Author Archives: Cindy

Thanksgiving Wrap-Up

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So… Thanksgiving happened. Here’s the mad-dash recap.

* Thursday – Went to my cousin’s house and had a lovely Thanksgiving meal with her family. Catie had a blast getting to play with her cousins all day, and we left feeling full, tired, and happy. I’d call that a win.

* Friday – Bummed that since we did Thanksgiving at someone else’s house, we’d have no leftovers of our own, I roasted a chicken and made some Thanksgiving-y side dishes, and we had our own little mini-Thanksgiving, just the three of us. It was fun, even though I had a really awful headache most of the day. (I have an OB appointment this afternoon, and I WILL be asking for a prescription for something I can safely take while pregnant, because there are some things that Tylenol can’t even begin to handle.)

Also on Friday: Catie and I put up our Christmas tree. I never thought I’d be one of those people who puts up their tree the day after Thanksgiving, but apparently this is what motherhood has done to me. We even listened to Christmas music the whole time! And I don’t even like most Christmas music, I just thought it’d be fun for Catie. What has happened to me?

(I didn’t put up the outside lights yet, just the tree. I might make Dave do that part.)

We also tried to take pictures for our Christmas card, with… mixed results.

big mug for the camera
I think that CHEESE was a little bit too hard, baby girl.

Frog Jump #1
Frog jump. Alternate title: Holy crap, look at ALL THAT HAIR.

(We actually do have some great pictures for our Christmas card, but you’ll have to wait to see those until the cards are shipped out.)

* Saturday – Catie cleaned up all of her toys all by herself (usually I have to help her), and by doing so, she filled the last square in her reward chart, which meant that I owed her a prize. Her request? She wanted a toy Rudolph and Clarice (Rudolph’s girlfriend from the movie). We have a Rudolph & Clarice Christmas ornament, but it’s a cheap piece of junk and the legs keep breaking off, so that wasn’t going to cut it. My sister insisted that she saw Rudolph and Clarice plush dolls at some drug store – she couldn’t remember which, but she thought it was CVS – so, we set off to hunt them down. Five drug stores and a trip to Wal-Mart later, we had a Rudolph, but no Clarice. Catie wasn’t happy because Rudolph would be sad without his girlfriend, but we found Rudolph another friend (a tiny plush cat wearing reindeer antlers that I found for $2 at Walgreen’s), so that worked as a consolation prize.

Besides, I hear that Santa may have found a lead on Rudolph and Clarice plush dolls on eBay, so no worries there.

* Sunday – I worked on my Epic De-Clutter Operation. My big Christmas gift to myself is that I’ve hired a housekeeper to come clean our house, and I am so excited I could cry. (She’s coming on Tuesday – TOMORROW. It also just so happens that my mother-in-law arrives on Thursday, and then my entire family will be here for Christmas, so it’ll be a huge relief to have a clean house before the family visits begin!) But before the housekeeper and her crew get to my house, I needed to get all of our junk out of the way, so they can actually… you know, clean.

The de-cluttering wasn’t too bad. Some rooms (like the kitchen) took longer than I expected, and some rooms (like our bedroom) took almost no time at all. I don’t know if I have adequate words for how happy it makes me to have someone other than myself clean the bathrooms and vacuum the stairs. But, OMG I AM SO EXCITED, I CANNOT WAIT.

On Sunday afternoon, Catie and I went to see Tangled. I thought it was a very sweet and clever take on the whole Rapunzel story, and I like that both Rapunzel and the guy/love interest actually have personalities. (Disney’s been getting better about that with their more recent movies; not so much in the really old princess tales.)

So, yeah, Tangled was cute. Catie liked it, but some of it scared her a little, which is unusual since she’s typically impervious to that stuff. (Case in point: she recently asked to watch Scooby-Doo before bedtime, and I said no because I didn’t want her to have nightmares. She gave me this exasperated sigh and said, “Mommy! It’s just pretend!”) So when she climbed into my lap during the movie and tried to hide her face in my shoulder, I whispered in her ear, “Remember, it’s all just pretend.” And it worked, she turned back around to face the screen and she seemed to enjoy the movie a lot.

