m trying to feed her stuff that will constipate her a bit – meats, cereals, etc. – but if any of y’all have other ideas, please let me know. Meanwhile, I’m going to be trying prayer and making sure that she has a couple of extra outfits in her bag.)
4) I’m not sure if it’s the teething, or the fact that she’s been sick, or maybe it’s just another one of those Baby Milestone things, but Cate has suddenly decided to start waking up in the middle of the night. In the past, she would occasionally sort of halfway wake up and fuss a little while she was finding a new position to sleep in. When I heard her on the monitor, I’d look at the clock and give her 2 minutes to see if she would go back to sleep, and she almost always would. Now, though, it’s like this frantic shrieking, and when I get into her room, she’s standing up in her crib and reaching for me. Maybe nightmares? Who knows. She’s fine as soon as I pick her up, and she’ll fall asleep in our bed in a matter of minutes. It’s making me crazy, though. Mama needs her sleep, and I’m starting to wish that there was such a thing as Baby NyQuil. (There isn’t. I checked.)