Author Archives: Cindy

to work or not to work?

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I have a job interview tomorrow. It’s for a part-time, six month contract at the Giant Software Company, and I’m really not sure how I feel about it.

Pros:
1. I’m qualified for it, and it’s certainly up my alley.
2. They want someone 5 days a week, but it’d only be four to five hours a day, which sounds pretty manageable.
3. The money would be nice.

Cons:
1. As completely un-enlightened as this might sound, I don’t like the idea of leaving Cate. What do you know, apparently I’m a 1950’s housewife. So much for my feminist upbringing. The thing is, I know Cate would be fine, but I would miss her. I realize that’s selfish, but that’s how it is.
2. Most of the time I feel like I’m barely keeping my head above water with all of the day-to-day stuff around here. The house is almost always a mess, I can never seem stay on top of dishes and laundry, I feel like I’m constantly washing bottles, mixing formula, etc. How would I squeeze in a part-time work schedule with all of that? The thought is totally daunting and makes me feel like I want to cry. I know tons of women have babies and work full-time, and hats off to you because I can’t imagine it.
3. Today is the first time I’ve tried calling daycare centers to see about availability. Most of them have insane wait lists – the first one said they have no openings for infants until June 2008. No kidding. And even if I found a daycare center, most of them don’t have a part-time option. It makes sense in a “childcare provider to infant ratio” kind of way, but it means that you end up paying for full-time daycare regardless of whether or not you use it that much. And then it becomes a question of whether or not the money I’d be bringing home would really be worth it in the long run.

And yeah, Dave works from home, so we could theoretically work out some sort of shift schedule. Say, he could work for a few hours before I leave, and finish his work day after I get back. The problem is, Dave and I have very different methods of taking care of Cate. (Example: I pick her up at the first whimper. He thinks there’s nothing wrong with letting her scream for a few minutes to see if she’ll settle herself down. The thing is, she never does settle herself down, so it takes five times longer to calm her down when he waits until she’s in a full-blown tizzy. That drives me nuts.) I know that we’re allowed to have different parenting styles, but since I’m an obsessive first-time mom, I tend to view his way as wrong. So even though it sounds totally horrible to say that I don’t want to leave our child alone with my husband for extended amounts of time, sue me, it’s the truth.

So yeah. Interview tomorrow. Huh. We’ll see.

step one of a major transition

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So, remember how I said that Dave and I decided we didn’t want to move to the Bay area? And that we were kicking around some other ideas?

Well, we started doing some research on Dave’s employer, and it turns out that they have lots of satellite offices all over the US. For a while, we were thinking about Colorado: it’s a nice state, a bit closer to our families, cost of living is cheaper, yadda yadda.

Then Dave found out that there’s an office in Durham, North Carolina. When Dave told me that, I started jumping up & down saying, “Can we move there? Can we? Can we? Huh? Pleeeeease? Can we???”

The ironic part, of course, is that for years I swore up and down and all around that I would never live in the South again. Ever. I hate the heat, I hate the bugs, and I hate the racism/sexism/homophobia. I’ve now moved around enough to realize that insects and discrimination are everywhere. And the heat in North Carolina isn’t as bad as Mississippi. At least everywhere is air-conditioned there, which is way more than I can say for Washington.

I guess the explanation for my total change of heart is that – surprise, surprise! – it’s actually true what people say about how having kids totally changes your priorities. The idea of a simple two-hour flight to see either my parents or my sister (as opposed to the six or seven hours it currently takes), and being just down the road a bit from my brother in Charlotte suddenly sounds really appealing. There’s even a direct flight from Raleigh to London that’s only 7 1/2 hours, rather than the ten hours it takes now. So Cate would be closer to her grandparents on both sides, which can only be a good thing.

Plus, let’s not forget one of the biggest perks, which is that Cate and e-baby could grow up having regular playdates! How awesome is that?

I was trying not to talk about this at first, mostly for fear of jinxing it, but Dave talked to his boss, who basically said that it was cool for us to move wherever after Dave finishes his current project (read: December). And that’s fine because we apparently can’t sell our house before May 2008 anyway (damn you, AmeriQuest, damn you all to heck!!). Unless we want to fork over several thousand dollars as a “pre-payment penalty” on our mortgage, which, no thanks. But it looks like this could very likely happen next year.

