Author Archives: Cindy

what does the owl say?

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Cate learned a new trick this morning: she actually pulls her tongue back into her mouth (shock!), she forms her lips into kind of an O shape, and she makes this little “hoo-hoo-hoo” sound. It’s like we have a little baby owl in the house. And of course Dave and I think it’s the coolest thing ever, so we keep making the “hoo” noise back at her so she’ll do it even more. I need to get a video of her doing it, it’s so cute.

Meanwhile, we’re recovering from a very long trip to Costco this afternoon (during which I came up with my own little song “At the Costco,” sung to the tune of Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto” – yes, I am oh so clever), and I’m going to go cook up some of our bulk items for dinner tonight.

Sorry this is kind of a lame entry. It’s Sunday, I’m lazy.

But hey, look at the smooshy cuteness!

her taste in music clearly comes from Dave's side

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The other night, I was watching a “Will & Grace” rerun on Lifetime (they apparently don’t use that Television for Women tagline anymore, which makes me a little sad because it was totally appropriate). I wasn’t really watching it, it was more just background noise while I was playing with Cate. During one of the commercial breaks, an ad for those ugly old-lady bras came on. You know, the 18-hour things that are 100% functional, 0% sexy? Yeah, those.

So, the ad is on, and I start singing along with it, because I’m stupid like that. Cate laughs and laughs. I try singing it again a few minutes later, and again she thinks it’s funny. Three days later, every time I sing the song, she thinks it’s an absolute riot.

Want to try to guess the song?

You’ll never guess.

“I’m Every Woman.”

I kid you not. Apparently Baby Girl likes her Chaka Khan. Who’da thunk it?

And because I’m a huge dork and all I know is the chorus, I’m actually downloading the song on iTunes right now so I can sing the whole thing for her.

sleeping arrangements

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I don’t know why I feel like this is shameful to admit, but here’s my nasty little confession: Cate sleeps in our room. Not in our bed, although we have taken a few “family naps” together (as long as she’s between Dave’s pillow and mine, I don’t worry about either of us rolling over on her). But we have a Pack ‘n’ Play set up in our bedroom, and that’s where she’s slept since she was born.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. When she was about 6 weeks old, I tried moving her to the nursery. But she woke up every hour screaming in terror because she didn’t know where she was, and I woke up even more frequently than that because every little bit of static on the baby monitor had me practically flying out of the bed and down the hall. So that lasted about two nights. Then it was back to the Pack ‘n’ Play.

For the past several weeks, we’ve had a nice little nighttime routine going:

1. Cate sleeps about 5-6 hours.
2. She wakes up, I pull her into our bed and she has half of a bottle. (A million thank-you’s to Cat & Tony for this, which lives on my nightstand, so I can warm up a bottle without even getting out of bed.)
3. We go down the hall to the nursery for a quick diaper change.
4. If she’s wide awake after the diaper (which she almost always is), we head downstairs so she can play for a little while & burn off some energy, and I can take all the vitamins that I have to take every day (part of that whole gastric bypass thing, I have well over a dozen pills that I take on a daily basis, lucky me). I figure it’s one less thing I have to do when I get up for the day, so that’s fine.
5. When she seems tired of playing, we head back upstairs, and she usually zonks out before she completely finishes the bottle.
6. She sleeps another 2-3 hours, then we’re up for the day. (Although sometimes I pass her off to Dave so I can get a little more sleep.)

The whole process from start to finish takes about an hour. I know that some people have miracle babies that sleep through the night from the time they’re six weeks old; in fact, according to my mom, my sister was sleeping 12 hours a night by three months. (To be fair, my sister has always been a freak about sleep – take your eyes off of her for five minutes and she’s out like a light.) But I also know there are moms out there whose babies are still waking them up three or four times a night when they’re a year old. So by comparison, one wake-up call a night doesn’t seem like I have much to complain about.

The irony is that this is one of those things that I was so opinionated about before Cate was born. I was adamantly opposed to co-sleeping, and I still generally think it’s a bad idea. It seems like a slippery slope into something that can become habit-forming, and the idea of having a 5 year-old child who still sleeps with her parents… well, that’s just kind of creepy to me. I mean, whatever works for your family is great and all, but that’s not for me. But even just having her in the same room as Dave and me – I thought that we would do that for the first month, maybe six weeks at the most. Ha.

