Author Archives: Cindy

things noticed on our daily walks

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* There are a ton of rabbits here. I don’t know if it’s an unusual amount or not, because last summer I didn’t go walking in the evening nearly as often as I do now. But every night we seem to run into at least a couple of little brown bunny rabbits with their little white cottontail butts, and they are just the cutest thing ever. I’m sure I would find them a lot less cute if I had a vegetable garden, but since our yard is just one big weed-fest, I don’t mind them at all. I just hope the mama bunnies keep their babies out of our yard, so the cats don’t get them.

* We also have a ton of slugs, which never cease to gross me out.

* One of our neighbors apparently owns a helicopter. I guess it’s a hobby, and he certainly has the acreage to store it. It’s just… huh. I’ve lived here for two and a half years. How did I never notice that before?

* If there’s a cow with no udders, that’d be a bull, right? Even though it doesn’t have horns either? There are two of them in a field right near our house, and anytime we pass farm animals, I always do the “Hey Catie, look at the (fill in the name of appropriate farm animal).” But I have no idea what to call those things. I always say cows, even though I’m pretty sure it’s the wrong name.

* Another night we walked past a field of horses, where there were like four horses in one pasture, and one horse in a separate fenced-off area (all on the same farm). I thought that was weird, but whatever. Then I realized that the one horse that had been separated from the others was… um… aroused. To put it mildly. I’m pretty sure the other horses were girls, so I guess I understand why the (very clearly) boy horse was separated from them. But I went from doing my usual “Hey Catie, look at the horsies,” to “Oh dear god, run away! Don’t look at the horsies! Eyes straight ahead, missy!!!” I know she’s way too young to understand, I just don’t want to put those kind of scary images in her subconscience or anything.

* A couple of nights ago, we ran into a kid who was clearly the opposite of the firecracker punks. We have a lot of gravel roads in our neighborhood, so it’s pretty ideal for those all-terrain vehicles. I heard this kid’s four-wheeler about five minutes before I saw him because it was so loud. When he saw us, he stopped, turned off the ignition, and walked his four-wheeler past us. Wow. How polite is that? Cate was right on the verge of dozing off in the backpack carrier, so as he passed us, I thanked him for not startling her. He kind of did the “aw, shucks” nod and kept going. It’s nice to know there are some teenagers in the world whose mamas brought them up right.

* Last night we passed one of our neighbors, who warned me that she had just passed a coyote, and her description of its location was right across the street from our driveway. Great! I went into hyper-mommy protective mode, holding onto Cate’s legs in the Baby Bjorn (no nipping at my baby’s toes, thank you), looking suspiciously at every shrub and hedge along the way, and getting mentally prepared to scream, yell and possibly kick the coyote if it came toward us. I don’t know how bold the coyotes are around here, but I’ve heard stories of them being totally unafraid of people, so I was trying to psych myself up for anything. I also wanted to get home as fast as possible to make sure all of our kitties were inside so they wouldn’t end up a coyote snack. We made it home and never saw the coyote, although I did hear some of the neighbors’ dogs going berserk (barking like crazy), so I think I know which direction he went. Add that to the list of reasons I want to move.

5 months

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Cate’s 5-month birthday was on Wednesday, and I meant to do one of my milestone recap posts on that day, but this week has been a kitchen painting frenzy (more on that later), and when I’ve had time to write at night, I’ve been opting instead to collapse in absolute exhaustion. So, a couple of days late, here it is:

* Catie-girl can now roll over from her back to her tummy whenever she wants, and she loves to do it. A lot. She’s rolled from her tummy to her back a couple of times, but it’s not entirely consistent. And sometimes she seems to roll herself over by accident, and boy, she is not happy when that happens.

* Along the same lines: now that she’s able to roll herself, she seems to prefer sleeping on her side. It doesn’t matter if I put her in her crib when she’s already asleep, the second that her head touches the mattress, she shifts around so that she’s on her left side. Which is funny, since probably 90% of the time, I have to be on my left side to be able to fall asleep too.

* This isn’t a milestone because she’s done it for ages, I just think it’s hilarious and I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it before: every time Dave sneezes, she screams her head off. I guess it’s the loud, sudden noise that scares her, but I’m not a quiet sneezer either, and she never freaks out when I sneeze. Maybe it’s because she felt my sneezes for 9 months when I was pregnant with her? I can’t imagine. But every time Dave sneezes, there’s about a two-second delay where we’re both like “oh here we go,” and then the scream starts.

