Author Archives: Cindy

spring-esque weekend

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We had a freakishly nice weather weekend that felt more like springtime than February (highs in the 70s! W00t!), so we decided to make the most of it.

I left work a little early on Friday so I could take Catie to the playground after I picked her up. We had a blast.

Climbing

Catie on the swing

On Saturday, all three of us headed out to a local park and had a picnic lunch. (Note: I don’t pack picnics. We stopped at Subway and picked up some sandwiches there, and took our food and drinks with us from there. This is the Slacker’s Approach to Picnicking 101. You’re welcome.)

There was a big lake at the park with a small beach area, so we sat on a blanket and relaxed. Dave and I got some nice time to talk, and we laughed ourselves silly watching Catie chase after the geese. I don’t know why she thought charging toward the geese and yelling, “Come here, boy!” would make the geese actually come to her, but she seemed genuinely surprised when they flapped away.

After that, we did another playground trip, which was ridiculously packed, and I realized that we really need to work on the whole “don’t talk to strangers” thing with Catie because she will literally talk to any adult that crosses her path. I’m not exactly sure how to teach her about that without scaring her, though, so if anyone has any ideas, feel free to pitch them my way.

Yesterday, I went on a crazy nesting frenzy and cleaned out a whole bunch of stuff to take to Goodwill. One of our old neighbors called and asked if Catie could come play, so I dropped her off there and ran some errands (including the Goodwill drop-off) by myself. It was really nice to do all that stuff on my own.

Today, Catie is at daycare, and we have the day off. I had an OB appointment this morning (everything’s fine in Baby 2.0-ville) and now Dave and I are planning to just drive around aimlessly and enjoy the sunshine. Sounds nice to me.

where did I go?

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I saw a therapist for the first time today. Well, not the first time ever, I did some therapy years ago, but this was my first session with this particular therapist. There are a lot of reasons behind this, most of which I don’t really want to get into on the blog, because I’m really just not the “bare your soul online” type of blogger.

(NOTE: I have absolutely nothing against the “bare your soul” bloggers. I read the hell out of their sites and I fully appreciate what they do. That’s just not me. This blog is totally not anonymous at all, and there are some things I prefer to keep private.)

At some point during this session, she asked me what I do for “me time,” to unwind and recharge. And I was stumped.

So she rephrased it, “Well, what kinds of things do you enjoy, that you’d like to do more of?”

Ummm.

Huh.

I have no idea.

It reminded me of something that Dave said once, which was basically that while I’m a great mom, I never stop being a mom.

I guess I never really thought about it that way before. Apparently at some point in the last four years, I’ve become so entrenched in Mommy Mode that I seem to have lost… me.

Basically, this is my life:
* Mornings: Get up, get dressed, get Catie dressed, get her off to daycare and myself to work.
* Daytime: work. (And I’m NOT complaining, because I do really love my job.)
* Evenings: get us all fed, do the bedtime ritual and allow Catie to stall about going to sleep for literally hours because I feel guilty for not seeing her all day. Then when she finally falls asleep, sometimes I stay up long enough to watch a TV show or talk to my mom on the phone, and other times I just crash for the night.
* Weekends: Dave and I clean the house, do the grocery shopping, and try to get us prepared for the week ahead. And squeeze in some type of fun outing for Catie if we can find the time.

That’s not to say I never have fun or that I’m depressed, because I do have fun and I don’t really feel depressed at all. (Well, I did after the therapy session, but I’m talking in general.) Four year-olds are freaking hilarious and I absolutely love that I get to hang out with this amazing little person and watch her as she develops. The vast majority of the time, I think being a mom is awesome. Of course, she has her tantrums and her moments of testing boundaries, and I get exasperated and cranky, just like all moms do.

For the most part, though, I consider myself to be relatively happy. I have a great job, a beautiful house, I love my kid, I have another (apparently healthy, knock on wood) baby on the way, I’m married to a really great guy, my whole family is awesome. What’s to complain about?

But there’s something missing here. The fact is, I don’t really ever take time for myself to just do my own thing. Sure, I might tell Dave to keep Catie downstairs for 20 minutes so I can take a shower in silence. Or I might go to the grocery store alone. But that’s it, really.

Just about everyone I know has a hobby, some sort of outlet. Dave goes hiking. My mom loves to sew. My dad plays golf. How come it took a paid professional for me to notice that I basically failed to develop any outside interests of my own? Is this whole “I don’t have any sense of self” issue something that all moms of young children experience? I’m guessing that surely my experience is not unique here.

But the bigger question is looming: how do I fix it when I don’t have a clue what types of things I would like to do, given the opportunity?

