Author Archives: Cindy

First day of kindergarten

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Yesterday’s post was all about Lucy, so now I need a minute to brag about my Catie-bug.

Where we live, the public schools have both traditional and year-round calendars. We opted for a year-round school (meaning, kids go to school for 9 weeks and then get 3 weeks off, every term), because I like the idea of being able to take off-season vacations, and it also works out well for planning visits from Dave.

So, year-round schools started today. This means that I am now the mom of a kindergartener.

Catie on her first day of kindergarten!

She has a dinosaur backpack with an Angry Bird clipped onto the zipper, a Sonic the Hedgehog lunchbox, a My Little Pony nap mat, and new sneakers that light up when she walks (her “sparkle shoes”). That pretty much encompasses Catie in a nutshell right there.

She knows how to write her first and last name. She can count to 100. She knows more words in Spanish than I do.

I love that Lucy's mouth is all, "SHUT. UP. No way!"
See look, even Lucy is all, “SHUT. UP. No way is my sister starting kindergarten already!”

She says she wants to be a paleontologist when she grows up, so she can look for dinosaur bones. But she wants to live with me and have me drive her to work every day, because she doesn’t want to learn how to drive a car. (I expect that desire to drive will kick in sooner than I want it to.) I’ve told her that she can live with me for as long as she wants, and I’ll drive her wherever she wants to go.

Lucy & Catie
Lucy will probably be hotwiring cars before she even hits middle school. That kid is gonna be trouble, I tell you.

She was so excited about starting kindergarten. I, on the other hand, have been a nervous wreck. My stomach would knot up every time I thought about it. I’ve been faking it for her sake, acting like I’m super-excited too, because I didn’t want her to pick up on any of my worrywart vibes.

Only this morning did she finally say, “I think I might be a little bit shy at my new school.” I told her that was normal, and that a lot of the kids are shy at first because it’s new for all of them.

We dropped Lucy off at daycare first, and then Catie and I went to the elementary school. We got there early, and waited outside (along with a lot of other parents and kids) for the doors to open.

A little apprehensive before school opened on the first day.

We made our way in and found her classroom. She was a little bit clingy and wanted a lot of extra hugs and kisses before I left. But really, she was fine. Great, even. By the time I got to the door, she was happily working on a dinosaur puzzle with a little boy.

No tears at all for either of us. I think we both deserve a cookie.

Me & my Catie bug. First day of kindergarten for year-round school.

I am so damn proud of her, y’all.

13 months and change

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In the past month, Lucy has had this amazing baby-to-toddler explosion. I don’t really know what else to call it. I vaguely remember this happening with Catie, it’s like a whole bunch of things suddenly change all at once, and it’s usually right around their first birthday.

She isn’t walking yet, but I guess she’s decided she’s tired of crawling too. So now she does what we call her “downward-facing dog crawl,” with her tush in the air. Like so.


(I would like to state for the record that my voice in this video is not an actual representation of my accent. I was being silly to make the kids laugh. I don’t actually use words like “git” instead of “get.” Honest.)

She also figured out this weekend how to crawl up and down the stairs. Which meant that she wanted to do it about 20 times in a row. (On the plus side, it’s good exercise for me, I guess?)

She loves the swimming pool, and has no hesitation to leap out of my arms face-first into the water. It scares the crap out of me, and I catch her before she goes under every time, but she’s gotten a nose-full of pool water more than once.

We've discovered that Lucy REALLY likes lemonade.

Although she prefers to mooch her Mimi’s lemonade while hanging with her Pop-Pop.

Walking with only Pop-Pop's thumb for support

The child is fearless to the point of having a death wish. I never really had to childproof anything for Catie (I would point at something and say, “don’t touch that,” and she actually listened to me and never touched whatever the thing was), but I basically have to tie down everything in sight when it comes to Lucy.

A little morning couch dancing.

She seems more precocious than a lot of babies I’ve encountered. I think a lot of that is because she wants to imitate everything her big sister does.

Lucy coloring with Mimi

Of course, this also has its downsides: she’s officially reached Tantrum Age. If you tell her “no” or take away something dangerous that she’s managed to get her hands on, she will throw herself face-down on the floor and scream like she’s being tortured. Most of the time I walk away (it’s my general rule for dealing with tantrums: don’t feed them more attention), but I can already tell that this girl’s toddler years are probably going to kill me.