Overall: it was a great holiday weekend. And I already can’t wait until Christmas.

two gross-ish tales

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Here are two of those “TMI Mommyblogger” stories that Catie will probably hate me for when she’s a teenager.

1.) Catie’s been fully potty-trained since early this year. She’s had zero accidents for… I don’t know, at least six months, I guess? It’s been so long that I’ve stopped bringing extra clothes with me everywhere I take her, because she’s so reliable about always using the potty.

But in the past week, she’s wet the bed not once, but twice. I know she’s stressed out because of my new job and my pregnancy and all of that, but I guess I kind of expected this to start after the baby got here, not before. True, both of those accidents happened on nights when she didn’t go to the bathroom before bedtime, but she’s done that dozens of times in the past and never had accidents, so… ? I don’t get it.

The thing is, if I have to get up at 6:30 a.m. to get ready for work, I do not have the energy for these middle-of-the-night sheet changes. So I’m implementing a new rule: if she doesn’t pee before bed, she’s going to have to wear a Pull-Up. (And no, just sitting on the potty and telling me that she can’t go doesn’t count.) I have a feeling this might be enough to snap her out of this phase, since she’s very entrenched in that “only babies wear diapers” mindset. Or at least it might convince her to just go ahead and pee before bedtime already. Sheesh.

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2.) Last night, when it was time to head upstairs for bed, she wanted to bring her stuffed reindeer with her to bed. Fine with me. But suddenly, she threw her reindeer on the ground and burst into tears, saying, “I don’t want my reindeer, he’s got white dirt on him!!”

I picked up the toy to check out what this “white dirt” was all about… and pulled two HUGE boogers off of her reindeer.

Me: Oh, eww. Catie, did you pick your nose and wipe it on the reindeer?

C: No.

Me: Then whose boogers are these?

C: Um… I think they’re Daddy’s?

Nice way to throw your father under the bus, kid. We went to tell Dave goodnight, and I repeated the story to him.

Dave: Catie, I did NOT put boogers on your reindeer!
[Aside: y’all should hear how Dave pronounces the word “boogers” with his British accent. It’s completely adorable and hilarious.]
[Aside #2: File THAT quote – “I didn’t put boogers on your reindeer” – with the other million sentences you never thought you’d say until you had a kid.]

C: *giggles because she knows she’s busted*

Me: So, whose boogers were they?

C: Fairy boogers! *falls over laughing*

If that’s true, Tinkerbell really needs to get herself to an ear-nose-and-throat specialist, fast. Yuck.

P.S. I think calling something “fairy boogers” is going to be my new kid-safe way of saying that something is bullshit. It sounds so much more G-rated that way.

differences and similarities

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Common wisdom states that all pregnancies are different, and I knew that going into this one, but it took a while for the reality to set in.

For one thing, the nausea during the first trimester? SO MUCH WORSE this time than it was with Catie. Of course, I didn’t really get sick until my 3rd trimester during my first pregnancy. This one has more of the “traditional pregnancy” (?) feel, since right around the 6 week point, I was absolutely flattened by the nausea. Because of my gastric bypass surgery, I can’t throw up, but so many times, I wished I could. (A nurse at my OB’s office told me to be thankful because most women say they don’t feel any better even after they barf. Uh, good to know?) I spent a lot of time with that horrible metallic “about to barf” taste in my mouth, without actually being able to do anything about it. It was pretty awful.

What’s funny is that I absolutely hated keeping my misery to myself, I wanted to whine about it. And I kept thinking, oh man, just a few more weeks and then I can moan about how miserable I am on my blog. Only now that I’ve ‘fessed up to being pregnant, I’m right around the 13-week point, and most of the horribleness is over. I get an occasional nausea flare-up, but it’s pretty rare. The heartburn is no fun, but, eh, it’s manageable. That’s why God invented Tums, right?

