Author Archives: Cindy

catching up

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So! My website was down for a few days because apparently spammers have nothing better to do than take over my measly little blog.

(Don’t ask me, I don’t get it either.)

Random stuff from this past week:

1. The yard sale last Saturday was good. We had a pretty impressive turn-out of people, made a few hundred bucks, and the rest went to Goodwill. All in all, a success.

During the yard sale, I set up a couple of beach towels on the front yard (picnic-style), and set Lucy down so she could stay happy watching all of the people come and go. (When she got bored & fussy, my dad walked her around.) A few people asked me how much I was asking for the baby. I told them to come back at 3 a.m. and I’d make them a really good deal.

Lucy models Mommy's headband.

Really. There are some days that I’d be totally willing to listen to anyone who’d make me an offer.

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2. I had lunch with The Guy last week. We generally take turns paying for meals, because you know, I’m a liberated woman and all of that. He picked up the check for this one, and paid with his credit card.

When the waiter brought the check back to the table, he said, “Thanks for coming in today, Mr. and Mrs. [his last name].” He and I both choked on our beverages.

Moral of the story: CHECK FOR A RING, Y’ALL. It takes two seconds and spares everyone involved in a whoooole lotta awkward.

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3. Is there anything else going on that I need to tell you? There’s a couple of things that are not bloggable (don’t ask), and other stuff which just sounds whiny and y’all don’t care, so let’s skip over that.

Really, who wants to listen to me moan about how much my kids wear me out?

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4. Alright, they’re cute sometimes.

My girls are apparently riveted by The Fresh Beat Band.

They even make watching the Fresh Beat Band tolerable.

9 things for Friday

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I didn’t mean to leave that really depressing post up at the top for so long. Sorry about that.

So! After a really awful week, here are some things that I am thankful for today:

1. It’s Friday.

2. After a hellish week of no sleep and being woken up at least three times a night, Lucy finally slept through the night last night. Thank you God and the makers of Benadryl. (Yes, I drugged her. I was desperate. Judge not lest ye be and all that.)

Someone is faking that she's asleep.
Yeah, ok, fine. She can be cute sometimes, I admit it.

3. Catie has been awesomely delightful this week. I think 5 is my favorite age so far. She still challenges me, but for the most part, she’s just so damn fun right now.

Day 6: hat, big pimpin' style. #photoadayjune
Pimp hats FTW!

And also this:
Day 8: Not long after 6:00. #photoadayjune

That picture makes me laugh every time I see it.

4. I get to have lunch with The Guy today.

5. My mom and I are doing a combo yard sale tomorrow, and I’m surprisingly not stressed about it. Normally I get all obsessive about pricing and organizing and all that. This time I’m basically just throwing my crap out in the yard and letting people make me an offer. Whatever doesn’t sell is going to Goodwill, so I really don’t care.

6. My belated Mother’s Day gift to myself is today. I had a Groupon deal for a facial and massage, and I’m finally redeeming it this afternoon. The last time I had a massage, I was pregnant with Lucy. And I can’t even remember the last time I had a facial, but it was before we moved to North Carolina (in 2008), so it’s WAY overdue. I’m so excited.

7. My brother is coming to town this weekend to help out with the yard sale. Which is, I guess, not such a HUGE deal, because I see him fairly often these days. But still, I like my brother, so it’s fun to have him around.

Lucy & her uncle Chris

8. Highs in the upper 70s in June. Damn, I love North Carolina.

9. Did I mention that it’s almost the weekend? Because yeah, that.

single parenting suckage

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Ok, here comes one of those confessional type blog posts that I don’t normally write.

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I’ve been on Lexapro since last year. If you were reading my blog when I was pregnant, I blamed most of my anxiety on the house break-in, but the vast majority of it was that my marriage was falling apart while I was pregnant.

I would go to my OB appointments and see all of these happy glowing pregnant ladies in the waiting room, and when they called me back to an exam room and asked how I was doing, I would cry. I felt awful because there was no sense of excitement or joy about my baby’s arrival. It felt like my due date was just going to kick off the countdown to the end of my marriage.

