A little toddler yoga. (Catie’s request, it’s her new favorite thing.)
At the top of the stairs.
Playing with “Britty’s bear.”
It’s peanut-butter-jelly time!
Want a sneak preview of one of the shirts I bought for BlogHer? Here you go. Catie thought it’d be fun to play dress-up in it.
Contrasting hair colors.
Catie says, “CHEESE!!!”
More about the weekend later; I gotta get to work.
My eye surgery is this afternoon. It occurred to me while I was getting dressed this morning that it was probably not the best day to apply both eyeliner and (non-waterproof) mascara, but it was too late by the time I realized it. I guess I’ll just look like a raccoon later when my eyes water it off.
And I forgot to say it earlier, but thank you to all of you who left kind words when I freaked out about the surgery last week. But I need to clarify, the surgery I’m having is not lasik. I’m still going to need my glasses after this is over. Basically what they’re doing is using a laser to poke a few holes in my iris (shudder), which will ensure that the fluid in my eyes can circulate. (If the fluid can’t continuously circulate, the optic nerve will die, hence the blindness.) You can read all about it here if you like – I started to read it and freaked out and had to close the window. But I think it’s relatively accurate.
Btw, I have no idea if they’re planning to drug me for this procedure or not. I forgot to ask beforehand. So I’m bringing my Klonopin with me, and if they don’t offer me any drugs, I’ll just go ahead and knock myself out, thank you very much.
And I have to say, it’s been a lot of fun having Brittany here this week. She has a great camera (that I totally want to steal) and we got some fantastic pictures of Catie, which I’m going to try to upload soon. As an added bonus, my sister flew in for the weekend last night, so I’ll have both Tracy and Brittany here to take care of Catie while I’m out of commission (and Dave will be, presumably, taking care of his drugged-up wife). Catie is in Happy Toddler Overload, she doesn’t know what to do with all the attention. So no worries on that end.
Oh, one random note: yesterday Catie was in a bad mood and I asked her if she wanted to watch a movie. She walked over to the shelf where all of her DVDs are stored, and pulled out “E.T.” (which I bought before she was born, but the cellophane was still on it because I rarely feel the need to reduce myself to a sobbing mess). I wasn’t sure if it would be too scary for her, so I skipped the beginning and started it at the point where Elliott and E.T. meet for the first time. She loved it. She walked over to the TV to pat Elliott and reassure him that he shouldn’t be scared, because E.T. was his friend. I can’t really say how great it is to see your kids enjoying movies that you loved when you were little, but yeah, it was fantastic.
Or Sallyjo, or “no comment,” or whatever you’re calling yourself today.
I installed a handy little feature that gives me some pretty detailed info about the people who are visiting my site. And I’m sure that the people you work for at the H0spice of S0uthern Illin0is in Belleville probably wouldn’t be too pleased to know that you’re spending so much time reading my blog. But I have their phone number, and if you spew your shit on here again, I’m not afraid to use it. I might not know your real name, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be too difficult for their internal IT department to figure out who you are, since you’re on my site every day.
I’m just sayin’. Watch your ass.
1. It looks like we’ll be staying pretty busy with company for a while. My brother spent Saturday night with us, and shortly after he left on Sunday afternoon, Brittany came to visit. (Which, if you read her blog, you probably know exactly why she came on Sunday instead of on Thursday, which had been her original plan.) On Sunday night, my sister called – she had travel plans for this weekend that fell through, and she was wondering if she could change her plane ticket and come to Raleigh instead. Sure, why not! So we’ll have a continuous stream of visitors for over a week, which is actually kind of cool. Especially since it distracts me from the fact that…
2. Our house closing date is going to get changed. The closing depends on us receiving some funds from the UK (we’re taking out a business loan against a couple of pieces of property that Dave and his mom and brother own together), and we just found out from my mother-in-law today that it’s going to take longer than we thought, due to the fact that we have to wait for lawyers and surveyors and all sorts of legal mumbo-jumbo to finish up. And you know, that’d be fine, if it wasn’t for the fact that we have to be out of this house on July 31st, and if we can’t close by then, we’ll have nowhere to live.
So, we’re asking the sellers if we can rent the new house for the month of August (along with a letter from the bank in the UK promising that the funds are, in fact, on their way… at some point). And I’m crossing my fingers and praying that they say ok and don’t decide to walk.
3. In other real estate news, for the past two days I’ve been trying to help Brittany find an apartment in the Raleigh area. It’s been fun – her arm is all banged up and she’s taking Vicodin for the pain, so she’s been very giggly and stoned through the whole process. I’ve been her designated driver, and I’ve been taking lots of pictures of all of the apartments because I wasn’t sure she would remember anything that we saw. But we’ve found a few apartments that she likes, now we just need to narrow it down and pick one.
4. Today’s date is 07-08-09. Funny.
We had a nice fourth of July here. It’s odd because it isn’t really a date that we typically celebrate that much in our house, since 1/3 of our household comes from the country that sort of made that whole Revolutionary War thing necessary. But Dave’s a good sport about American holidays, and he wasn’t even offended when the neighborhood association stuck an American flag in our yard next to our mailbox. (Why, I don’t know. But it was awfully tempting to buy a Union Jack flag to hang up, just to balance things out.)