* She loves it when we blow in her hair. I don’t know why, but it always makes her laugh and kick. Or jump, if she’s in the jumperoo. Oh, and the love affair with the jumperoo has not ended. It’s one of her favorite places to be, she can bounce happily for over half an hour sometimes. And if we have one of the Baby Einstein DVD’s is playing on the TV at the same time? Pure baby bliss.

* We’re still working on the rice cereal, and if any of you know how to spoon-feed a child who always has her tongue stuck out, please give me some pointers. I’m not worried about it, we started her on solids relatively early and I know that she’ll figure it out in her own time, and lord knows it isn’t like she’s wasting away. But so far we haven’t had much luck. I get the spoon in her mouth, I make little “mmmm” noises with my lips shut to see if she gets the idea, she thinks my “mmmm” noise is funny, so she laughs, which mean the tongue comes all the way out, and the rice cereal ends up on her chin rather than in her mouth. Yeah. I’m at a loss.

* She used to hate it when the cats accidentally brushed against her, but she’s recently started noticing them and trying to reach for them when they pass her. The cats are generally still a little unsure about her, except Cleo. Poor Cleo is such an attention whore that she’s all, “Want to twist my ear? Make a fist around my whiskers and yank as hard as you can? Ok, that’s cool. Just pet me, pet me, loooove me. Purrrrrrrrrrrrr.” I’m trying to guide her hand to show her how to gently pet the kitties, but I don’t know how much good it does for a tiny person with very little motor control.

* The sleeping is going well. She averages about 7 hours straight, then we’re up for an hour or two – we have a bottle, a diaper change, and we play for a while – and then we go back to sleep for a couple of hours (our mid-morning nap). It’s enough sleep that I feel human again for the most part. Which is pretty amazing, since it wasn’t that long ago that I could’ve sworn that I was so sleep-deprived that I would never recover.

And even though it’s probably not true, I’ve managed to convince myself that she’s sleeping so well because we have our evening routine of going for a walk and then having a bath. I’ve been religious about this routine too; we walk every. single. night. Even when it’s raining, I put a hat on her and button my raincoat around both of us, so the only thing that might possibly get damp is her face. And even though this week has kicked my butt with all the kitchen painting, we’ve still been going for our usual walk, despite the fact that sometimes it feels like my lower back is going to explode. (I used the backpack carrier a few times this week, hoping that it might use different muscles than the Baby Bjorn and not hurt my back as much. And yes, it does use different muscles, but no, it wasn’t any less painful.)

And I’ve noticed that since we’ve been walking every day, I have less cellulite on my butt and thighs. Which, ok, that’s not a part of my body that I typically obsess about. I have very specific body part neuroses, and the butt/thigh area just doesn’t rank as high on my freak-meter as some other places (like my boobs, for example). But still, I’m pretty darn happy about the lack of cellulite. Not that I’m going to be breaking out the short-shorts anytime in the foreseeable future, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.

But since this post isn’t supposed to be about me and I’m now thoroughly off the subject of baby milestones, I think that’s a sign that it’s time to call it a night and go to sleep. Stay tuned for pictures of my pretty kitchen cabinets. Even though the walls are still four different colors.

oh no they di-n't

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It’s been hours, and I am still so angry about this that I could spit.

This afternoon, I went to the grocery store and brought Cate along with me. I’m going to start painting tomorrow, so I want to make sure that we have all of our essentials (diet coke, bread, etc.) so I don’t have to run to the store covered in primer.

So, grocery store, blah blah. We finish shopping and head out to the parking lot. There’s a white sedan with four teenage boys who are just hanging out. They see me with the baby, one of the boys jumps out of the car, and throws one of those firecrackers on the ground that explodes when it hits the pavement. He jumped back into the car, and they all laughed and watched me to see my reaction.

Are you freaking kidding me? These little punks throw a firecracker to see if they can scare my baby? For the record, Cate was sound asleep in her car seat and didn’t even flinch at the explosion, but that’s so not the point.

I glared at them and reigned in my initial impulse, which was to either give them the finger or shout some obscenity across the parking lot. (Good mommies don’t scream profanity in public, do they?) I gave them the hairy eyeball while I was loading the groceries into my car. Meanwhile they moved on to their next target. Some guy had a souped-up restored antique car (don’t ask me what it was, I don’t know; it was purple, does that help?), and as he was driving away, they shouted “faggot!” at him. Note that they yelled this as the guy was driving away. Yeah. Scaring babies and yelling slurs at people who can’t hear you. Clearly these are some big, bad-ass, brave characters we’re dealing with.