(And clearly I was right about that, since Dave and I split ten weeks after Lucy’s birth.)

So, yeah, I’ve been on an anti-depressant ever since then. I think for me, this whole depression/anxiety thing is situational and not physiological. There are occasional times when I feel like I probably don’t need it anymore, but since it’s not hurting anything, I’ve decided that I’m staying on it at least until my divorce is finalized.

Honestly, the idea of not taking it scares me, because I have no idea how I’d cope without it. Maybe I’d be fine, but god, what if I’m not?

And really, there’s only one unpleasant side effect of Lexapro: I can’t cry. Or, rarely, anyway. Sometimes it’s awful, because something will happen and I really want to cry, and I can’t. I get a lump in my throat and the stinging in my eyes, but it never breaks through. I’ll get a headache because I just can’t get that release to get it out of my system.

The closest thing I can think to compare it to (be warned, this is not G-rated) is the feeling like when you’re juuuuust about to have an orgasm and for some reason, you can’t get there. It’s frustrating, to say the least.

(Btw, I used this analogy to explain it to the guy I’m dating. His response was, “I understand that there are words coming out of your mouth, but they make no sense.” Typical dude, I’m thinking. He also said that if he had to choose between not being able to cry and not being able to have an orgasm, he’d be fine with never crying again. I’m guessing 99.9% of the males on earth would agree with him.)

So, it’s a bad side-effect, and an annoying one, but most of the time, I can live with it.

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And then I have days like yesterday.

My weekend started off ok. I had a baby-sitter planned for Saturday night, but my date got canceled (emergency came up with his ex-wife and he had to take his kids; it happens, not a big deal). Catie was so excited about the baby-sitter coming over that I decided not to cancel, and instead, I went to the movies by myself.

(I finally saw the Hunger Games. I haven’t read the books, but I was curious about it. And I liked the movie, although I thought a lot of it was extremely disturbing. But I guess that’s the point.)

Sunday morning, when we woke up, Catie asked if we could go get pancakes. It’s rare that she asks me for something that I can say “yes” to, but that sounded do-able. We got dressed and went to IHOP.

While we were sitting at IHOP, Catie just very matter-of-factly blurted out, “Mommy, you love Lucy more than me.”

*RECORD SCRATCH*

WHAT?

I said, “Sweetie, that’s not true. Why would you think that?”

She said, “Well, Lucy’s cuter than me.”

I told her that was absolutely not true, that they were both beautiful and that I loved them both.

It bothered me, and I repeated it to her again later. Just sort of, “Hey, remember when you said that? Y’all are both my girls, and you are both beautiful, and I love you both the same.” She seemed to accept it, but man, that whole thing rattled me.

Really, if I look at it from a 5 year-old’s perspective? I get why she thinks that. I am constantly fussing at Catie to be gentle with the baby, share her toys with the baby, stop being mean to the baby, yadda yadda. But I don’t ever yell at Lucy, because, you know… she’s a baby.

And Lucy gets a lot more of my attention, because, again: she’s a baby. Catie is five and doesn’t need me to constantly watch her every move to make sure she doesn’t shove a choking hazard in her mouth or go tumbling down the stairs.

I don’t know how to fix that. It just is what it is.

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Sunday afternoon, we hung out at my parents’ house for a while. Then I took the kids to the playground, and we came home to do the whole dinner/bath/bedtime thing.

Oh! Big milestone here! During all of that, Lucy took 4 steps on her own. Left, right, left, right, then she fell on her tush. She was so proud of herself, and afterward, she kept standing up on her own with this look on her face, like, “Hey, look at this new trick I learned!” So far, I think 4 steps is her record, but she took 1 or 2 steps a lot last night.

And of course, it’s been 4 1/2 years since the last time I dealt with this, so I forgot how every new developmental milestone totally screws up their sleep schedules.

So bedtime rolls around, and Lucy is nowhere near sleepy. I let her stay up a little later than usual, hoping that she’d burn herself out and eventually go to bed easily.

