Been a while since I posted a video, so here’s Cate taking up one whole minute of your day.

I hate how dark that turned out, I can never seem to get enough light in my living room at night. As for the noise I’m making in the video, we’ve learned that sometimes when we go “HA!” at her, it’ll make her laugh. She kind of laughs a tiny bit at the beginning of the video, but you almost can’t tell over the noise of the jumperoo.

Oh, and if you want to check out my sister’s mad cinematography skillz, you can go here to see the video she filmed when my family was in town. My sister is a great photographer, but she doesn’t seem to get that you can’t flip between portrait and landscape in video format. Still, it’s pretty cute if you tilt your head to the left.

On Saturday, we met up with Kris and her new boyfriend Tony for a trip to the zoo. It was a lot of fun even though Cate is too young to really notice any of the animals. I knew that was going to be the case, since when we go for walks, she doesn’t notice the horses unless they stick their heads over the fence for us to pet them. It’s all about people-watching for her, and that’s fine.

And I am totally annoyed with myself for bringing the camera with me and taking a grand total of one picture while we were there. I took a picture of a wallaroo. That’s it. Not a single baby photo. I don’t know what happened to my brain, but there you go.

I realized while we were there that I really need a normal stroller. I’ve been getting by for the past 6 months with just the frame that the car seat snaps into, and that’s fine for quick store trips, but I need something that Cate can ride in sitting up and facing out. She was not happy about sitting in her car seat at the zoo, so Dave and I took turns carrying her in the Baby Bjorn most of the time. That was ok, but a little tiring for both of us.

Since I had mentioned the stroller thing to Kris, less than an hour after we left the zoo, she called me to say that she was at a yard sale and found a stroller. She said it was ugly, but it was lightweight and easy to fold, and it only cost $5, so she was buying it for me. Right on! We met up the next day so I could pick it up from her. It’s a Century TraveLite stroller, and ok, it sort of looks like one of Bill Cosby’s sweaters from the 80’s threw up all over it, but it isn’t that bad.

When I got home, I took Cate for a spin up & down our street in the stroller, and she LOVED it. She tends to kick her feet when she’s happy (sort of like a puppy), and her feet were going non-stop the entire walk. I even stopped to chat with one of our neighbors, which is normally when she’d get bored and cranky, but she was happy and smiling the whole time. Yay!

Then yesterday, I googled the stroller to try to find a picture of it so I could show my mom what it looked like. In retrospect, it would’ve been easier to just take a photo of it and email it, but I guess it was lucky that that didn’t occur to me until later. The first result was a link from the Consumer Products Safety Commission that the stroller was involved in a huge recall several years ago. They say, and this is a quote: “The strollers can unexpectedly collapse or the car seat/carrier adapter can unexpectedly detach. When this happens, an infant or young child inside the stroller or an attached car seat/carrier can fall to the ground and suffer serious injuries.” Um, holy crap?

So obviously, we won’t be using this stroller ever again. I’m honestly tempted to take it back to the yard sale people and demand Kris’s five dollars back. I’m hoping that they didn’t know about the recall, because if they did… god, what jerks.

Meanwhile, Cate and I are off to go stroller shopping this afternoon. At least I don’t have to worry about spending money on a stroller and her not liking it. And maybe I can get one that doesn’t involve the colors teal, purple, yellow and hot pink all on the same stroller. Fingers crossed.

I would not normally have done this, since… well, I’m not insane, but Cate is unfortunately at the peak of separation anxiety where she screams every time I walk out of a room. Since I needed to clean and was going to be back and forth all over the house, I thought it would be easier to just strap her on my back and get on with it.

And honestly, it was easier. She was happy as a clam to come along for the ride while I did everything. But man, thank God for ibuprofen, because my back isn’t sure when it will forgive me for that little stunt.

Aside: Cate is trying really hard these days to figure out how to crawl, but so far all she can do is get her knees sort of halfway underneath herself, and then she proceeds to scoot backwards across the floor. Is that normal? Dave and I both find it hysterically funny to watch her try to figure it out. It’s weird, though – on the one hand, I dread crawling because it means we have to start childproofing the house, and I haven’t done the first thing in that regard. On the other, when she’s mobile and can follow me rather than scream when I walk out of a room? That sounds pretty awesome.

Ok, Internet, y’all can tell me if I’m totally crazy here.

I got an email (via Flickr) a few days ago from a journalist who’s writing a story promoting breastfeeding, and she wanted my permission to use this picture of Cate getting a bottle “to provide context.”

Blink. Blink.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t she basically imply that she was going to use the picture of my baby getting a bottle as an example of “here’s how you shouldn’t feed your child”? I know that this is a particularly sensitive issue for me, so maybe I’m overreacting, but that is what she’s more or less saying, right?

This is what I wrote back to her:

Hi [insert journalist’s name],

I appreciate where you’re coming from, but I am one of the thousands (millions?) of mothers who really wanted to breastfeed my baby and was unable to, due to poor milk supply. Perhaps I’m being oversensitive, but every time I read some type of news story that promotes breastfeeding over formula, it still stings a bit and makes me feel like I am somehow failing my child. I know that’s not true, but it gets tiresome because it seems like there is some new “breastfeeding good! bottle-feeding baaaaad!” story being published practically every other day.

So, the way I read your email, you’re asking if you can publish a picture of my daughter as one of those poor, deprived bottle-fed babies with a horrible selfish mother who doesn’t care enough to breastfeed her? Sorry, but no. I don’t want any of my personal photos used for that purpose. I understand that you’re trying to do a good thing – raise social consciousness, whatever – but I’d rather not be involved.

Thanks,
Cindy

Ok, maybe I was a little rude, but believe me, it took a great deal of self-restraint to make it as polite as it was. I held back a lot.

Also, as for the photo itself, it’s not even that great a picture of Cate – her hair looks greasy, her eyes are half-closed, her diaper is showing – I have hundreds of photos that are a million times more adorable. And I’m not the one feeding her in the picture, it was my mom. Not that you can tell from the way the picture is cropped, but whatever. It just bugs me. If you want to publish a picture of my daughter in the media, it had better be a really cute one. Like this. Or this. Or this. Or… ok, I could go on for days with that.

I’m also irritated because I am so. damn. tired. of getting the stink-eye from other women every time I have to give Cate a bottle in public. I know it goes both ways – I was with a friend of mine when she nursed her baby in a Starbucks, and there were teenage boys pointing and giggling, and hoo boy was I grateful that it was her boobs on display and not mine. It just feels like, man, I have to deal with this issue often enough in real life, and now I have to feel like I’m being judged via email too?

It isn’t really the journalist’s fault. I checked out her Flickr profile – she’s young, pretty and single, and I’m sure that she probably never gave a half-second’s thought to this issue before she had to write about it. But, I do wonder if the other people she contacted about posting pictures of their kids being fed by bottles were as offended as I was.