Author Archives: Cindy

a day at the (kids') salon

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Catie came home from daycare on Monday talking about how her little friend Kiersten got a haircut – which she pronounced like “ahh-cut,” making Dave & I giggle. She kept saying, “Catie needs a ahh-cut, too!” I was a little thrown off that she wanted a haircut, since normally I trim her bangs myself, and she’s never really been a fan of that. But ok, I guess this is part of her “I a big-girl now!” thing, so that’s fine.

I absolutely love her long hair, so I didn’t want to cut it short, but I have to admit, she was right about needing a haircut. I’ve noticed the tangles when I try to comb her hair out after washing it, so yes, she was definitely due for a trim.

Since she was so excited about the idea, I decided to make a big deal about it and go to the special kids’ hair salon, rather than just trimming it myself at home.

playing at the kids' hair salon

(And seriously, Snip-Its was fantastic. Yes, it’s a little pricey for a kids’ haircut, but the stores are set up really well with toys and cartoons and other distractions, and the people who work there have the patience of Job, I’m not kidding.)

playing at the kids' hair salon

It was all very exciting and fun while we were hanging out in the lobby. But when it was her turn for a haircut, Catie changed her mind. Suddenly it didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.

not really enjoying her first salon experience

not really enjoying her first salon experience

Is it horrible that I had a hard time not laughing during all of this? Probably.

As soon as her haircut was over, she was rewarded with her very first-ever lollipop (she chose the butterscotch flavor, which, eww, who likes that kind?), as well as a random prize that they give out to all of their customers. Catie’s prize happened to be a rubber purple dinosaur. They couldn’t have picked out a better prize for my child with her love of all things reptilian.

after the haircut, all is well again

Suddenly, all was well with the world again.

As for the lollipop, I told her to “lick, but don’t bite” it. So she just rubbed it on her tongue.

lollipop time

She did that the entire drive home. And she absolutely loved it.

So, yeah. We survived. And her hair looks pretty darn cute, I must admit.

after the haircut
Although I may trim it myself next time. I’m not sure that I’ll be up for the drama again for quite a while.

tuna noodle casserole

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It seems like whenever I don’t have much else to write about, I default to a recipe. Here’s another one. Let me know what you think of it if you decide to try it.

Tuna Noodle Casserole

Ingredients:
* Chunk light tuna packed in water, 3 cans (drained)
* 1 can of mushrooms (drained)
* 1 can of green peas (drained)
* Cream of mushroom soup, 2 cans
* 1 package of egg noodles
* 1 onion
* Shredded cheddar cheese, 2 cups
* Potato chips

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Make your pasta according to package directions.
2. Chop the onion & sautee (with butter, vegetable oil, or whatever you prefer) until it’s soft & caramelized.
3. In a large mixing bowl, combine: tuna, cream of mushroom soup, mushrooms, peas, sauteed onion, & one cup of the shredded cheese.
4. Put tuna noodle mixture in a 9×13 dish.
5. Put potato chips in a Ziploc bag and crush with the flat side of a meat tenderizer. Mix the remaining 1 cup of cheese with the crushed chips, then spread over the top of your casserole.
6. Bake at 425 degrees until the cheese is brown & bubbly. About 15-20 minutes.

I love this because it’s quick & easy to make, and it makes enough to feed us for at least 3 nights.

Enjoy!

and my lungs still ache

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Note: I promise this isn’t going to become sort of exercise/fitness blog, but it seems like writing about it is one way to keep myself accountable, so here goes.

Today, I was planning to do my couch-to-5K workout again. Since it’s the weekend, I left Catie with Dave rather than hauling her along with me. I thought the gym’s daycare might be fun for her, since she enjoyed it last time, but the nursery is only open in the afternoon on Sundays. So no biggie, I set off for the gym by myself while Catie & Dave snuggled on the couch and watched cartoons.

I got to the gym, and the parking lot was… empty. I walked to the door anyway, and sure enough, there was a little sign stating that the gym doesn’t open until 1 p.m. on Sundays. It was 11:30 a.m. at the time. Sigh. That’s what we get for joining the YMCA, they’re closed on Sunday mornings because they assume everyone is at church. Even more annoying is that I thought ahead enough to look up the nursery hours online that morning, but not the actual gym hours. I’m clearly a genius.