That didn’t happen. What happened is that I let her stay up just a little too long, and she freaking lost it. She was so past the point of exhaustion, she didn’t know what to do with herself. So she screamed. And screamed.

I tried everything to comfort her. For an hour. Finally I gave up and put her in her crib and figured she’d eventually settle herself down to sleep.

She didn’t.

[Aside: Somewhere during the screaming, I got a, “Hey, how’s your evening going?” text from The Guy.
I texted back: “Teenagers should be forced to come to my house right now as an on-site demo of why they need to use birth control.”
Him: “Oooh, that good, huh?”]

After listening to Lucy scream for another half-hour (so, 90 minutes of screaming total), I called my mom. Both of my parents came over.

Catie was still awake, because it’s impossible to put her to bed while Lucy is up (plus, how could I expect her to sleep with ALL OF THE SCREAMING in the house?). So my parents showed up, and my mom put Catie to bed, while my dad paced Lucy around the house until she fell asleep.

(And yes, I had tried that exact pacing trick myself, and it had not worked for me. But my dad is the only person that Lucy wants right now.)

I took a shower while my parents put my kids to bed, then I came downstairs, sat on the couch, and burst into tears.

So, apparently when things are bad enough, even the Lexapro can’t hold the tears back.

I just felt like the most epic failure of a single parent. My 5 year-old thinks that I don’t love her, and I can’t even comfort my own baby to sleep.

I don’t know if I have made it through an entire weekend, ever, without calling in backup to some extent, and it’s usually my parents. I feel like I dump my kids on them all the time, and even though I know that’s not really true, and hell, they moved up here for the express purpose of helping me with the kids, it still feels shitty.

So many people tell me that they admire how I’m handling being a single mom, or that I kick ass at this, or whatever, and I just don’t see it. My ex-husband moved 3,000 miles away. What choice did I have in the matter except to deal with it? It’s not admirable, it’s just basic survival. I feel like I’m half-assing it at best, and on days like yesterday, I’m white-knuckling it until bedtime.

I try not to use the f-word on my blog, but really? I fucking hate it. There are two of them and only one of me, I feel like I will never be able to be “enough” for both of them. I keep hoping it will get easier when they get older, but I also know that just presents a whole different set of issues, and I’m not prepared for any of it.

It sucks, basically, is what I’m saying.

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I tweeted about it last night, and I got a lot of awesome responses because I have a fantastic online support system, and I cannot even begin to express how grateful I am for that. Really, you guys rock.

The Guy offered to come over and rub my feet, which was very sweet, but he lives a half-hour away, and no way was I staying awake that long.

I thought, oh, you know, it’ll all be better tomorrow after I get some sleep.

Then Lucy woke up 3 times last night.

Sigh.

I wish I had some cute, funny way to tie this up, but I don’t. I’m exhausted and I feel like hell.

I know it’ll be ok eventually. I know this. But for now, I’m bracing myself for another half-assed day at this whole single parenting thing.

Lucy at One

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Dear Lucy,

Yesterday, you turned one year old.

This is a happy birthday baby right here.

I suppose I should’ve written this post yesterday, but Mommy was a little bit distracted with her friends being in town.

You see, baby, you won’t understand this until you’re a lot older, but this past year? Has probably been one of the hardest and longest years of my life. And that’s not your fault at all, that’s just life. But this was the week that I needed my friends around me to help me celebrate the fact that I survived this past year.

Lucky for you (and your sister), this means that you get a whole bunch of bonus honorary aunties who absolutely adore you.

It's @amazinggreis and the birthday girl.

Sometimes they even bring you Abby Cadabby dolls for your birthday.

A few months ago, someone (I won’t say who, it doesn’t really matter) unthinkingly told me that I shouldn’t have had you, because your birth happened right around the same time that your dad and I separated. That blew my mind.

Obviously, if I’d had a crystal ball and knew how things would play out, then no, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to get pregnant with you, because being a single parent to one kid is hard enough, let alone two. But now that you’re here? I cannot imagine our lives without you in it.

Lucy splishing and splashing.