Lucy-face

She’s damn lucky she’s cute, that’s for sure.

Charlotte trip recap

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The trip to Charlotte this past weekend was really nice. I don’t know how to summarize it in a normal way because it’s too hot for my brain to function.

So, hey look! Highlights!

1. We saw Beauty and the Beast on stage. It was The girl who played Belle was fantastic, but the Beast was obviously hired for his singing voice, because when he transformed back into a prince, all of the adult heterosexual women in the audience kind of went, “… Oh.” He was decidedly NOT hot. Sorry, dude. The guy who played Gaston was really good, and Lumiere damn near stole the show.

Of course, I hear the “Bonjour!” song at the beginning like this in my head:


(Warning: If you watch this video, you’ll never hear the song the same way again.)

2. I finally got to see the house that my brother bought. It’s lovely.

3. The plan to time our departure with Lucy’s naptime? SUCCESS!

Operation "plan the road trip around Lucy's naptime": SUCCESS.

4. We split up so it was boy’s house/girl’s house. This meant that my dad stayed with my brother, and the rest of us stayed at my sister’s apartment. Catie and my mom slept in my sister’s room (her room is huge, she has a queen-size bed and there’s plenty of space to also set up an air mattress), and I slept in the guest room with Lucy. I brought the pack & play, but Lucy started screaming after about 30 minutes there. I didn’t want her to wake up everybody, so I brought her onto the futon with me.

There are worse people you could have to share a futon with.

This meant that I didn’t sleep that great, but let’s be honest, I’ve shared futons with worse people.

5. My kids love my sister’s apartment.

Piano sisters. (My sister's apartment is so not kid-proofed.)

And more specifically, my sister’s cats.

My sister's cat Valentino is very concerned about Lucy taking his cat toy.

6. Overall it was really nice. The heat was brutal (110+ degree heat index, whee!), but we just altered plans and made it so that we stayed indoors as much as possible. The trip home was pretty easy too. Both kids slept for a good chunk of the ride home and it was fine.

7. The one bad part: I came home to a house with no A/C. Well, partially. I have a two-story house, so the A/C upstairs (where we sleep) is fine. But downstairs, which is, you know, where we actually live, was boiling. I called the landlord’s after-hours answering service, but they couldn’t get anyone out here on a Sunday. The service tech called me this morning and said he’ll be here this afternoon, but he wasn’t sure when. Fingers crossed it gets fixed soon, because no A/C in July in the South? No thank you.

Overall, though, A+ weekend. And it’s nice to know that I can take both kids on a road trip. It’s exhausting, sure, but totally manageable.

Heading to The Queen City

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Today is kind of a big deal at our house. We’re packing up and driving to Charlotte for the weekend.

And yeah, I know, Charlotte is a measly 150 miles from us, so it’s really not that big a deal. Normally I’d agree with you. But this is the first time I’ve undertaken a road trip with both a 5 year-old and a 1 year-old. In fact, it’s Lucy’s first road trip ever. She’s never gone more than about 15 miles in a car.

So, yeah, I’m nervous, is what I’m saying.

The reason we’re going is because both of my siblings live in Charlotte, and I haven’t been there to visit them since before I got pregnant with Lucy. My brother actually bought a house since the last time I was there. It’s been too long.

Also, my sister has hired a baby-sitter for Lucy and bought tickets for us to take Catie to see Beauty and the Beast on stage. She is so excited. (Ok, I am too.)

My parents are coming with us, we’re all driving over together in my mom’s mini-van. Hopefully the fact that I’ll have a higher adult-to-child ratio will make the road trip part easier to manage.

Day 12: My girls from a low angle #photoadayjune . (I was on the floor, they were on the bed.)

Yeah, I know they look all sweet, but I’m still nervous.

Catie will most likely be fine. She woke up today so excited, yelling, “It’s Tracy day!!!” (She adores my sister.) The only thing that worries me is that she tends to get carsick, but I have some chewable children’s Dramamine, which will hopefully keep that under control.

And we’re carefully timing our departure to coincide with Lucy’s naptime, so hopefully that will work to our advantage. Cross your fingers for us.

But other than worrying about the drive over (and oh lord, please let Lucy sleep ok in the pack & play), I’m really excited to go. It’s been ages since I’ve gone out of town for a weekend. I think a change of scenery will be good for all of us.

