Author Archives: Cindy

Raise a glass

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So, what with the lack of blogging lately, one major life event sort of slid under the radar here:

A couple of weeks ago, my sister, Tracy, and her boyfriend took a vacation to Italy. And he proposed. In Venice, of all places.

(I would like to note for the record that Dave proposed to me at our kitchen table when we lived in Washington. Not that there was anything wrong with it – I mean, hey, I tend to be more practical and get uncomfortable with overly romantic gestures anyway. I’m just saying. Kind of a stark contrast there.)

Her fiance, Everett, is a good guy and she seems really happy, so we’re all excited for them.

Tracy & Everett

And, she asked me to be maid of honor at her wedding. I happily agreed, on the condition that nobody call me “matron of honor.” (Seriously, if ANYONE says the word “matron” in my general direction, they’re gonna get a swift kick in the shins.)

They’re getting married next November in Texas. Everett lives in Austin and Tracy will be moving there.

The plan is for Catie and Lucy to both be flower girls at the wedding. Since Lucy will be 2 1/2 at the time, we’re guessing she can handle it. Catie has already said that she is absolutely not doing it because she doesn’t want all those people looking at her, but… eh. She has a year to get used to the idea, and there’s a big difference between 5 1/2 and 6 1/2. I kind of haven’t pushed the idea too much, because I can’t force anything with Catie. She has to come around to it in her own time.

And honestly, this whole thing has been pretty rough on Catie. When I first told her that Tracy and Everett were getting married, she was happy, because she really likes Everett. But when she found out that Tracy was moving from Charlotte (where we can hop in the car and see her in 2.5 hours) to Texas (where we’ll have to take a plane to see her), she got really upset. I’m not sure how much of it specifically has to do with Tracy – because they do have a very special relationship, the two of them. I think it also has a lot to do with her dad moving away, and now she feels like she’s losing more of “her people.”

Tracy came to visit this past weekend, and she and Catie had a long talk about how this is going to be ok, because she’s going to come visit just as often as she does now, so the only thing that’s going to change will be that we’ll pick her up at the airport instead of her driving up in her car. Catie cried and cried and said that she doesn’t want Tracy to get married and move away. Sigh.

What can you do? Change is hard for adults, and it’s hard for kids. I feel bad for her, but she’ll adapt to it, just like she’s adapted to everything else that life has thrown at her.

Totally unrelated side note just so this post doesn’t sound completely depressing: when I told The Guy that I’m going to be my sister’s maid of honor and that the wedding is in Texas, he said, “Hmm, I just had a mental image of you in a bridesmaid dress with cowboy boots. That’s kinda hot.”

For the record, I do not currently, nor have I ever, owned cowboy boots. And I’m pretty sure my sister will not allow them to be worn at her wedding. Although this past weekend she was joking about getting a mechanical bull for the reception, so who the hell knows.

Yee-freaking-haw.

Anyway: my sister is getting married! YAY! Weddings! Sparkly diamond rings! Shopping! Love and happiness and all of those things that I refuse to be bitter about just because of my own personal tragedy! (It will NOT affect my ability to do good hair!)

This is all really good stuff. I am so, so happy for my sister. She is so awesome and she’s waited so long to find the right guy, she deserves every happiness in the world.

Congratulations to Tracy and Everett.

P.S. Yes, I am pre-emptively worried about making a toast. Public speaking is not my thing. But I’d bet my sister knows enough musical people that I can throw together a choreographed dance number in no time flat.

Official

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I got an email from my attorney a few minutes ago that I am officially divorced.

It feels weird that I didn’t have to be there for it. I had all these little fantasies about how this would play out: I’d show up at the courthouse in a fancy dress and tiara, and write “Just Divorced” in soap on the back windshield of my car as I drove away.

But none of that was necessary. My attorney went to the courthouse for me, she handed the judge the decree, the judge signed it, and that’s that.

Pretty anti-climactic, no?

I had planned to meet up with Laura this evening to get pictures taken of me and the girls. A mini-celebration of our new little family unit, just the three of us. It felt appropriate.

Then Lucy crashed on her tricycle at daycare. The director told me she had “a little boo-boo under her eye.”