Of course, it also depends on Dave and I taking a trip there to check out the area, and making sure that both of us fall in love with it. Which I don’t think is going to be a problem. Right now I’m totally addicted to looking at houses online, and oh man, the houses there are so pretty. I love the Pacific Northwest, but the houses are seriously dull-looking. And North Carolina real estate is so much cheaper than the Seattle area! We could be debt-free and have a decent savings built up in just a few years. College funds and everything. I can’t even fathom it. Sounds like bliss.

tattoos for tots

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Our town has this little festival every year with live bands, and a bunch of local businesses set up booths. It’s pretty low-key, but it’s free and it’s something different to do when the weather is nice. We went this year because we thought Cate would enjoy it – and she did, but she quickly got overstimulated by all the people and noise. We didn’t stay long, but it was fun.

I’m not sure why, but a local acupuncturist was doing face painting and temporary tattoos for kids. I have no idea what that has to do with their business, but whatever. We decided to let Cate have her first tattoo experience. Behold, the ladybugs:

My dad was horrified, even though I assured him that they washed off when I gave Cate a bath only a few hours later.

Unrelated: I’ve been using the Baby Bjorn a lot lately, since the weather has been really nice and Cate can now hold her head up well enough to ride in it facing outward. I’m not sure why, but when she’s facing out, it changes her weight distribution just enough so that my lower back isn’t killing me after five minutes. Also, when she’s in the Baby Bjorn, she stays awake for the whole walk because she can look around and see everything. And lord knows it’s good exercise for me – nothing like walking up a hill with an almost-17 pound baby strapped to your chest.

So we’ve got this little routine, which we’ve been doing for about a week now: we go for a walk in the evening after dinner. When we get home, I give Cate a bath – I know daily baths aren’t at all necessary for babies, but it really does seem to mellow her out – and then after she has a bottle, she is out. She’s been sleeping anywhere from eight to ten hours every night since we started doing this, without making so much as a peep. It’s awesome. And of course, I probably just jinxed it by talking about it. (Fingers crossed – shoo, Jinx Fairy!)

My hope is that this whole “sleeping through the night” thing will become a habit so that by this winter – when the rain will mess up our daily walk routine – it won’t matter. Hoping, hoping.

P.S. I know that not everyone is the praying type, but if you are, send up a few for Shannon. Stay, baby, stay!

my space or yours?

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I finally got a MySpace page, mainly because Kris and a couple of other friends bugged me about it. So fine. Here’s my page – if any of you are on MySpace, please be my friend? Right now I only have a few people, and it looks really sad.

It’s weird, though, ever since I set up the account, I’ve been obsessively looking for people I used to know, and I’ve found so many of them. Heck, I have relatives on MySpace, and I didn’t even know about it until I just happened upon their pages. And virtually every boy I’ve ever had a crush on? They’re all on MySpace. Including the guy I lost my virginity to. Yikes! I emailed him, but I have no idea if I’m going to get a response. It was almost 12 years ago, and I’m guessing I probably scared the bejeezus out of him with my little “Hi!! Remember me?” note.

There’s also an ex-boyfriend of mine I found, who I’ve stayed friends with over the years, so I wasn’t surprised to find his page. But apparently he doesn’t read this blog, and he hasn’t seen me in the past six or seven years, so he was all, “Daaaaamn! You look great!” Which… yeah, ok. He’s a nice guy and things didn’t end badly between us at all, but that was still a nice little “HA! So there!” kind of moment.

Yeah. I know, I’m a freak.

four months redux

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Cate’s four-month pediatrician appointment was yesterday. Our girl is now in the 95th percentile for weight at 16 pounds, 11 ounces. Holy mother of god, no wonder my back hurts all the time! It’s hard to believe that when she was born, she was in the 5th-10th percentile for weight. I think it’s safe to say that she caught up with a vengeance.

For anyone who cares about the other statistics: She’s in the 50-75% range for height (24 1/2 inches), and her head circumference is at a whopping 97th percentile – not surprising, considering the noggin size of both of her parents.

I was starting to worry that my pediatrician thinks I’m obnoxious, because every time she tells me Cate’s weight, I always get this sort of worried look on my face and I’m like, “um… is that ok?” So finally yesterday I told her that my concerns are not really about Cate, it’s about my own history, and I told her about my gastric bypass, and how I worry that there might be some kind of “fat gene” that I could pass on to her.

The pediatrician now quite possibly thinks I’m insane for babbling away about my personal issues like that, but she handled it well. She said she was glad that I told her, since of course we want to make sure that Cate is healthy, so that’s something we want to keep an eye on. But she said that for now it’s nothing to worry about, and she’ll probably burn off most of her pudge when she’s a toddler and starts getting more active.