I guess I’ve just been thinking that this pattern has been working ok for us, so why mess with it? I was worried that if I put her in the nursery, we’d go back to waking up every two hours, and I’m just barely starting to feel like I’m recovering my sanity. I’ve been working on the crib idea with her – I put her there for naps sometimes, and occasionally I’ll just put her in there when she’s in a mellow mood and turn on the mobile, which she seems to like. I wanted her to be a little more familiar with it so she wouldn’t wake up in a strange place and freak out. But I hadn’t put her down for the night there, I guess because I wasn’t ready for it more than anything.

Last night, Dave and I talked about it and decided it was time to try the nursery again. And? Nothing really happened. She slept for about 5 hours, woke up, we did our routine, and then she slept for another 3 hours. Same as usual. Huh. Whaddya know.

three months

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Cate turned three months old on Friday. To recap all of our girl’s latest skills:

* She’s trying really hard to roll over. It took me a while to figure out what on earth she was doing, because at first it looked like she was trying to pull some kind of Linda Blair/Exorcist stunt with her head. She’s now at the point where she can turn her head and most of her torso onto her side, she just can’t seem to get her hips and legs to follow. I have a feeling she’s going to master that skill sooner rather than later.

* Probably because she wants to turn over so badly, she’s a little more interested in “tummy time” these days. As long as I lie down where she can see my face, she’ll tolerate it for several minutes before she starts to get mad. And she seems to like sitting in the Bumbo chair, but she isn’t quite strong enough for it yet. She just kind of slumps over to the side after a minute or two.

* The smiles and laughs are a lot more frequent and consistent than they were a month ago, and they continue to be my absolute favorite thing in the world. I suppose it isn’t quite a genuine laugh yet, but she does a really big open-mouth smile, squinches her nose up and makes this sort of “kakk!” noise. Honestly, the laughs make it a heck of a lot easier to be woken up at 5 a.m. every day.

* Cate also seems generally more aware of her surroundings, and I’ve noticed that on days when she doesn’t leave the house, she gets very cranky. Yesterday she was a screaming terror, so I took her for a walk around the yard. We have two acres, so there’s plenty of room to explore. The second we stepped outside, she stopped crying. [Thanks to my aunt Susie for mentioning that, because I probably would’ve never thought to try it otherwise.]

* I’ve mentioned the Baby Einstein thing, right? Because good lord in heaven, that ROCKS. Twenty happy-baby minutes so I can wash dishes, eat a snack, read a blog, whatever. I am eternally grateful to the creator of that series.

* She doesn’t reach for toys and other things yet, but if I put a rattle or something near her hand, she’ll grab onto it. I’ll be interested to see how much those motor skills develop over the next month or two.

* The pacifier is still hit-or-miss, but if I can get her to latch onto it, it really does seem to calm her down when she’s fussy.

* In the past week or so, she’s suddenly gotten a lot more “talky”. She makes all kinds of sounds, and it’s usually pretty easy to tell when she’s just happy and babbling to herself from when she’s really mad. Example: “ah-bah-eye-nyeh?” versus “AH-BAH-EYE-NYEH!!!” It’s all in the tone. Although, honestly, I find both of them completely hilarious, which makes it sort of rough, since I probably shouldn’t be laughing at her when she’s upset.

There are tons of other things too, but I am wiped out from our trip to the Tulip Festival today. So here are a couple of my favorite recent pictures.

First, proof of her Mississippi heritage:

Poor little redneck baby. She’s going to hate me for that photo someday.