How do you find yourself, when you didn’t even know you were lost?

excuse me while I whine

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You know what’s really, really no fun at all? Being sick when you’re pregnant.

The totally unfair part is that I was already sick back in December, and it took two rounds of antibiotics and a course of Prednisone to kill it off. I’m supposed to be done now, right? Isn’t my body supposed to ease up on my poor little gestating self?

Yeah, no, apparently not. So I’m miserable. I spent all day Saturday in bed, watching really awful movies on cable. Catie hung out with me in bed and played with Dave’s iPad so I wouldn’t be lonely.

Playing with Daddy's iPad

It was nice to have the company.

Yesterday, I was feeling slightly better, so I went to Target and folded some laundry – nothing super-exhausting, but you know, STUFF. Some basic life tasks that needed to be done. To give me some kid-free relaxation time, Dave took Catie to the park for a few hours and they had a great time (or at least, they did until some stupid thug tween boys hit her in the head with a basketball and I swear if I’d been there I probably would’ve lost it).

And then, even though I had been feeling better, I coughed all last night and woke up worse than ever. I have no voice left, it hurts to talk. And I’m trying to keep myself in that delicate zone of “medicated just enough to be pregnancy-safe, but also enough that I don’t cough constantly and annoy my co-workers.” It’s a tough balancing act, let me tell you.

I’m so ready for winter to be over. I’m also ready to not be pregnant anymore so I can enjoy some damn DayQuil again.

/end whinypants-ness

Whining Smackdown

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Last night, Catie and I went to the grocery store, figuring that it would be a ghost town during the SuperBowl. (I don’t care about football or sports at all. Sorry, I’ve tried, I just can’t make myself muster up an interest.) Apparently a lot of other people had the same idea, so it wasn’t quite as deserted as I’d hoped, but whatever. Time to shop!

Catie asked if we could get the cart that has that stupid plastic car attached to the front, and I said ok, even though it’s like steering a freaking bus down the aisles. She was really good in the store, she would hop out of the car to get things off the shelf for me (“Hey, don’tcha need spinach, Mommy? Can I get some? What else is on the list? I’ll get it, I’m a good helper!”), and she wasn’t bugging me to buy her toys or junk food. When you’re shopping with a four year-old, that’s about as much as you can ask for.

And really, it was about a 10,000% improvement compared to how she acted when we’d gone to the mall the day before. Which I will always remember as the tantrum that was so epic that an on-duty police officer came over to us to ask if we were ok. Seriously. That actually happened.

Love that face.
Who, me? Act naughty in a public place? Surely you jest! Why, don’t I look angelic?

We passed a mom that was shopping with her two girls – I’m guessing they were 5 or 6 years old, and they were obviously twins. They took one look at our cart and started in on their mother, “Mooo-ooom! That little girl got a car cart! How come WE didn’t get a car cart?? That’s not fair!!” I smiled sympathetically at the mom, and kept walking.

Later, when we were in the bakery section, Catie mentioned she was hungry, and asked if she could have a cookie. We were at Kroger, and they usually have a box of cookies out in the bakery for the little kids to have one. I tend not to get too uptight about the occasional treat, and since Catie was being so well-behaved, I said sure, and grabbed a cookie for her.

As luck would have it, we passed the mom with her twin girls again. They started up again, “Mooo-ooom! That little girl has a cookie! How come WE didn’t get a cookie?? We want a cookie! No fair! COOKIE COOKIE COOKIE!!!” They were like twin Veruca Salts with the whining. I kind of felt sorry for the mom, but I noticed that she didn’t respond to the kids at all when they whined, so I wondered if she hears it so much that she just tunes it out. I don’t think I could tune it out. There’s a certain pitch that little girls can hit with their voices that makes me feel like my head is going to explode. Catie has only tried it on me a few times, and it’s gotten her nowhere (the only reaction she gets from me is, “Try saying that again politely, and maybe I’ll answer you.”), so she seems to have given up on it.

Of course we passed each other two or three more times (why, God, why?), and they repeated their complaint about Cookie Injustice every time. By the last time we passed them, we were on our way to the checkout, and Catie had long since finished the damn cookie. That didn’t stop them. “That’s the little girl that had the cookie! We want a cookie too!” And so on.

Now, I generally have a rule about interfering with other people’s children. And the rule is: I don’t. I wouldn’t appreciate it if someone did it to me, so I don’t do it to anyone else. But I felt so bad for this mom, she seemed so worn out by these kids and their non-stop whining, and… well, I couldn’t resist.

So I turned to the girls and interrupted their little complaint-fest. I said, “You know why she got a cookie? Because she was really good the whole time we were in the store, and she never whined once.”