On anger

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It’s 11:30 at night, the girls are asleep, the dishwasher is running, clothes are folded and put away, daycare bags for tomorrow are packed. I should be sleeping right now.

Yet all I can think about is this rage I feel swirling around in my head, and I don’t know what to do with it.

I’m not generally an angry person. I don’t like to hold grudges. That’s not how I want to live my life. I don’t want to be one of those angry, bitter people. (You know the people I’m talking about. Everyone knows at least a handful of them.)

Lately all of my anger is aimed at Dave. Other than the obvious reasons, I can’t exactly pinpoint why. Generally we’ve been ok with each other lately. We’re civil, anyway.

But then I have a day like Monday – and of course, even though I texted Dave to let him know we were at the ER, I still had a lot of that resentment, that “your kid is sick, you should be here right now; or at the very least, you should be taking care of your other kid while I take care of the sick one” feeling.

I’ve also felt that way a lot over the past couple of weeks, when I’ve been having problems getting Lucy to sleep. Because yes, as it turns out, I do kind of need another adult in the house who can take over at 4 a.m. when I’m at the end of my rope.

I’m guessing it’s natural to feel that way when the father of your children lives 3,000 miles away, and is no longer a regular physical presence in their lives.

But it really hit me hard this past Saturday. Why Saturday? Because I spent all day with the girls, just me and them. And yes, it was exhausting (my god, was it ever), but there were so many good moments.

And I just stop and think, god damn you, you’re missing everything.

He doesn’t know how Lucy asks for her bottle, what words she knows, her favorite foods, who her favorite person is (hint: my dad), or the little “jokes” she tells. (Slapping her forehead and saying, “D’oh!” is one guaranteed to make me smile every time.)

He doesn’t see the way Lucy’s face lights up every morning when she sees her big sister for the first time.

He doesn’t get to look in his rearview mirror and see the two of them in the backseat, and catch a glimpse of Catie reaching over to tickle Lucy to make her laugh.

He doesn’t know what Catie’s favorite bedtime book is this week. He doesn’t know the songs she sings along with on the radio.

He misses the bad stuff, sure – he never has to do the grunt work of changing diapers or reminding Catie again that she needs to pick up her toys. But he misses all of those amazing and precious moments too. It makes me so angry FOR THEM. They won’t get to have memories of their childhood that involve their dad. At best, those memories will be sporadic and fleeting.

We have a lot of mutual friends on Facebook (obviously, we de-friended each other a LONG time ago), so I hear things about how he talks about the kids. He makes it sound like he’s this super-involved and loving dad. I guess that’s what he wants his friends and family to think, because the reality of it is just so unbelievably shitty.

And he brought it all on himself. He chose to leave. There’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t force him to stay in North Carolina and be a present figure in his children’s lives.

I’ve dated/am dating guys who are divorced with kids. So far, all of them have joint custody and see their children on a 50-50 basis with their exes. I’m jealous of that. I mean, sure, I’m jealous that their ex-wives get a break, some “free” nights off here and there. But I’m mainly jealous that their kids will grow up with their fathers in their lives. I wish to God I could make that happen for my girls.

I can’t fix this. I can’t change what it is. I just have to figure out some way to work around this anger that I can’t seem to get out of my head right now.

Monday at the ER

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Monday started off like a normal day. Dropped Catie off at daycare, and Lucy at my parents’ house. Did my work stuff, went to daycare to pick up Catie, then went to my parents’ house and had dinner with them.

At some point while we were at my parents’ house, Catie went to the bathroom, and she started crying. I went to check on her, and she said it hurt when she peed. Obviously that was a major red flag, but I also know that she has a tendency to hold it for a really long time. Since she had no other symptoms (no fever, otherwise acting like her normal happy self), I wrote it off as a fluke. She’s never had a bladder infection before, so it seemed unlikely.

When we got home, I took the girls upstairs to give them a bath. Catie said she needed to pee again (red flag #2, she had just gone less than an hour before, and she normally pees maybe 3 times a day tops, because her bladder is the opposite of mine). She got on the toilet and started screaming that it hurt.

Right. Ok then. Time to go to Urgent Care!

I called my parents, they came over to take care of Lucy so I wouldn’t have to bring her along.

Unfortunately, all Urgent Care offices here close at 8 p.m., and it was 7:55 when we left the house. Change of plans: off to the ER!