I headed home, and decided since it wasn’t too hot outside (about 80 degrees, a lot cooler than it’s been over the past several weeks), I’d try to do my workout outside instead. Plus, Catie loves to ride in her stroller when I go for walks. So I headed home, loaded her & the jogging stroller up, and we drove over to our local community park. There’s a huge lake there, and the trail around it is exactly 2 miles. That’s about the length that I do during my 30-minute workout (5 minute warm-up, 20 minute walking/jogging intervals, & 5 minute cool-down), so I figured it’d be about the same, right?

Um, NO. Jogging outside as opposed to inside on a treadmill? TOTALLY different animal. Turns out that the added heat, plus the humidity, plus the hills (oh lord, the freaking HILLS) equals a workout that’s about a thousand times harder. I’m sure that pushing the 32-pound toddler in the jogging stroller didn’t help, either. I thought for sure I was going to pass out before we could get back to the car.

I wore Dave’s heart monitor/stopwatch because mine is broken and I wanted to keep track of my jogging and walking intervals. (Not that it did much good, I was only able to jog a full 90 seconds once, the rest of the time I could only do 30- or 60-second intervals.) And I’m pretty sure the heart rate jobby is busted because at one point it said my heart rate was 278. My resting heart rate is around 90. Um, pretty sure I’d be dead in that case, but thanks, stopwatch!

The good news, though, is that because it was so much harder and I wasn’t able to run as much as I was “supposed” to, I figured that it was going to take me a lot longer to go the full two miles. But I finished the course in 32.5 minutes, so it wasn’t much longer than my treadmill workouts at all. I’m pretty proud of myself for that, I guess I was running more than I thought I was.

Of course, now it’s three hours (and one lovely lukewarm shower) later and I still feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. But hey, that’s just proof of how hard I worked, right?

I just happy too

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Today I worked out, keeping up with my couch-to-5K thing, and I took Catie with me to the gym. The daycare at the YMCA is pretty cool; Catie goes to the room for the 18 month-olds to 3 year-olds, and they have different activities for the kids every 30 minutes or so. Music time, puzzle time, etc. There’s a half-hour that they’re scheduled to go outside to the playground, but if the weather is bad, they section off half of the gymnasium, get out a bunch of balls and toddler toys, and let the little ones go nuts.

Today the weather wasn’t so bad, but the playground was swarming with bees (WTF? I don’t know why either), so they kept the kids inside to play in the gymnasium. On the second floor, there’s a track that goes around the perimeter of the gymnasium, and there’s also a little alcove where they have treadmills, stationary bikes and elliptical machines. I worked out on the treadmill (nothing against doing laps, but it’s easier to keep track of my time and pace on the treadmill), so I could look down and see part of the gymnasium below.

It was interesting, contrasting how Catie reacted today compared to the same situation a year ago. I worry a lot about Catie’s tendency toward being overly cautious, and the way that she freaks out in crowds or new situations. Last year, when the kids were in the gymnasium, I jogged laps on the track above, and I kept looking down at her and trying to will her with my mind to get up and play with the other kids. She didn’t. She found a place to sit, hunkered down and stared at the floor. I kept getting angrier that none of the daycare teachers came over to check on her, as she was obviously miserable. She finally broke down in tears, and then one of the teachers finally came over and picked her up. It was awful, I kept fighting my instinct to run down the stairs and go scoop her up, thinking that at some point she’d get used to it and start playing with the other kids. She never did. We both hated it. I didn’t go to the gym for about 6 months after that.

Today, when we first got to the gym, Catie started to throw a tantrum, which I misinterpreted as more of her social anxiety flaring up again. My heart sank at the idea of going through that again. Turned out, it was actually because she really needed to use the potty; as soon as I took her to the bathroom and brought her back to the gym, she was like a different kid. She gave me a kiss and said, “Bye, Mommy!” and took off to play.

From my little vantage point on the 2nd-floor treadmill, I could only see part of the gymnasium below. But every now and then, I’d see a blur of blonde hair go running by, jumping on mats, kicking balls, and actually interacting with the other kids. It was awesome.

On our way out of the gym, I asked her if she had fun. She said, “Yeah, Mommy! No screaming, no crying! I just happy!” No lie, y’all, I almost cried happy tears.

Wordless Wednesday

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Because really, when she sings this? It’s pretty much impossible to stay in a bad mood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Vpmz4BVU8

* I know most of y’all will probably not watch the video because it’s over 3 minutes long, but you should really listen to the last 10 seconds or so, just to hear the way she pronounces “Thumbkin.” Her “Th” sounds like an “F,” and she doesn’t enunciate the M. So it sounds… well, it sounds like something that should be bleeped, let’s put it that way.

upset

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I’m sitting here trying to figure out words for how upset I am, and I can’t really find them. My stomach is in knots and my mind is a blur.