Ummm…

Well, we WERE going to have family pics done tomorrow, until someone fell off a tricycle & got her first black eye.

This picture doesn’t do it justice. Girlfriend has a full-on shiner now. I feel like I need to put a sign around her neck that says, “She’s just an accident-prone toddler, nobody is abusing her at home, I swear.”

And then Catie got sick with a cold. She’s had the sniffles for a while, but it got really bad last night. Bad enough that I let her stay home from school today, and she’s currently laying on the couch watching some random dinosaur cartoon on Netflix.

Honestly, it’s kind of nice to have her around.

This day feels so weird. I am happy that it’s done. I really, really am. This process was so ridiculously long and drawn out, I feel like a weight has been lifted knowing that it’s done.

It’s also a little surreal, and I think it might take a while for it to sink in that it’s finished.

But black eyes and sniffles and canceled plans notwithstanding, it’s a good day. It really is.

And P.S., a heartfelt f*** you to the state of North Carolina and their ridiculous mandatory waiting periods. This whole process was made so much more agonizingly painful than it needed to be. As much as I love everything else about this state, that’s really the only advice I have from this whole thing – don’t get divorced in North Carolina. Ever.

in dire need of Mr. Sandman

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Ok, this might make me a terrible person, but I’m going to complain about my baby here for a minute.

Back before I got pregnant with Lucy, I used to joke that Catie had such horrible sleep habits as a baby, that God owed me a good sleeper on the second kid.

You know what? GOD STILL OWES ME. Only I don’t want more babies, so maybe He can make it up to me another way. A million dollars and a weekend spa retreat would be a good start.

Lucy's big grin
Don’t even try to act like you’re all sweet and innocent here, missy.

Back in January, I let Lucy cry it out a few times, and it seemed to work. We had a few blissful months at the beginning of the year where Lucy slept great. We eventually settled into a pretty predictable routine – I’d put her down around 8 or 8:30, then she’d wake up around 10:30 or 11 for what I call her “bonus bottle” before she’d settle down to sleep for the night.

I’m not sure exactly when it all changed, but it was a couple of months ago. She started freaking out when I put her down and waking up several times a night. At the advice of our pediatrician (who gave me a good long lecture about how learning to self-soothe is a skill that has to be taught), I managed to bust out some CIO techniques again to get her to go to bed without screaming.

The problem is, she’ll go to sleep with no problem. But she wakes up every 3 hours or so, screaming, “Mama! BAH!!” (Translation: Bottle!). And I don’t know what to do about that. It’s not like she’s up for very long. She sucks down her bottle and goes straight back to sleep. But the sleep interruptions are KILLING me.

I’ve tried out a few different theories. Is she teething? I tried some baby Motrin at bedtime. Didn’t help. Is she waking up because she peed and it feels uncomfortable in her (cheap, Target generic) diapers? I invested in some expensive Huggies Overnights. While they do help with leaks, it hasn’t helped with her sleep at all.

A couple of nights ago, she woke up & started to fuss right as I was walking past her door. I crept in & saw that she had rolled over and banged into the railing of her crib. (Her crib doesn’t have a bumper – partly because the AAP says not to use them anymore, but mostly because the one from Catie’s bedding set ripped and I was too lazy to buy a replacement.) I rolled her back over and patted her until she went back to sleep.

So, I thought… Maybe the problem is that she’s just too big for her crib? It certainly makes sense, right? She’s only 16 months old, but she’s wearing a 2T (and a 3T in some things), so girlfriend is *big*.

I threw the question out on Facebook (is 16 months too young to move up to a regular bed?) and got lots of positive feedback from my friends & family. That helped me feel a little bit validated.

My parents had a spare twin-size bed in their attic, so yesterday, my dad and I got it down, hauled it to my house, disassembled the crib, and set up Lucy’s bed. (I’m not using the frame because I want it low enough where she can climb in & out herself. It’s just the mattress & box spring on the floor with a guard rail to keep her from falling out.)

When Lucy got home, she seemed to dig her new big-girl bed.

Lucy was very excited about her big-girl bed when she got home tonight.

And she went down for the night with no problem at all.