You are just pure light and joy and laughter and sunshine. You probably helped me through this past year more than anything else. You showed me that I can handle pretty much anything.

One year old seems pretty young, but in so many ways, you’re already becoming a big girl. For one thing, you can communicate like crazy. You point at whatever you want and say, “Dat?”

When I get you from your crib in the morning, you point at the door and say, “Ba?” I know that means you want to go downstairs and have a bottle.

You call your sister, “Tay-tee.” She loves that. She loves YOU, even though she’s already getting cranky about having to share her toys with you.

Day 1: morning. TGIF, y'all. #photoadayjune

You know your grandfather is Pop-Pop (although you say it more like Bop-Bop). You call your Mimi, “Meemuh.” You even know the cat’s name – every morning, you say, “Hi, Buh-muh” to Beaumont.

You sometimes call me Mama, but it’s rare. It’s ok, though, because I know when you want me.

Right now, Pop-Pop is your favorite person in the world. When I take you to their house, you lunge out of my arms toward him. He spoils you rotten, he carries you around all the time; he knows you’ll fuss if he sets you down, so he just doesn’t. He lets you nap on him and insists he can’t possibly put you down in the Pack & Play to sleep.

Wearing Mardi Gras beads & Pop-Pop's MS State hat. And no pants. As you do.

You cry when he carries you out to my car because you know that means it’s time to leave Mimi and Pop-Pop’s house.

You’re sooooo close to walking, but you can get where you need to go by crawling at top speed for now. I’m reasonably certain you’re going to figure it out sometime in the next month.

Lucy & Beaumont are workout buddies. (It was unplugged, I promise.)

You are just so delightful. I cannot believe in the past year, you’ve gone from being this wide-eyed tiny newborn…

Lucy late at night

…to this sweet baby girl with a million miles of personality.

HI EVERYBODY I'M ONE TODAY AND I FEEL LIKE YELLING ABOUT IT.

We love you so much, my sweet Lucy-girl, Lulubelle, Little Lulu. Happy first birthday.

Love,
Mama

learn from my mistakes, people

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So, yesterday. Oh man, where do I start?

(Be warned, this is a long story.)

Yesterday started off as a good day. Got the girls off to daycare with no problem, I was able to squeeze in a run during my lunch break, I was really productive with work, etc. All good stuff.

Then it started to go south.

I was supposed to pick Catie up from daycare early to go on a tour of her new kindergarten. She doesn’t start for a couple of months, but she’s been a little anxious about the idea of kindergarten, so I figured that maybe checking the place out would ease some of her worries.

I had a work conference call come up, which I absolutely could not miss, and of course it conflicted with the time of the kindergarten tour.

I called my mom in a panic. She said not to worry, she’d pick Catie up early and they’d go to the local garden center together, to distract her.

(Side note: Catie is currently obsessed with helping my mom with her flower beds. They work in the yard together all the time. It’s completely adorable. Maybe the green thumb gene skips a generation, because lord knows I don’t have it.)

I was stuck working until late, but my parents had both kids and said they’d feed them dinner, so I was fine. (Hooray for grandparents!)

I wrapped up work around 6:30 pm and headed over to their house. As soon as I pulled up in their driveway, I burst out laughing, because this was in my mom’s front flower bed:

The bane of my existence

Without even asking, I knew it meant that Catie saw the lawn flamingo at the garden center and begged my mom for it, and she caved.

I went inside still laughing, and my mom said, “Oh no, that’s Catie’s flamingo. She’s taking it home with her. She wants to put it in your yard.”

Umm, are you kidding me? Have you SEEN my house? I basically live in a pastel blue Easter egg.

See, look:

Apparently the landlord is a big UNC fan. I don’t know.

I mean, I don’t particularly care because it’s a rental and it suits my purposes, but let’s be honest. I live in the eyesore of my neighborhood. And now I’m going to make it even tackier by putting a pink flamingo in the yard? HELL NO.

Then Catie starts in, “But I named him Mango and I LOVE him! He HAS to come home with us!”

I must admit, Mango is kind of an awesome name for a flamingo, even though it makes me think of Chris Kattan.