But you know, I was so pissed about the firecracker that that little bit of hate speech just sent me over the edge. I was about to put Cate back in the car, but then that happened, and I was all, “oh heeeell no!” I put Cate back in the cart and stomped back inside.

Now, the woman at the customer service desk… how do I explain this woman? I think she’s in her 40’s, but she could just as well be 70 and I would have no idea. She has dyed jet-black hair that is permed within an inch of its life, a big wall o’ crispy bangs, she wears about a pound of black eyeliner on each eye, and she’s got some severe smoker’s teeth. Every time I have ever been to our local sports bar, I have seen her there, and she is always drunk. Right on.

So, I tell her about the boys in the parking lot, and when I get to the part about the firecracker, she’s all, “They tried to scare the baby?!?! Where are they?!” And off she stomps out the door. I was glad it was her and not one of the nice customer service ladies, because this woman honestly would’ve scared the crap out of me if she’d gotten angry at me, so I can’t imagine what she’d do to a bunch of spineless teenage boys.

I guess the kids figured out when they saw me head back into the store that I was going to rat them out, so they were gone by the time Scary Lady got there. Oh well. I gave her a description of the car and she said she’d keep an (heavily lined) eye out for them.

I just can’t believe that anyone would intentionally try to frighten a baby. I know they’re just teenage boys, which automatically means that they’re stupid and inconsiderate. It’s just… wow. That’s a whole level of stupid that I was not expecting.

If this ever happens again, I am totally going to go over there and tell them to go home to their mamas. And I might throw in some profanity for good measure. I just hope I don’t haul off and smack them, because while good mommies might occasionally curse, they definitely do not get arrested.

home improvement time again

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There isn’t much going on around here right now. I don’t know my exact start date for the new job, which is a whole boring story about fiscal years and new budgets and new projects, blah blah blah, and trust me, you don’t want to hear about it. Point is, it’ll probably be August before I start, which is fine with me.

Since I have some time before the job starts, and I’m sort of obsessed with the idea of getting our house ready to sell, I’m going to start painting the kitchen next week. I’m doing it in phases so it doesn’t seem so overwhelming. Next week, I’m just doing the cabinets. I’m going to leave the walls alone for now, I’ll do them when my parents are visiting next month.

Next week is also the first week of summer vacation for the public schools here, and there are a couple of girls in the neighborhood who’ve been very eager to baby-sit. They’re going to alternate days and come over to keep Cate busy so I can get some work done. She gets in this mode where she wants to be held all the time and screams if I set her down, so having an extra set of hands will be very helpful.

Btw, if anyone has tips for a simple way to paint kitchen cabinets, please let me know. I’m planning to take all the cabinet doors off (since I’m replacing all of the hinges and knobs anyway) and bring them outside so I can work on them on the deck, and keep at least some of the fumes out of the house. The guy at Home Depot said that all I need to do is wash the cabinets to get any grease off of them, then prime and paint. It sounds way too easy, I was sure I was going to have to strip the stain off of them first. Any other helpful hints out there?

For the record, we aren’t still 100% on the move to North Carolina yet. We need to take a trip out there to check out the area and make sure that it’s really where we want to be. And it’s weird, I keep thinking about all of the things I was planning to do with Cate in Seattle when she got older (the zoo, Pacific Science Center, various outdoor music festivals) that we won’t be able to do if we move, and that makes me a little sad. Which is not to say that the Raleigh-Durham area doesn’t have its share of that kind of stuff, I just don’t know enough about what’s there.

But, we can sell our house next May with no pre-payment penalties on our mortgage, so I want the house to be ready to put on the market by February. Even if all we do is move to a different suburb of Seattle, I’ll be ok with that. I’ve just had my fill of this whole “country life” crap and I’m ready for civilization.

And yeah, ok, yesterday when I took Cate for our daily walk, we got to stop and pet a couple of horses, and that was very cool, and I realize that I won’t have that after we move. But it seems like a very small sacrifice compared to all of the things I hate about living here.

First Father's Day

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In honor of Dave’s first Father’s Day, last night we had our first official Date Night. Dave and I haven’t had an evening that was just the two of us since Cate was born, so it sounded like a good idea. Kris came over to baby-sit, while we went to dinner and a movie. It was so nice. We went to this great little Italian place for dinner, and then we went to see “Ocean’s Thirteen”. (Which was surprisingly entertaining. And hello, two hours of Clooney. No complaints here.)

I had called Kris to check in between dinner and the movie, just to see how things were going. She said she was in the middle of giving Cate a bottle, and everything was fine so far. I set my cell phone to vibrate in case Kris needed anything during the movie, and we sat close to the aisle so I could easily jump out of the theater to answer the phone if necessary.