Tiny girl, big bed.

So, I thought, oh see? This is just perfect. We will all sleep blissfully well through the night from now on! Huzzah!

Then Lucy woke up basically every hour on the hour last night. She never tried to climb out of the bed, she just sat up and screamed. Over and over. All night.

My guess (because, really, all I have are guesses when it comes to this kid) is that she woke up and everything looked unfamiliar, and that’s why she freaked out. So maybe tonight will be better? Because I’m not putting the crib back together. I’m not. I refuse. I hate the crib, I’m so done with it.

Hopefully this phase will pass quickly, for my own sanity if nothing else.

And if anyone has advice on what to do with a child that seems to wake up “needing” a bottle every few hours (and believe me, it’s not that she doesn’t eat enough during the day because OMG she can out-eat her big sister any day), please let me know.

visitation

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(This post is a little rambly. Sorry I’m having a hard time collecting my thoughts lately.)

Dave flew back to Seattle on Sunday. All things considered, his visit here with the girls went exceptionally well. He texted me pictures of them when he took them out places (even the grocery store).

Girls take the wheel(s)! Look out!

In fact, one evening he came to pick up the girls a little early, and I had ordered pizza for them for dinner (because I thought he wasn’t coming until later and I knew they’d be hungry). So he hung out and we ate pizza together, and we talked about our kids and the upcoming election.

It was easy and familiar and completely freaking weird, all at the same time. I’d like to think that it’s the start of a trend, but I also worry that the other shoe is going to drop at some point. (It usually does, right?) But in the meantime, I have to think that it’s good for the kids to see us being pleasant with each other, so I’m hoping that we can keep it up.

On the nights Catie spent with him (we both agreed that Lucy is too young to spend the night away, she needs her crib and her normal bedtime routine), I made a point that I wanted to have a few minutes to either visit with Catie in person or Skype with her each day that she was away. It worked out really well.

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One time after spending 2 nights in a row with him, she started to whine that she was homesick, so Dave brought her home to hang out with me. This just happened to be on Friday, which was my mom’s birthday, so she and I put on our matching aprons and made Mimi a birthday cake.

me & my girls on Mimi's birthday
Ignore the fact that I’m a sweaty mess in dire need of lipstick. Look how proud of herself she is!

Oh, one more unnecessary picture because it cracks me up.
Happy birthday, Mimi!
That was taken while we were singing “happy birthday” to Mimi. The WTF-ness on Lucy’s face just slays me.

(And yes, the cake looks pretty awful. I am not a very good cake decorator under the best circumstances, but with my tiny sous chef, it was even more challenging. Doesn’t matter, though, because it was DELICIOUS.)

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So, that was Friday. Saturday, I took Catie to her cousin Elizabeth’s birthday party, and then the girls hung out with Dave for a few hours so I could take a nap (which was blissful). Saturday night, I had them both back at home because his flight left at 6 a.m. on Sunday.

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At this point, I know I don’t really have to worry too much about how Lucy handles things because she’s still so young and oblivious. She won’t be soon, and believe me I know that.

But I primarily have to keep a close eye on Catie’s stress level. I’ve figured out a lot of her stress indicators (crying frequently, getting physical with Lucy and pushing her, etc.), and I try to be sympathetic while not letting her get away with too much crap. I mean, hey, I get that you’re upset that you haven’t seen your dad for a few months, but that doesn’t give you the right to shove your baby sister to the ground, you know?

I’m also trying to get her to talk about her feelings more. One of the things she frequently and randomly bursts into tears about is because she claims she misses Teenie, our cat who passed away in February. And I’m sure she does miss Teenie, but I don’t think that’s the whole issue. The last time she had one of these outbursts, I said, “Baby girl, are you crying because you miss Teenie, or because you miss Daddy?” She cried, “BOTH!!!” And sobbed harder.

It’s so hard for her, and I try to make it easier where I can, but we have moments like that where she just breaks my heart and I don’t know how to comfort her because I can’t fix it.

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I knew it was going to be bad when he left, so I randomly said, “Hey, you know what? I know you’re going to be really sad after Daddy goes back to Seattle, so I think we should think of something REALLY SUPER FUN to do after he leaves, and I think you should pick what our adventure will be.”