In the meantime, I’m trying really hard not to worry about it, because the last thing I want to do is project my own neuroses onto my daughter. I think about how when I was little, my mom always complained about how fat she was, and was always on a diet (and I think she was probably a size 8 at the time, so seriously: she was not fat) and that definitely had an impact on how I think about my body. I don’t want Cate to pick up any of that from me. I know it’s practically impossible for a female to grow up in this society with no body image issues whatsoever, but I’d like to be as positive an influence on her as possible. I’m working on that now, so it hopefully won’t be an issue when she’s older.

P.S. I don’t want to get too obnoxious with the video links, but I upload lots of them for the grandparents. If you want to see yet another video of Cate in the jumperoo, or any of the videos posted so far, you can go here to check them out.

four months

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Today is Cate’s four month birthday, so I thought it would be a good time to brag about some of our girl’s latest accomplishments:

* Just this past week, she’s figured out reaching and grabbing at things. It was so weird, it seemed to literally happen overnight. Her hand-eye coordination isn’t totally perfect yet, but it’s starting to make things pretty interesting. She now loves her baby gym since she can grab the rattles on it, so she’ll often have a parrot in one hand and a giraffe in the other (er, it’s a jungle-themed gym, obviously), and she’ll just yank and yank on them like there’s no tomorrow. Sadly, this new skill means that it’s the end of me being able to wear my hair down, and all dangly earrings have been banished for the foreseeable future.

* She’s figuring how to squirm around on her back – the other day I put her on the baby gym and walked away for a minute, and when I came back, she had done a total 180. Her head was at the opposite end of the gym from where I had originally placed her. Another time this happened, she wiggled off the gym completely and I found her halfway under the coffee table. Hmm. Seems that it’s time to get rid of our rectangular metal-and-glass coffee table and trade it in for something less hazardous.

* A few days ago, we gave her her first taste of rice cereal. The books all say to introduce solids in the “four to six months” range, and I figured that since it was only a few days before her four-month birthday, we were close enough. It was… not a huge hit. In fact, she sort of hated it and freaked out. We’ve tried it a couple of times since then, and she’ll get maybe a drop or two down her throat, but I stop the second that she starts to cry. I don’t want her to develop some kind of aversion to spoons, and there’s plenty of time to work on solids. God knows it isn’t like she’s wasting away.

* One thing that I absolutely love is that she no longer screams when she wakes up. I’m not sure when that happened – I think it started last week when we were staying at the hotel in California. Now I’ll hear her making little babbly talky noises on the baby monitor, and I have time to toss a bottle in the warmer and pee before I go fetch her. And when she sees me or Dave in her room, she starts laughing and kicking, which is awesome.

* She’s now able to hold her head up completely. She used to get tired after only a minute or two in the Bumbo, but now she can sit there for ages and be totally content. This morning I put the Bumbo on the kitchen counter while I emptied and reloaded the dishwasher, and cooked myself breakfast (providing a running narration on everything I was doing along the way), and she was totally happy the whole time because she was up high where she could see everything. She usually gets fussy if she’s on the bouncer on the floor, because the view from there is pretty dull.

And in honor of this new ability to hold her head up consistently, today we put together her jumperoo and let her try it out. It was a huge hit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViYe0fYLQcM

Check out those purple mary jane socks. They were a gift from a friend in Mississippi – they come in a whole bunch of different colors, and I love them. They’re called Trumpette’s – here’s the link, if any of you are interested.

a photo blog

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Behold!

Isn’t it cute how they put those little score marks on the cheesecake to indicate how big one slice should be? I find those hilarious. Two slices then? Yes, please.

I also decided to go ahead and fire up the Dyson for the first time today. And oh my god, y’all:

Is that not the grossest thing you’ve ever seen? I was kind of expecting the cat hair. And I knew that lots of my hair would be in there, since I’m in that fun post-partum hair-falling-out stage. (Lucky me!) I tend to forget that living in the country means that there is always dirt in your house. But that was only the first floor and the stairs – I haven’t even gotten to all the bedrooms yet. I’m terrified.

Catie says: “You people expect me to learn to crawl on that filth? Are you insane?”

The one thing I don’t have a photo for: earlier tonight, the teenager across the street (the one who kitty-sat for us last week) called to let us know that she had just seen a coyote heading up our driveway. I promptly freaked, and ran outside to call the cats inside. I never saw the coyote myself, and all of the cats are present and accounted for, so it all ended well. But that was quite a little moment of panic that I had there.

And it reinforced the thing I’ve been nagging Dave about for ages: I hate the country and I want to move. You know, just in case he didn’t hear me the first ten thousand times I said it.