Both girls snapped their mouths shut. The mom said to them, “You see? THAT’S what it takes if you want a cookie!”

I hope the mom wasn’t offended (and I’m guessing by her reaction and the smile she gave me that she wasn’t). But I figure I bought her at least 30 seconds of shocked silence from her kids, so I’ll call that a win.

It does make me a little nervous about having two girls, though. If they both crank up the whining on me at the same time, I don’t know how I’ll react. Maybe my head really will explode. Who knows.

the big sister transition

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Catie’s been talking a lot about becoming a big sister lately. I’ve been trying not to talk about the new baby constantly, so I tend to wait for her to bring it up. Which she does, often.

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Example 1:
A couple of weeks ago, she cleaned out her toy box and filled up a huge bag with toys that she doesn’t play with anymore. She says, “These are baby toys. We can give them to Baby Sister.” We put the bag in what will be the baby’s room. I kept thinking she’d go back and decide that she needed something from that bag of toys, but so far? She hasn’t even mentioned it once.

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Example 2:
She decided that we needed to set up the baby crib, like, right at that moment. (Which is funny because I was the exact same way when I was pregnant with her.) I told her no, we have plenty of time to do that. She started to cry, “But my baby sister needs a beeeeed!!” So, as a compromise, we set up the Pack & Play together (which takes like 10 seconds, tops). Catie put a bunch of the baby toys in the Pack & Play, so it’ll be all ready for her.

And I have to admit, it sort of threw me for a loop to see that Pack & Play again. I had a major, “OMG this really is happening all over again, isn’t it?” moment.

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Example 3:
Last night, Catie and I lay in her bed together snuggling after we read a book.

Catie: Hey, Mommy? How is Baby Sister gonna get out of your tummy? What if she gets lost?
Me: *trying to dodge the question and be vague – saying stuff like, oh, babies know how to get out, it’ll be fine.*
Catie: I think the baby comes up out of your mouth just like the barf does.
Me: Well, no, sweetie. The baby will come out of my noonie. That’s how all babies come out.**
Catie: *shocked & laughing* YOUR NOONIE???
Me: Yep.
Catie: Hey! That’s just like in Milo & Otis!
Me: Um… Yeah, I guess?

(Side note: I had no idea what she was talking about for a minute, but then I remembered that toward the end of the movie, Otis and his “wife”(?) have a litter of puppies, and they showed the female dog giving birth to them. So… Yeah, ok, I guess it is sort of like that?)

** I know it’s not how ALL babies come out, but it was late at night and the thought of trying to explain a C-section to a 4 year-old was too much for me.

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Example 4:
Two nights ago, while we were snuggling in bed…

Catie: I love you, Mommy.
Me: I love you too, Catie bug.
Catie: *pats my tummy* You too, Baby Sister.

And then I died from the sweetness.

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Honestly, the main reason for this blog entry? I wanted to make sure I had a few of these little moments written down, so I can reference them someday when all she does is complain about how her little sister drives her crazy.

on being "outed" as pregnant

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When I started this job back in November, I was close to 10 weeks pregnant. I didn’t say anything about it at the time, because it was my first trimester and I didn’t want to alter anyone’s perception of me as an employee.

The problem is, they hired me as a temp-to-perm employee – meaning they wanted to give me a trial run for a month or two to make sure that I could actually write before they put me on their payroll for real. Which is fine, I’m confident in my abilities as a technical writer and I don’t mind proving myself. I figured that I’d probably be transitioning over to a full-time employee around the time I was comfortable with announcing my pregnancy, so no big deal.

But then, a whole bunch of stuff happened in between (like the holidays, and other people’s vacation schedules, and one manager in particular who had absolutely nothing against me personally, but wasn’t convinced that I was right for the job because I’m “just a writer” and not a software engineer… which, um, yeah, but the job title is technical writer, dude). So, they decided to extend my contract trial run until the end of January. This is around the point where I started to get nervous because I still hadn’t told anyone that I was pregnant.

(Well, ok, let’s amend that – Dave’s manager knows, because Dave had to explain why he was leaving work in the middle of the day, when he was meeting up with me for an ultrasound appointment. Apparently his manager had no idea and just thought I was chubby. I don’t know if he’s told anyone else in the office, but I’m thinking that people must be starting to figure it out, because good grief, y’all, my expansion rate is out of control.)

Fast-forward to the past week or so: everyone is back from vacation, and I’ve apparently won over the one guy who had doubts about me, so yesterday my manager made me an offer to become a permanent employee, and I accepted. And don’t get me wrong, this is great. I love this company, my co-workers are great, I really enjoy the work that I’m doing, and the offer is for a higher pay rate than I thought I’d get. It’s all great news.