She thought about it for a few minutes, and said she wanted to go see the dinosaur bones at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. She went there recently on a field trip with her daycare and she loved it.

Did I mention that admission to the museum is free? DONE.

Catie & Lucy at the NC Museum of Science

Almost every picture I took turned out blurry because both girls were having so much fun that they never stopped running the whole time.

I did, however, get one picture of my girl sitting with a dinosaur footprint.

My future paleontologist poses with a dinosaur footprint.

This is sort of how I see her as an adult, since she’s so adamant about wanting to be a paleontologist when she grows up. I can imagine her 30 years from now at a dig site in South America or God-knows-where, sitting just like this next to some brilliant discovery she’s made.

As far as distracting her from Dave’s departure? It kind of worked. She’s mostly been fine for the past couple of days. Maybe it’ll be a delayed reaction, I don’t know.

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Last night, she said that she wanted to make Daddy a card. I gave her one of my blank note cards, and she asked me to help her spell out her words. (We’ve been doing this a lot lately since she’s been practicing writing at kindergarten. I help her sound them out and try to help her figure out the next letter herself.)

She wrote on the card:

“I miss you Daddy. Love Catie and Lucy.”

Then she covered it in stickers and asked me to mail it. Even though seeing those words printed out in her little 5 year-old handwriting made me want to hold the card to my chest and cry, I put it in an envelope, stamped it, and shipped it off.

I have no idea if it’ll break his heart like it did mine. I guess that disconnect to each other’s feelings is just one of many reasons we aren’t together anymore.

random Monday thoughts

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My head is kind of a mess of different things right now, and I feel like I should blog since it’s been a week. (I know y’all probably don’t care, but when I look at my archives and see barely anything written, it tends to be because those are the times when my brain was too preoccupied to say anything.) So, a few random things happening here.

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* Dave is in town for a visit. He hadn’t seen the girls since March, so I wasn’t sure what to expect and I was quite honestly a knot of anxiety about the whole thing. Six months is a long time, especially when you’re a little kid. So far, it’s going pretty smoothly. Catie is obviously thrilled to see him. And Lucy didn’t really remember him, but she warmed up to him quickly, probably (at least partially) thanks to sibling rivalry. (Catie is sitting on someone’s lap? Lucy wants to be on that person’s lap too, dammit.)

So, it’s fine, but it’s also a weird topic that I don’t really feel comfortable talking about here. I’m bracing myself for next weekend when he leaves, because that’s essentially when I have to go into grief counselor mode for Catie. It’s going to suck, but it is what it is and there isn’t much I can do about it, other than to try to keep her routines in place so she feels as safe and secure in her world as possible. Which is what I do anyway.

[Ok, fine, here’s where I’ll be snarky and admit that when he texted me to tell me that he took both kids to IHOP yesterday and the food took an hour and both kids had simultaneous meltdowns in the middle of the restaurant? Yes, I did derive a tiny bit of satisfaction out of that. If that makes me a petty, horrible person, so be it. Also, later on, Lucy puked on him, but it was at my house and I had to clean up the floor, so that was less funny. Still, it did feel a little bit like, “Oh hey, welcome to MY world, buddy!”]

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* I took advantage of the kids’ time with Dave this weekend to try to reorganize the house and clean out my office. That was possibly the most gratifying thing I’ve done in a long, LONG time. I made about 6 trips to the recycle bin and hauled out a couple of giant lawn-size hefty bags of trash. It felt so good to unload all of that stuff. I keep looking around my office and feeling like a weight has been lifted off of me. I can now watch “Hoarders” without nervously looking around my own house. It’s very freeing.

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* Lucy. My god. This child.

She is how I know without a doubt that I’m done having babies, because I am quite certain that I would never survive another toddler. The tantrums and the drama, plus the fact that she still doesn’t consistently sleep through the night, and she howls every time I try to put her in her car seat… it’s like somebody crossed a newborn with the terrible two’s and came up with this hellspawn hybrid demon baby-toddler.

But then, you know, she’s also a toddler, and therefore completely hilarious.