Yep. Perfect name for a flamingo. You win, Catie.

We compromised and decided that the flamingo could live in the backyard, where it’s kind of woodsy and he wouldn’t offend all of the neighbors.

So, I load up the girls and head home. Lucy was starting to get a little fussy, and my parents had mentioned that she hadn’t eaten much, so I plopped her in her high chair and put a snack on the tray for her.

Then I went into the backyard to set up Mango the Flamingo’s new home.

Catie saw me and said, “Wait, Mommy, I want to come with you!”

She came running behind me, and pulled the back door closed behind her. I didn’t realize it because I always use the deadbolt locks on my doors, but somehow the doorknob lock had gotten turned, so when Catie closed the door? She locked us out of the house.

And Lucy was still inside. So was my cell phone.

Once Catie realized we were locked out, she burst into tears. I told her to calm down and I ran next door. My neighbors weren’t home.

I knew I needed to run, and I knew that a sobbing and hysterical five year-old was only going to slow me down. I told Catie to stay right there in the driveway and not move. I sprinted (like, I have never run that fast in flip-flops in my life) across the street. Those neighbors weren’t home either. Dammit.

So I ran to the house next to them. It’s a very nice older lady who lives there who has tried to sell me Avon stuff a couple of times. I was like, “Uh, hi, I live across the street? And my 5 year-old locked us out of the house? And my baby is inside? CAN I PLEASE USE YOUR PHONE?!!”

She let me in and handed me her phone. I called my parents and sort of shrieked out enough key words that my mom understood. (Something like: “LOCKED OUT LUCY INSIDE NEED EXTRA KEY COME NOW!!”)

I thanked my neighbor profusely and went back to my house. Catie and I sat on the front steps. And thank God my parents live so close by and were able to come quickly, because this was probably the longest five minutes of my life. Catie was crying and saying, “I’m so sorry, Mommy! Poor Lucy!!”

I tried to calm her down by telling her that it was ok, it was an accident, and Lucy was ok, she was safe in her high chair, so she wasn’t going to get hurt, and she’d be ok for a few minutes until Pop-Pop could come unlock the door for us.

Meanwhile I could hear Lucy inside, screaming her head off because she realized pretty quickly that nobody was around. That damn near ripped my heart out.

I felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack during all of this, but I also knew that I had to keep it together. What other choice did I have?

My dad pulled up in the driveway a few minutes later and threw me his keys. I ran to the door and rushed inside to get Lucy. She was so distraught, she wanted absolutely nothing to do with me, she only wanted my dad. (She’s in a very Pop-Pop-obsessed phase right now.)

Unfortunately, my dad had only come to unlock the door and still had to go back home. As soon as he handed Lucy back to me, she started screaming all over again.

He left, and I said, “Ok, you know what? BATHTIME.”

Catie, Lucy, and I headed upstairs, walked into the bathroom, I flicked on a lightswitch… and a fuse blew and all of the upstairs lights went out.

Son of a bitch.

Back down the stairs. I set Lucy down on the playroom floor, which made her SCREAM like I was cutting off an appendage. I told Catie, “Just hug and kiss your sister for just a minute!”

I ran to the garage and flipped the circuit breaker to get the lights back on, then started the whole bathtime process all over again.

Lucy never calmed down during any of this. She basically spent the entire evening looking sort of like some variation of this.

Seriously. It was a bad night.

Finally, I got them bathed, PJed, and back downstairs. Catie scampered off to call Dave on her iPad to tell him all about the evening’s dramatics, while I fixed Howlin’ Baby Lucy a bottle.

She was asleep after about two gulps on the bottle. Poor thing had screamed herself hoarse and was completely exhausted. I didn’t hear a peep from her until 8:30 this morning.

Later, I got Catie to bed, took a Klonopin, and watched the finale of Dancing with the Stars.

Moral of the story?

Get one of those “hide-a-key” things and keep a spare key outside of your house because MY GOD.