And my favorite shot of the two of us in the tulips today:

The rest of the tulip festival pictures are here. Happy Monday, everyone.

back home again

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The trip to Mississippi was so much fun, and this post would be a mile long if I mentioned everything that happened, so I’ll try to keep it (relatively) short with some highlights:

  • I scored a ton of baby clothes, courtesy of my mom. At least half of them involve ruffles across the butt. They’re hilarious.
  • My dad and I took Cate for a lot of walks around the neighborhood. My dad walks at least 2 miles a day, in addition to his daily golf game – not bad for a 71 year-old guy. Since we went on his usual route, he got to stop along the way to show Cate off to the neighbors, which he loved. It’s so funny to see what a softie he’s become in his old age.
  • My parents, Cate and I had dinner with Sally and Larry Ferrari. Sally is just as funny in person as she is on her website, so if you ever have the opportunity to meet her, I highly recommend it. We ate at a place called Hamil’s, which was a buffet of all kinds of old-fashioned Southern food. I managed to resist the urge to shovel the fried okra into my mouth by the handful, but I think I probably talked with my mouth full. A lot. I didn’t even realize I was doing it until afterward, I just could not. stop. eating. Go me with the fabulous first impressions.

    Oh, it was also funny trying to explain to my dad what a “blog” is and how Sally and I sort of already knew each other even though we hadn’t technically met in person yet.

  • The second stop on my meeting-other-bloggers tour was to have lunch with Danielle and Emily. Emily is such a cutie with her big blue eyes and 2 bottom teeth. She’s one of the smiley-est babies (yes, I just made up a word) I’ve ever met. It was a lot of fun.
  • After lunch with Danielle, I had the most surreal part of my trip: since I was in the neighborhood, and Cate was asleep in the car seat, I drove past my old school, where I went from 2nd through 11th grades. The school closed down in 2000, so it’s been sitting there abandoned for the past several years. The playground is all overgrown with weeds, the buildings are falling apart, and the gymnasium was gutted by a fire a few months ago (apparently vagrants had been living in there). It was so bizarre, like seeing something from your childhood in a dream. I can’t say I felt sad about it, since I don’t have very many happy memories associated with the place. It was just strange.

    Interesting tidbit: before my school bought the facility in the early 80’s, it had been a White Citizens’ Council school. It’s ironic that the neighborhood surrounding the school is now almost entirely African-American. There seems to be some sort of poetic justice in that.

  • Continuing with the baby-oriented theme, my sister and I met up with a couple of her friends who have babies too. One was her former college roommate, who has a baby girl exactly one month younger than Cate. The other was a friend who now has three girls: a 9 year-old, a 6 year-old, and a 9 month-old. I’m exhausted just writing that sentence, I don’t know how she does it.
  • One little self-discovery that I made on this trip: in the past, I’ve always been very tense when I go to Jackson. Growing up there wasn’t a happy time for me, and every time I’ve gone back to visit, I’ve emotionally gone back to that very insecure and unhappy place. But it didn’t happen. I’m not sure why – maybe it’s my age, the fact that I’m married, that I’m now a mom, or maybe it’s a combination of all of it. But I was totally fine and happy this time. Weird.

    One of the nights that I called Dave to check in, I told him how I was surprised to feel completely un-stressed, and he asked if that meant that I wanted to move back to Mississippi. Um, NO. Even though his salary would take us a lot farther there than it does in Washington, and he works from home so theoretically we could make that work. And it would be nice to live closer to my parents. There’s still the issue of the heat and the bugs, and the fact that I absolutely love the Pacific Northwest. So I think we’re staying put for the foreseeable future.

  • The flight home was pretty easy – I had nice flight attendants, Cate slept most of the way, fussed very little, UNTIL. About 15 minutes before we started our descent into Seattle, it occurred to me that it had been about 5 hours since I changed Cate’s diaper, so I’d better hurry up and do that before she soaked through her little outfit. We grabbed our supplies and headed off to the restroom. (Cue the music of impending DOOM.)

    I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this before, but Cate has a tendency to pee the second that I undo her diaper and she feels a draft of fresh air on her bits. Normally I’m on the lookout for it, and I’m able to catch the stream in the already-wet diaper. No big deal, right? Well, this time I thought I had caught it, but I was sadly mistaken. And I didn’t realize that the flip-down changing table in the airplane restroom was slightly tilted. And my changing pad is waterproof. So the pee went all the way up her back, thoroughly soaking her outfit, and made a little puddle right at the back of her head. She had pee IN HER HAIR. Oh my good lord. Eww eww eww. I tried to clean her up with wet paper towels and baby wipes, but seriously, how gross is that?