The triage nurse called us back and asked a bunch of questions. Catie impressed me by being able to answer the questions about her symptoms herself. Sometimes it still stuns me that she isn’t a toddler who only I can understand.

Then we had to wait for a bed. The hospital has a separate pediatric waiting room, which is really just a little nook with some ottomans to sit on, and a TV showing Nick Junior.

I’ve never been so grateful to see Dora the Explorer in my life.

Thankful for the pediatric waiting room at the ER showing Nick Junior. It appears that Team Umizoomi helps.

We finally got a bed, and, as Catie put it, “They let me pee in a cup!” (Gee, that sure was nice of them, wasn’t it?) Found out that yes, she does indeed have a UTI. They sent us home with a prescription for antibiotics and a list of instructions for things to be careful about from now on.

We got home after 10:30 p.m. (Again, SO THANKFUL I didn’t have to lug Lucy along with me through all of this.) I insisted that Catie had to take a bath, because, eww, ER germs. She finally crashed after 11. I crawled into bed soon afterward.

Then, of course, Lucy had me up from 4 to 6 a.m., so I basically feel like death today. (Tired, grumpy, headache-y death.) And I have a ton of work to do today, which is going to be a challenge.

But Catie is starting to feel a little better, so I’m thankful for that. And she was excited that she would have the most exciting story at Show & Tell today. So, you know, there’s that. Priorities.

The good news is that we’re halfway through 2012 and this was our first ER trip this year. Fingers crossed that it’s also the last.

Pre-K graduation

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Last Friday, Catie graduated from her pre-K class at daycare.

Catie and her pre-K graduating class (she's 3rd from the right)
She’s 3rd from the right if you’re doing a “Where’s Waldo?” of the teeny-tiny caps & gowns.

I also love this picture, mainly because it captures exactly how bored all of the kids were precisely two minutes into the program.
The pre-K crowd isn't exactly known for their long attention spans.

But then there was this, which I loved.

(It seems that I am incapable of filming a non-jiggly video. Sorry about that.)

And this, which… y’all.
My pre-K graduate.

I’m generally pretty good about staying stoic through these types of things. I don’t cry at every “oh my baby is growing up” milestone. But yeah. Catie’s teacher cried, and then I almost lost it.

(The way to cope with this, by the way, is to stealthily text your other single mom friend in the room about how skanky her ex-husband’s new girlfriend is. Especially when the new girlfriend is sitting less than 3 feet away from you, and OMG honey, it’s a bunch of freaking 5 year-olds in here, do you really need to wear a dress so low cut that we can almost see your areolas?)

(Moral of the story: keep it bitchy and you won’t cry in public. Yay feminism!)

I tried to explain the concept of graduation to Catie. I told her to think about all of the things she couldn’t do a year ago that she can do now – she knows how to write all of her letters in upper and lower case, she can count to 100 & do basic math, she knows more Spanish than I do, and she’s really good at coloring inside the lines. I told her that graduation is when we celebrate all of those things she’s learned, before she moves on to the next thing, which is kindergarten. She seemed to get that.

As for kindergarten, Catie is signed up for year-round schools here. For those of you not familiar with Wake county, that means the kids go to school for 9 weeks, then have 3 weeks off after each term. (It works out well for taking off-season vacations, and makes visitation issues with Dave easier.)

It also means that kindergarten starts two weeks from today. HOLY CRAP.

The good news is that Catie is so excited about kindergarten, she asks every day if it’s time to go yet. I love that she’s so psyched about it.

My nervousness, on the other hand, mainly revolves around preparation. I’m in a tizzy worrying about school supply lists, trying to figure out what to pack in her lunchbox, figuring out the logistics of getting her there on time and then getting Lucy to daycare, etc. It’s… a lot. I think I need some to-do lists.

Oh, one last thing about pre-K graduation? Each kid was given a little book full of artwork they’ve done throughout the year, some photos that the teachers snapped of them, and then they all had certificates saying they were Most [whatever]. Catie won Most Inquisitive. Which is no surprise to anyone who’s had to listen to her ask “Why?” a million times. Or anyone who was in the car with us last night when she out of the blue (the radio was off) started singing “I’m Sexy and I Know It,” and then asked what “sexy” means. (Try answering THAT one with the grandparents in the car! AWKWARD.)

So, yeah. My Catie is a pre-K graduate. Time is a-flyin’, I tell ya.