But my manager? Is based out of the Colorado office. Which means he’s never met me in person and has no idea what I look like. So… I still haven’t told him that I’m pregnant. And for those of you keeping track, I’m now 23 weeks along. Hmm.

The thing is, as a contractor, they have no obligation to me whatsoever. So even though, yes, it’s technically illegal to discriminate against me for being pregnant, they could easily say, “Well, your contract is over, thanks for your time!” and let me go with no explanation at all. And I doubt that they would do that – my manager is a really good guy, and he has kids himself, so I’m sure he’d be sympathetic. But I just didn’t want to look like I was walking in the door going, “Hey, thanks for the job and by the way, I’m gonna need some paid maternity leave in a few months…”

Also, this is terrible, but there is this stereotype of working mothers being a bit flaky. Like I’m going to collect my paid maternity leave, and then suddenly say, “Oops, sorry, I can’t possibly go back to work, I need to stay home with my new baby, thanks anyway.” I know that women who have done that probably have very valid reasons for doing so, but… well, let’s face it, they haven’t exactly done the rest of us any favors. Employers are understandably a little gun-shy about hiring someone who might quit suddenly without notice.

But this is not my first time at this particular rodeo, and I know I’m going back to work. I mean, (a) we need the money, and (b) I need to maintain my sanity. It might sound awful, but I know I’m a better mom when I get a break from being in Mommy Mode and I get to use my brain for a while. I did the stay-at-home mom thing with Catie, and while I have no regrets about it, I didn’t particularly enjoy it either, and I know that I don’t want to do it again.

So, the upshot is that I’m planning to wait until all the paperwork with Human Resources is signed, sealed, and delivered, before I tell my manager about this pregnancy. I just hope it doesn’t take too long for the paperwork to process, because I am getting awfully nervous about postponing it as long as I have.

Birthday Party Recap

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Catie’s birthday party on Saturday was so much fun. The downside of Catie having a January birthday means that backyard parties aren’t really an option, and I don’t particularly want a whole slew of kids running around my house. So, if she wants a party, we basically have to host it elsewhere.

We had the party at a local place called Hopper’s House, which turned out to be one of the cheaper options as far as an indoor place with bounce houses and lots of other kiddie entertainment. Catie’s been there several times before and loves playing there, and I knew it would be a hit with the three and four year-old crowd. We had a smaller turnout than I had expected, around 10 kids, but it turned out to be perfect. (And trust me, ten kids? Make PLENTY of noise on their own.)

Elizabeth & Catie

Plus we had two of Catie’s favorite people there, my brother Chris and my sister Tracy (plus my sister’s boyfriend Everett). So that made it even better.

Tracy, Chris, Dave & Everett

Catie had requested a unicorn birthday cake, but I couldn’t find any stores that do custom artwork on cakes, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to attempt it on my own. So, thanks to a suggestion from the lovely Danielle, we got a unicorn cake topper from Birthday Express. It was perfect.

Unicorn cake!

Except for the part where the unicorn sank into the cake like quicksand and then fell over, but eh, whatever, it was fine. The birthday girl herself didn’t mind at all, it was exactly what she wanted. As evidenced here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzT9rJP4InU
(Video bonus: you can see my pregnant self for like 0.5 seconds. Lovely.)

She was a very happy birthday girl.

One odd thing about birthday parties, and I don’t know if this is a local thing, or if it’s a new tradition everywhere, but it seems like kids don’t open their gifts at the party, they open them later at home? Now, I can think of a few reasons that would motivate this:
1.) You can’t rely on a four year-old to graciously receive a gift.
2.) Because the birthday boy/girl might be sad about the party ending, so hey, guess what? Now we get to go home and open presents! Yay!
3.) So other kids don’t feel left out. (Which is kind of lame, because, well, that’s part of life, you know? It isn’t always about you. Sometimes you’re the guest of honor, sometimes you’re the guest.)
4.) It’s a whole lot easier on the parents to keep track of who gave what for thank-you notes when it isn’t a gift-opening free-for-all.

While I don’t necessarily approve of this tradition, I can certainly see the motivation. So, since every other birthday party we’ve been to for the past year has done things this way, this is how we did it too. We opened presents at home, and I have to say, it does make things a lot easier. And I can ensure that all the kids who were there will get appropriately personalized thank-you notes this week.

Opening presents

birthdays are fun!

It took Catie a long time to settle down after her party, but when she crashed, she crashed.

Zonked out on the air mattress.

Catie spent almost the entire day on Sunday playing with her cousins, which was a great distraction to keep her from being sad about our houseguests leaving. And when we got home, she got to have leftover party pizza and cake for dinner. Can’t beat that.

All in all, it was a really great birthday weekend.