Our house closing is going to get delayed for 2 more weeks. And it’s our fault. For trusting an attorney in the UK who’s apparently either having a nervous breakdown, or about to get fired, or who knows what. But he’s been telling us for weeks that everything with our loan is ready to go, and in reality he’s missing many key items of paperwork. And that paperwork is going to keep us from getting our money in time for our house closing here.

We have a new attorney as of this morning, and he seems competent and he understands that this is a rush for us, but he told me to expect that this will take “a fortnight” (read: 2 weeks; gotta love the Brits). I’m relieved to finally have someone who will be honest and give me a definite ETA, but I hate that it’s going to take so long.

I’m praying that the sellers don’t decide that we’re flakes & decide to walk away with the earnest money we already put down. They have the right to at this point, but I’m hoping they don’t exercise that option.

I had to leave our landlady a message, asking if our house has already been rented, or if we can stay here for another 2 weeks. If we can’t, it means we have to put our stuff in storage, board the cats, and find a temporary place to live.

I feel like I need to get back online and start looking at houses again, just in case the sellers walk. But then I think about losing that house, that beautiful house that I envisioned our lives in, and I want to lie down and cry. And yes, I know it’s just a house and there are millions of them. But I could see us there. It’s the house that I wanted to bring our second baby home to. I could see us being really happy there. The idea of possibly losing that house breaks my heart.

I know it’ll be ok, and that this too shall pass. I normally believe that things will work out the way that they’re supposed to, and that we’ll end up wherever we’re supposed to be. But I’m having a really hard time finding that belief within myself today.

Random Sunday bits

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* Diet/exercise update: I’ve been doing pretty well so far. Trying not to eat at night has been about as difficult as I expected, which is to say, VERY. I’m drinking a lot more water, although I’m probably still drinking too much Diet Coke. One step at a time, people. For me, Diet Coke is more addiction than habit, so that one’s a little tougher.

My sister talked me into trying out The Daily Plate to track my calories, and I guess I should’ve expected to be appalled by the amount of junk I was eating, but it still caught me by surprise. The website has its pros & cons: it doesn’t strike me as the most user-friendly, but on the plus side, it does have pretty much every food item imaginable in the database (even menus at chain restaurants). My main gripe with it, or any type of food journal, is that it’s just tedious to keep a log of every single food item you put in your mouth. (Of course, I also see the benefit, that it makes you think twice about it when you know you’re going to have to see the calories on the screen right in your face later.) I’m still debating on whether or not I’ll use it long-term.

I’ve worked out the last three days in a row. On Friday, I did pilates. Saturday, I did the first couch-to-5K workout (which was hard, but I survived), and then today I did the Biggest Loser Weight-Loss Yoga. Tomorrow it’s back to the couch-to-5K, and so on & so forth.

* We went to Target today and it was insane. We shop there all the time, so I didn’t account for the traffic increase on Sunday afternoon. That’s a mistake I won’t be repeating. But listen, I get that it’s August in North Carolina and it’s insanely hot outside, but y’all: wearing a teeny-tiny swimsuit cover-up and a pair of flip-flops (and nothing else) is not appropriate shopping attire. What happens if you have to bend over to pick up that 12-pack of soda? Lord help us all. And I’m not talking about one person, there were many women that I thought, “oh wow, she really should’ve put on a bra before leaving the house.” I saw lots of kids running around the store barefoot too, which, eww. Yuck. Seriously? Really, really not ok. I think we needed the fashion police up at Target today, is what I’m saying.

* Catie continues to be almost 100% successful at peeing in the potty (she had an accident in her Pull-Up at Target today, but it was her first mistake in 5 days, & she was distracted by the toy aisle, so I’m overlooking it). Still no poops in the potty, but I think she’ll get to it soon. I’ve been shaking her Pull-Ups into the potty so she’ll have the visual “this is where it’s supposed to go” clue. And she’s been acting out scenes in which one of her toys poops its diaper and she tells it, “no no, poop goes in da potty!” (my favorite was when Molly, one of her Thomas the Tank Engine trains, pooped her diaper; I can’t even begin to wrap my head around how that’d work).

* Random kid funny: Last night Beaumont climbed across Catie, trying to get within head-scratching distance of me. Somehow part of his giant cat self ended up on Catie’s foot, which made her irate. She screamed at him, “No, Bun-bun! It’s MY foot! It’s Catie’s!” I can’t explain why that made me laugh for the next 10 minutes, but god, it really did.