One thing that I didn’t expect? That my cravings this time are totally different than they were with Catie. The main things I remember craving with Catie were peanut butter and tomatoes. (Um, not at the same time. Ew.) But with this kiddo, I suddenly want:
1.) Coffee. Which is weird because I normally hate coffee. I’m not a fan of hot beverages in general, I’m a Diet Coke addict. I’m not sure if it’s the power of suggestion (the office smells like coffee because everyone here drinks it all day), or if I want a hot drink because the office is cold and I’m trying to warm myself up. But my normal “hot beverage of choice” would be green tea, and I don’t want that. I just want COFFEE. Weird.
2.) Citrus fruits. Specifically, mango and pineapple. Which I’ve always liked, but now it’s like, neeeeed. (Maybe my body needs the vitamin C?)
3.) Fried eggs. When I ate eggs while I was pregnant with Catie, they had to be either scrambled or hard-boiled, because if I saw even a hint of a runny yolk, I’d get sick. Now I want my eggs over easy, and the runnier, the better.

There are other occasional food cravings that pop up. Like last week when I decided that I needed a baked potato more than I’ve ever needed anything in my entire life. So I decided to cook steak, just so I’d have a vehicle to serve baked potatoes. And I mean, I went all-out with it: I bought sour cream, chives, and shredded cheese to put on top. The works. And when I finally ate it? I made so many happy noises that Dave was like, “Uh, do you and your potato need some privacy?” It was borderline obscene. And you know… Don’t get me wrong, I like a good starchy carb as much as the next girl, but that was weird. I don’t think I’ve ever had that kind of reaction to a potato in my life.

But to be fair, there’s a pretty long list of things with this pregnancy that are the same as last time:
1.) Exhaustion.
2.) Crazy dreams.
3.) Stretch marks (yes, already).
4.) All the tiny new-growth hairs that are sprouting up all over my head and driving me crazy. (Last time, I decided to tackle that issue by getting bangs. Which I liked at the time, and now I look back and wonder what the hell those hormones did to my brain. The “before” picture is so much better than the “after.” Yeesh. So let’s all say a prayer that I maintain enough of my sanity this time to not do anything too drastic to my hair.)
5.) Acne.
6.) Itchy dry skin.
7.) Complete and total loss of my attention span.

Wait… What was I talking about?

Oh right. I guess that overall, there are probably more similarities between my two pregnancies than there are differences. At least so far. I just have to wait and see if that stays true over the coming months.

Pregnancy Low-Down

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Two major topics I didn’t mention in yesterday’s post:

* Despite the fact that we waited for what feels like AGES for this baby, the timing with my new job could be better. For those of you keeping track, I applied for this job back in August (before I got pregnant), and I found out that I was pregnant sometime around my third interview. Then they waited another five weeks to actually hire me. So I started working here when I was already 10 weeks pregnant. And I’ve been praying that nobody would figure it out right away, and that they’d think I’m chubby with an unfortunate way of carrying my extra weight around my mid-section. But I’m already mostly in maternity clothes, so I think it’s going to be really obvious very soon.

(This is the burden of having a short torso. Nowhere to expand except outward.)

I mean, I just didn’t want to walk in here on Day One and be like, “Hey, thanks for the job and all, but BTW I’m gonna need some maternity leave in a few months.” It seemed… tacky. I wanted to establish myself as a valuable employee first. So, I’m working on trying to figure out a graceful way to handle that one. Obviously, this is not my first time at this particular rodeo, so it’s not like I’m going to be quitting when the baby arrives. I know that I still want to (need to) work, so I just need to make sure I explain that very clearly to my manager when I tell him.

(Oh, that’s the other weird part. My manager is based in the Colorado office, so he has no idea what I look like. I could theoretically wait until a week before my due date to say anything. I mean, I won’t do that, because that would be horrible. But I probably could get away with it.)