Someday she is going to outgrow that tummy. And I will cry.

I took this picture because I wanted to capture THAT TUMMY. Which I kiss about a million times a day. And when I say, “Lucy, where’s your tummy?” She pulls up her shirt and rubs her little Buddha-belly like she’s all proud of it, and it makes me sad that we don’t keep those body image ideals as we get older. She’ll outgrow that tummy someday, and I’ll be heartbroken when she does.

Also, one of my friends pointed out that in that picture, she looks like a tiny David Lee Roth. And she totally does, except I think Lucy might have more hair on top than ol’ David Lee has these days.

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* On a sad note, my great uncle Numa passed away last week. It wasn’t a surprise, and we’re all relieved that he isn’t in pain anymore. I don’t really have the words to sum up my uncle Numa here. There’s a really nice obituary that covers what an amazing career he had. (How many people can say that the guy who played Newman on Seinfeld played them in a movie? Random, right?) I knew him as the guy who was completely smitten with his wife, my great aunt Connie, even after 50 years of marriage. He was hilariously funny and told the greatest stories.

He had been ill for a very long time, and he hadn’t wanted visitors around when he was sick, so I hadn’t seen him in a long time. I remember in 2004, when Dave and I were still just dating, we were in New Orleans at Christmas, and I called Numa. I don’t remember why I called him, I think I was asking him for a restaurant recommendation. But that was the last time I spoke with him. At the end of our chat, I remember him saying, “Darlin’, if you get into trouble in the Quarter tonight, just tell the cops my name and they’ll take care of you.” Always good to have a name you can drop when you get arrested for drunk & disorderly on Bourbon Street, right?

He was a wonderful man who’ll be very missed by so many.

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* It was 50 degrees outside when I woke up this morning. The high today is 72. Hey there, September, you’re looking lovely.

Rainy zoo days

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(Warning: tons of photos ahead.)

Yesterday was gray and rainy, but it was also the first day we’ve had in ages where the high was in the low 70s. After how soul-crushingly hot this summer has been, that meant that we were going to get outside and enjoy the cool weather if it killed me.

With that in mind, we (meaning me, the girls, and my parents) loaded up into my mom’s mini-van and drove to Asheboro to visit the North Carolina Zoo. We’ve been to the zoo a couple of times before, although the last time I went, I was very newly pregnant with Lucy and wasn’t able to enjoy myself very much because I was kind of sick and miserable the whole time.

The main reason for the zoo trip this time is because Catie heard about the dinosaur exhibit there, and since she says she’s going to be a paleontologist when she grows up, she was DYING to see the dinosaurs. In fact, from the minute we got there, she kept asking, “Can we see the dinosaurs next? Where are the dinosaurs? Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, DIIIIINOOOOOSAAAAAUUUURS!!!!”

(It got old, is what I’m saying.)

Then we finally found the dino exhibit, and oh y’all, my girl was in heaven.

There’s one dinosaur near the entrance that you can climb on for pictures, but the rest of them are off-limits. These are really amazing life-size dinosaurs that move and roar and everything.

Catie and the dinosaur

I tried to get Lucy in one picture, but girlfriend was NOT having it.

Tried to get a picture of both girls on the dinosaur, Lucy was not having it.

Once we got into the exhibit, I basically only saw Catie’s back for the next 20 minutes. She would run ahead to the next dinosaur and then stand there and stare at it, absolutely transfixed.

little girl, big brachiosaurus

This was our view of Catie for most of the dino exhibit. She couldn't get enough of them.

(I basically have a lot of pictures of the back of her blue Tinkerbell hoodie.)

It kills me how much she knows about dinosaurs, and it’s all stuff that she’s learned on her own, because I certainly haven’t taught her this stuff. As we walked up to this one…

My mom: "Hey Catie, is that an allosaurus?" Her: "No, Mimi, it's an APATOSAURUS." And she was right. Of course.

My mom said, “Hey, Catie, is that an allosaurus?”

Catie replied, “No, Mimi, it’s an APATOSAURUS.”

And she was right. If you’d asked me what it was, I would have shrugged because I have no clue.

Anyway, the dinosaur exhibit was a major win.