    Our plane got in at 10:45 p.m., so it was after midnight by the time we got home from the airport. I hadn’t been planning to give Cate a bath the minute that we got home, but after the pee incident, that plan changed. I started calling her Pee Head, and Dave came up with one even better: Catie Urinatey. I’m afraid she might have a new permanent nickname. Poor kid.

    • So now we’re home and settling back into our routine. And I have to go catch up on a week’s worth of blogs that I’ve been missing. Whee!

    blogging from Mississippi

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    I know I’m overdue for an update, but I’ve been having a blast visiting with my family and all sorts of other cool folks. Cate and I are headed home tomorrow evening, and we’re both missing Dave a lot, so we’re very much looking forward to seeing him.

    Until I get a chance to recap this whole trip, you can see the pictures here.

    baby's first flight

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    Our flight to Mississippi was really not so bad. The TSA folks were very helpful in getting my car seat & stroller on the conveyor belt, which was difficult for me since I was carrying Cate. One of the TSA guys even talked to her and called her adorable. Shocked the heck out of me, since I have never known them to be even remotely polite. I guess that shows what traveling with a baby can do for you.

    However, we were running a little late, so once we got through security, we had to go straight to the gate to board. No time to stop and use the bathroom, which was unfortunate for me since I had downed two Diet Cokes already. Hmm.

    We got on the plane, and I immediately whipped out the Baby Tylenol plus Cold medicine. I figured the decongestant would help Cate with the ear pressure, and maybe it would also make her sleepy, which would just be a bonus. I gave her a half-dose, and she dribbled half of that onto her outfit, so I figured it probably wasn’t enough to do any good. Five minutes later, she went from bouncing and laughing on my lap to being totally zonked. She proceeded to sleep for the next 2 hours. She’d occasionally wake up and look around, and she seemed completely stoned. I know it’s wrong, but it was completely hilarious.

    Oh, back to that other issue. So as soon as we were in the air and the “fasten seat belt” light was turned off, I got up and bolted for the restroom. There were 3 flight attendants: two women and a very obviously gay man.* I asked if one of them could please hold Cate while I went to the bathroom, and they all looked at me like I had three heads. Absolute disgust. Finally the guy stepped up and said he was afraid of babies. I told him that Cate didn’t have teeth, so she couldn’t bite, and I’d go as fast as possible. He held her out in front of him like she was an hors d’oeurve tray. Yeah. Totally natural. I peed at lightning speed and got us back to our seat.

    *Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

    But Cate did really well – she fussed a little bit when the plane started its descent, so I popped a pacifier in her mouth and she was fine. Oh, and she did indeed poop on the plane, but there was a changing table in the bathroom, so no big deal.

    Our connection was in Houston, and the flight from there to Jackson was one of those tiny little 35-seater planes. I didn’t realize until we boarded that Cate and I were in one of the bulkhead rows, which is great for legroom, but that means there’s no seat in front of me to put my diaper bag under. I asked the flight attendant if I could please keep the bag behind my legs, so I could reach bottles/pacifiers/etc., and she said that was fine. I thanked her, and then muttered to the guy next to me, “That’s the first nice thing a flight attendant has done for me all day.” She overheard me, and said, “Really? Oh, bless your heart!” (God, I love Southerners for that expression.) After that, she kept coming over to check on us and see if we were ok, and she helped me with my bags after we landed, and she was just generally awesome. I really hope she’s on our return flight, although I know the odds are pretty slim.

    Anyway, my folks picked us up, and everything’s gone well so far. The weather’s been nice, my dad and I took Cate for a walk around the neighborhood, my mom made an awesome dinner (fried shrimp, steamed sugar snap peas and baked potatoes… yum), and we’ve just been hanging out. Cate slept pretty well last night, probably because she was exhausted after such an adventure-packed day.

    Oh, and tonight we get to have dinner with Sally. And maybe Larry Ferrari too. Yay!