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* Catie is pretty aware of what’s going on now. We’ve talked about how she’s going to be a big sister “someday,” since it’s hard to explain timelines to an almost-4 year-old. I tried telling her it’ll be next summer, but I don’t know if she understands that or not.

I showed her the ultrasound pictures from yesterday and explained that it was her baby sister and that the doctor took a picture of her in my tummy (she found her own ultrasound pics once and I explained to her that it was a picture of her before she was born, so she’s familiar with that). I told her that it’s going to be a long time before the baby is here, and my tummy is going to get reeeeeally big in the meantime. She said, “Wow, I’m so excited to see a picture of my baby sister! [3-second pause] Mommy, can I play with Daddy’s iPad?” So… yeah. I’m not sure how much she really understands about this whole thing.

But she IS excited to help me decorate the spare room. So there’s that.

Oh, also? Now I really, really, REALLY want my parents to hurry up and sell their house to move up here. I’m going to need their help more than ever, no doubt. Anybody need to buy a 4-bedroom/2-bath house in Ridgeland, Mississippi? Anyone?

Knocked Up

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So, sometime in late September, there was this.

And then today, there was this.

It looks like we’re having baby #2 sometime on or around May 31st, 2011. I’m a little over 12 weeks along. And based on the ultrasound today, the doctor said there’s about a 95% chance that we’re having another girl.

If you know how long Dave and I were trying to get pregnant (OVER. A. YEAR.), you know that obviously we’re both beyond thrilled. And we’re super-excited about having two girls, too.

It’s funny, after how horrible my first pregnancy was, I couldn’t imagine being excited about doing it all over again. And it’s true, I’m still not the glowing “Earth Mother” type. I’m much more likely to whine about heartburn or moan about how my clothes all suddenly stopped fitting about 5 minutes after I got a positive pregnancy test.

But at the same time? I’m so psyched. I absolutely cannot wait to meet this tiny person. If she is anything like her big sister, we are in gonna be in for SO MUCH FUN.

YAY FOR BABIES!! (And more on the nitty-gritty pregnancy details later!)

Random Odds & Ends

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Catie’s latest obsession is Scooby-Doo. One would think that the excessive amount of monsters, ghosts, etc., would be too much for your average 3 year-old, but apparently that’s not the case for her. I’m pretty sure that in the past couple of weeks, I’ve watched more episodes of Scooby-Doo than I ever did in my all of my childhood years combined.

It’s gotten to the point that I was trying to think of toys for Santa Claus to bring Catie, this action figure set was the first thing I thought of for her. Since she’s already working the names Shaggy and Velma into her imaginative play, I have a hunch that she’s going to flip out over it.

Incidentally, that’s about as far as I’ve gotten with my Christmas shopping and planning. Hmm. I should probably work on that, shouldn’t I?

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This weekend I got Catie all dressed up and took her to our town’s community park, which has a gorgeous lake and some really great views, and I tried to get pictures of her for our Christmas card. (It also helps that we’re having the most vibrant fall I think I’ve ever seen, the colors of the leaves are absolutely amazing.) I got some pictures that I thought were really great, played around with some Christmas card layouts, and ran them past my mom and sister to see what they thought. My mom said that she thought Catie was doing a “fake smile” in every picture and that I needed to re-do the whole thing. I think my mom needs to put down the crack pipe if she thinks I’m going to go through that whole process all over again.

(And for the record: I DON’T think she’s fake-smiling in most of the pictures. Sure, she’s not belly-laughing, but she was happy, and the smiles were real. So there.)

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I’m trying to get in the habit of doing all my chores on the weekend so that I don’t have to worry about them during the week, but it’s hard. I know that eventually we’ll find out groove, but in the meantime, OOF. I seem to forget about a lot of things until Sunday afternoon, then there’s this whole panic of trying to get everything done at the last minute. It’s a weird trade-off: my weekends are busy and semi-stressful, but in exchange, it means that my time at home during the week is pretty chilled out and easy. Eh, I guess it works.