Two hours later, we got home, and the first thing I noticed was that Kris had pulled her hair back into a ponytail (it was down when we left) and she wasn’t wearing the same shirt she had on earlier. She also had that sort of wild-eyed, crazed look that I imagine people have after they’ve just emerged from some sort of battle. Uh-oh.

She was so apologetic, all “oh my god, I hope I didn’t traumatize her for life, she didn’t stop crying for TWO SOLID HOURS, and I didn’t know what to do, but I didn’t call you because I didn’t want to ruin your date night.” There was apparently also a rather huge barf incident, which explained the wardrobe change. (Cate was also in a different outfit, but she was asleep in the swing when we got home, so I didn’t notice that right away.)

I felt so bad. I knew Kris was kind of nervous about being alone with the baby for the first time, and I was really hoping that Cate would go easy on her, but no such luck. And all of my little tips that I gave her – all of the things that I do to calm Cate down when she gets fussy – failed miserably.

As for Kris’s fear that she traumatized Cate, I think we don’t have to worry too much about that. She seemed to have recovered completely by this morning.

I don’t know if I can say the same for Kris, but hopefully she’s ok and will be willing to baby-sit for us again. Even if it isn’t until Cate is in kindergarten.

hey la, hey la, my paycheck's back

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The interview for the part-time job at the Giant Software Company went well. It seems like an ok job – nothing exciting, but you know, I could do it and not feel like throwing myself out of a window. Coming up with some type of daycare solution would really be the only problem.

But you know, these things can never seem to be isolated incidents. When I got home from the interview, I had an email about another company that wanted to interview me today. This company is one that I interviewed with a year ago, and who I turned down because they wanted me to be a full-time project manager (in the office 40-50 hours a week) and I had just gotten pregnant. Apparently when they found out I was on the job market again, they wanted to get me back.

It was the weirdest thing – I walked in and the guy said, “This isn’t really an interview. We already know we want you, so let’s talk about what you want to do.” Um, ok!

So, I’m going to be doing some technical writing, which is 100% work-from-home. It’s all project-based, meaning that I might be working on an online course one month, and a technical article the next month. Depending on the project, some might require full-time hours and some might be part-time. And there could be downtime between projects where I wouldn’t be making any money, but that’s really fine with me. The point is that I can work and use my brain without even getting out of my pajamas.

I suspect that I’ll need to hire at least a part-time babysitter or nanny for Cate, but that sounds a whole lot less daunting than trying to find a daycare. Heck, there are enough teenage girls in this neighborhood that keeping us covered for the summer shouldn’t be a problem. There are two 12 year-old girls who both seem eager to baby-sit. I wouldn’t normally leave Cate with a 12 year-old, but if Dave and I are both in the house and we just need some quiet time to concentrate? I think it’ll be fine.

Also, I asked about the telecommuting thing, and whether their employees need to be local because “my husband and I are talking about moving in a couple of years.” (Ok, it’s kind of a lie, but nothing about the move is set in stone yet, and I wanted to see how he reacted before I got into all of that.) He said that they have people working remotely all over the world, and certainly if they’ve established a working relationship with me and know that I do good work, they’ll bend over backward to accomodate me wherever I want to go.

So, in short: WOO-HOO!!!!

It’s weird, I was so unsure about whether or not I wanted to be working, and this just totally fell in my lap and I think it’s the most ideal scenario that I could possibly ask for. I have a really good feeling about it, I think it’s going to be great.

And I think it goes without saying, but yes, I got an offer from the Giant Software Company, and I turned them down. C’est la vie!

thanks, Mimi

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My mom sews for a living. She has her own little alterations business that she runs out of my parents’ house. (If you live in central Mississippi and need an article of clothing fixed, email me and I’ll get you her info. She rocks.) Growing up, she made a lot of our clothes. She doesn’t do custom sewing anymore, because she has scoliosis and it hurts her back to lean over the table to cut out a pattern. However, baby clothes appear to be the exception, because she was absolutely delighted when I asked her to make some baby clothes for Cate.

Which Cate can’t wear, because my mom is apparently under the mistaken impression that her four month-old grandbaby is actually a toddler.

Holy mother of God, those are some big pajamas! Don’t get me wrong, I think they’ll be adorable when she’s older. But I also think they’re going in a drawer for the next several months.

Dave says she looks like a faun in this picture, and he’s been calling her Mister Tumnus ever since. Scary but true.

More on the interview stuff later.