The rest of the zoo was a lot of fun too. Lucy insisted on walking a lot of the time, which meant going really slowly. The zoo is divided into two major exhibits, the Africa side and the North America side. We only covered the Africa side, and left North America for another time. After all, Africa has all of the really cool animals that we wanted to see.

That's a lot of giraffes, y'all.
(Note the tiny baby giraffe sitting down. He was just born at the zoo recently. I love him.)

Lioness
Gorgeous. Think they’d let me take her home? I’ll bet Beaumont would like a friend.

Elephant

This was Lucy’s first time at a zoo, and I was interested to see what her reaction was. She was mildly interested in things like the elephants.

Me & Lucy checking out the elephants.

But it was the chimpanzees and the gorillas that really got her attention. I think maybe because the exhibits let you see them so close, but I got this picture after Lucy saw a gorilla up close for the first time, and I think it might be one of my favorite pictures of her.

Lucy's face after seeing a gorilla up close for the first time. Priceless.

She was just STUNNED. It was hilarious. After a minute, she got excited and spent the next few minutes saying, “ooh ooh ahh ahh” at them. As we left, she blew them kisses and yelled, “Bye-bye!!”

So, I think she’s a fan of the zoo.

Lucy in a (fake) ostrich egg.

My girls check out the safari helicopter

She got tired toward the end, and she only wants my dad when she’s grumpy, which led to this picture, which I love.

Tired girl only wants her Pop-Pop

It was a really great day, even in spite of the drizzly rain, and both kids were so worn out that they went to bed early and slept soundly all night, so who knows? We might go to the zoo every Sunday from now on. (Not really. But it’s a nice thought.)

single vs solo parenting vs OMG shut it already

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This thing came up online a couple of days ago and it’s been gnawing at me ever since.

So, my friend Katie – do y’all know Katie? Because you should, she’s awesome – she had a baby recently. And then her husband went out of town for a week and she was on her own with the baby for a week. And she wrote a post about how difficult it was.

And then a whole bunch of commenters showed up and basically blasted her for not having a clue how difficult it is to really be a single parent. They said she was a spoiled brat and a rich lazy housewife with an easy little life (none of which are things that are true if you know anything about Katie, but I digress).

Here’s the thing: I’m a single parent, and I read the article and found absolutely nothing offensive about it. But it’s another example of something that seems to be a very common phenomenon online, particularly among the parenting blogs, and it drives me bonkers. Here’s the thing, y’all: IT’S NOT A COMPETITION.

Is life generally harder for me as a single parent compared to other moms with spouses? I don’t know. Probably, I guess.

Some of my married friends have husbands who are useless pieces of crap (sorry, truth) who do absolutely nothing to help out with the kids and who basically function as an extra (very large) child that they have to clean up after and take care of. I imagine their lives are probably WAY more frustrating than mine.

(Note: I’m not saying that’s true of all of my married friends. I know plenty of awesome husbands/dads too.)

Some of my single parent friends don’t have the support system around them that I’m very lucky to have. I imagine that’s got to be really hard too.

So Katie had a rough week. Why jump on her case for it? Taking care of a 4 month-old is HARD. I would so much rather deal with my toddler and 5 year-old together than one tiny newborn. (Another reason I’m definitely done having kids – I mean, besides the whole divorce thing – is that I’m pretty sure I would never survive another newborn baby. I love my kids to the moon and back, but I am SO GLAD to be past that stage.) She didn’t claim that she was a “single parent” because she took care of the baby by herself for a week, just that she could sympathize with single parents because she had a taste of what it’s like to do it on your own, and she saw how hard it is. Can someone tell me what’s offensive about that? Because I just don’t see it.

I don’t sit around thinking about who has it easier and who has it harder than me. Because it’s none of my business. And I prefer to just go ahead and live my life rather than thinking about what everybody else is doing.

And I think that if you DO sit around thinking about other people’s lives that much, maybe it’s time to turn off your computer and go find yourself a nice hobby. (I hear knitting can be very relaxing. Or maybe go pet a horse.) Because life is too short to sit around feeling all “woe is me” all the time. There’s no medal for winning the Adversity Olympics.