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On the topic of weekend chores: One of the things that drives me insane is that Catie leaves her toys all over the family room, strewn everywhere. Now, it’d probably make more sense to just clean up the small mess she’s made each day, but I’m always tired at night and I forget about it at the time. Then by the time the weekend hits, I’m ready to scream from all of the clutter. The problem is, she’s only 3, so when I tell her to clean up her stuff, she just kind of stands there and stares at it. She can’t seem to figure out what to do first. (Actually, Dave has the same problem, so maybe it has nothing to do with her age and everything to do with genetics.) I don’t mind helping her, but I also want her to learn how to clean up her own messes. It’s part of that whole “teaching your kid to be self-sufficient” thing, which I consider to be a big part of my job as a parent.

But, I think I’ve figured out a way to work with her on this. I tell her that we’re going to have a Clean-Up Race. I set the timer on the microwave for five minutes, and we both work on picking up all of her toys. Whoever cleans up the most stuff in 5 minutes (hint: it’s always the kid, never the grown-up) is the winner, and gets a piece of candy. In Catie’s case, that’s a York peppermint patty, which is her favorite treat on earth.

And bonus points: the two times we’ve done this Clean-Up Race, we’ve gotten the entire family room clean before the 5-minute timer beeped. Love that. Chores that can be done quickly and effectively? WIN.

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There’s some other stuff going on with us right now, but this entry is getting way too long, so it’ll have to wait until later this week. (I know, you’re like, DYING of anticipation, aren’t you? Heh.)

Working Me Over

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Conversation last night…

Me: Hey, Catie-bug, who’d you play with at school today?

Catie: Nobody. I didn’t play with anybody.

Me: Really? Not even Isabelle?

C: No. I don’t have any friends at school. You’re my only friend.

Me: I’m your ONLY friend? What about Daddy?

C: No. Just you. I just wanna stay with you all day.
[Side note: Dave was sitting a few feet away when this conversation took place. It got a raised eyebrow and a “gee, thanks a lot!” when informed that he wasn’t her friend.]

Me: What about Tracy? Is Tracy your friend?

C: (pause) Yes.

Me: What about Mimi?

C: (probably realizing that I had her on a slippery slope to admitting that she has more than 1 friend) NO! Not Mimi. Just you and Tracy and that’s all. And I only love you.

Me: Well, sweetie, I love you too, more than just about anything in the world. But I love other people too, you know.

C: You do?

Me: Sure. I love Daddy, and Mimi and Pop-Pop, and Tracy and Chris, and [list of basically our entire family tree]. You can love more than one person, and you can have lots of friends, there’s nothing wrong with that.

C: But I don’t want lots of friends, I just want you.
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That’s around the point where I gave up. I decided I was going to talk to her teacher today to see if Catie’s acting a little reclusive and sad at daycare, or if she’s just saving it all up to work a guilt trip on me at home. I also think that if Catie knows that both her mommy and her teacher are onto her act, that might put an end to it.

Of course, today when I walked her in, we found out that it’s her teacher’s day off, so there was a fill-in daycare teacher instead. So that conversation will have to wait until tomorrow. (But, one plus: the fill-in teacher is someone who Catie knows and absolutely adores, so I know that if she whines about school when she gets home this evening, she’s full of horse puckey.)

But the thing is, yes, Catie whines about getting dressed for school in the morning, and she talks about hating it when we’re home at night. But as soon as we get there every day, she skips down the hall and is happy and excited to see her friends. She barely even takes two seconds to run over and kiss me good-bye. And on Sunday, she cried when I told her that it was the weekend and she COULDN’T go to school. (“But where are my friends???” *sob*sob*)

So what the hell, kiddo? What on earth are we going to do with you?