I’m going to the hardware store today. Never doing this again.

pre-birthday

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Warning: picture-heavy post ahead…

This past weekend was the only weekend in May that both my sister and brother could come to town, so we decided to have a little “pre-birthday” for Lucy.

She won’t actually be one year old until May 31st, but hey. What does she know about birthdays? She doesn’t care. And besides: CUPCAKES!!

We stripped her down to her diaper and put a sheet on the floor, thinking she’d make a giant mess.

Only, she didn’t. Make a mess, that is.

She was kind of just confused.

Lucy is all, "Um, what the heck is THAT?"

(Side note: The amount of baby chub in these pictures just about kills me dead. Y’all have no idea how often I kiss that belly. Pretty much constantly.)

She gave the frosting a little taste.

First taste of frosting

Then she decided, that eh, she’d had enough, and she wanted to go crawl off and see what other kind of trouble she could get into. Maybe smear some of those cupcake crumbs on her lips onto something valuable. Like her aunt Tracy’s “dry clean only” clothes.

Deciding she'd had enough of the cupcake, thanks anyway. I'll just crawl off & see what's over there.

(I’m starting to realize that she’s totally going to be a redhead, isn’t she? I’m going to have a redhead named Lucy. I DIE FROM THE CUTENESS!!)

Meanwhile, Catie decided she’d “help” Lucy out by opening all of her presents.

"What do you mean all these presents aren't for me??"

BUSTED.

Basically, the entire thing was good practice for ten days from now (10!! OMG!!) when she actually does turn one year old.

My brother and sister left on Sunday. But not before I got this picture, which I think might be my favorite picture of my brother and one of his nieces ever:

Lucy's like, "Uh, who is this guy and why did you hand me over to him?"

I want to write little cartoon thought bubbles next to their heads.
My brother: WTF do I do with this kid??
Lucy: Who is this guy and why did you hand me over to him??

Catie was sad about them leaving, because she adores my siblings. Which is sweet, but it makes it hard when the visits inevitably end.

So my dad and I decided to distract her. We loaded up the girls and took them to the Got To Be NC Festival, which is like a slightly smaller version of the state fair.

(This was my first year actually going to the festival myself. Last year, my cousin took Catie to it while I thought I was going into labor. Spoiler! I wasn’t going into labor. Lucy had to be forcibly evicted. Freaking stubborn children of mine.)

They had pony rides. Catie immediately stopped being sad about my brother and sister leaving.

Catie on a pony ride

(Also, when did she get SO TALL?!!)

Overall it was a really great weekend. Fun with my family, great weather, great food, and homemade cupcakes. Oh, and I’m not 9 months pregnant this year. Yay! Can’t really beat that.

seventh and last

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Today is my last wedding anniversary.

I mean, the last one before my divorce is finalized. It would’ve been seven years today.

It makes me unbelievably sad to think about it. It’s not that I want to stay married to Dave. I don’t. Not anymore, I really don’t.

I guess it just makes me think about the actual wedding day, and how happy we were then, and how full of hope and promise and potential we were.

Poof. Gone.

I’ve been in a bit of a funk about it for the past week or so. Then I decided that I’d had enough of my stupid moping, and I was going to do something drastic to cheer myself up when the day finally rolled around.

So I texted my hairdresser and asked her if she was working today and had any openings. She did. (Have I mentioned that I love my hairdresser? I do. And I also love her teenage daughter who babysits.)

I decided that maybe a lighter hair color would lead to a lighter mood.

Keep in mind that I haven’t colored my hair in over 10 years. This was a very, very big deal for me to decide to do this.

Before:


(Ignore the frizz, I had just worked out & showered, so my fly-aways were out of control.)

…

…

During… And let me just say, that I don’t think there has ever been a sexier photo taken of me, ever:

Yeeeeeah, baby. You know that’s hawt stuff right there.

…

…

Aaaaaand, after:

I have to say, I really love it. The highlights are subtle, but they blend in my grays, and it’s enough of a change that it feels like a really big deal to me.

Overall, not such a bad way to spend my last anniversary. It was a nice distraction and has kept me from moping all day, so I suppose in that sense, it was a total success.