Anyway, yesterday morning, Catie and I went to meet up with my cousin Cat and her family (plus a couple of friends) at the Eno River Festival in Durham. That was a lot of fun – we ate giant turkey legs, corn dogs and other festival foods, wandered around, heard these guys, who were un-freaking-believable, and let the girls play in the river. The river, btw, was a hilarious example of how different Catie and Elizabeth are. Elizabeth sees the river, and immediately strips off her dress so she can swim in the river in just her underpants. Meanwhile, it took me 20 minutes just to get Catie to take her shoes off and stick one toe in the water.
This was the deepest I could ever coerce her to go, and she whined and cried about it the whole time. I wish I had a picture of Elizabeth for contrast, because it was a great visual example of Daredevil Child versus Cautious Kid.
After the festival, we came home and got cleaned up just in time for my brother to arrive from Charlotte. He didn’t have anything to do for the holiday weekend and wanted to know if it was ok if he came to visit. I said of course, so he drove over & spent the night with us last night. As soon as he arrived, we headed over to Cat and Tony’s for dinner.
I must say, I love hanging out at Cat & Tony’s house. It’s always relaxed and fun and easy. Plus, you know, I get to smoosh on this little guy.
Mmm, thumbs, nom nom!
Cat’s parents (my aunt & uncle) are in town, and a couple of their friends plus Tony’s sister Diana were also there, so it was a nice big group of us. We had grilled chicken, hot dogs, and I think I ate my weight in chips & hummus. Oh, and there were at least four desserts. Awesome.
As we were leaving to go see the fireworks (the viewpoint is about a half-mile or so from Cat & Tony’s house), Cat told Elizabeth to go get her shoes. Her shoes were upstairs, so she said, “Come with me, Catie.” Catie said ok and followed her. And they held hands as they walked up the stairs together. My heart almost exploded from the cuteness.
I cannot tell you how much I love watching our two girls grow up together. Even when they fight (and there are occasional disagreements about whose turn it is to use a certain toy), it’s still great to see them interact.
Then of course, there were the fireworks, but I need a new camera, so most of my pictures were crap. This was the first fireworks experience for both Catie & Elizabeth, and they absolutely loved it. Our viewpoint was from a field a couple of miles away from the action, so we could see all the explosions and colors without too much noise. It made the whole thing much less scary for the girls.
This morning, we went out for breakfast, and drove my brother past our new house so he could see it. He left to go back to Charlotte soon afterward, and Catie went down for a nap.
This evening, we’re getting a visit from the lovely and delightful Brittany. She has a few days off work, so she’s going to come stay with us to look for a job and an apartment before she moves here next month. Yay! I can’t wait!
Edited to add: I just realized that I wrote a post with this exact title, five years ago today. That was the first fourth of July that Dave and I celebrated, watching the fireworks from the roof of my apartment in downtown Seattle. We’d only been dating for about six weeks at that point. Aw, nostalgia.
A couple of months ago I went to the eye doctor and got glasses. While I was there, my doctor told me that she thought I might be showing early signs of glaucoma, so she had me come back and do a really gross eye test that involved a little plastic doohickey touching the surface of my eyeball. (And yes, that really is just as squicky and gross as it sounds.) However, she couldn’t tell much from the test, so she sent me to a glaucoma specialist. Great.
That appointment was a couple of weeks ago, and I can’t believe I didn’t blog about it, but I think I was in some sort of “lalalala-I-can’t-hear-you-lalala!!!” denial mode about it. It turns out that yes, I actually am showing early signs of glaucoma (thanks for the crappy eye genes, Dad!) and I need to have laser surgery on my eyes to make sure that I don’t suddenly go COMPLETELY EFFING BLIND. Um, yay?
The doctor said he could do my eye surgery on August 4th, then said, “You aren’t traveling anywhere between now and then, are you?” I said actually, yes, I’m going to Chicago at the end of July (I didn’t tell him about BlogHer, I was worried he might look at me funny), and he said, “Oh no, that’s no good. Ok, in that case, we have to squeeze you in sooner.” Apparently the air pressure changes in an airplane could cause the fluid pressure in my eyes to change and again with the blindness and OMG are you kidding me with this?
So, I’m having laser eye surgery next Friday, July 10th. At 4 p.m., which sucks because it’s not a daycare day, and it’s right at the end of Catie’s naptime, and Dave has to be there at the eye doctor’s because I won’t be able to drive myself home afterward and blaaaaah I so do not want to deal with this. Also, I have no idea how I’m going to be feeling after the surgery, but we’ve had two invitations for fun stuff that weekend, and I’ve had to turn them down just because I’m worried that I’m going to be feeling weird, or at the very least I’m still going to be wearing those giant protective goggle sunglasses from the eye doctor’s.
Yeah. Laser eye surgery. Yippee. But let me tell you, if I walk into that doctor’s office and see a shark tank (sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads!), I am SO out of there.
Generally between the two of us, Dave is the more relaxed parent and I’m more of the disciplinarian. I don’t know how it worked out that way, but he’s just less uptight about rules and boundaries than I am. And that’s fine, I guess. But it means that I’m in the position of being Mean Mommy far more often than I’d like.
This morning, Catie wanted to watch a DVD that we borrowed from our baby-sitter (this one, if you care). Which, fine, whatever. Since I am always in favor of the path of least resistance, I thought it might be easier to get her dressed in front of the TV than to try to coerce her upstairs with me. So I grabbed a clean diaper and her clothes for the day, and brought them downstairs. She let me take off her pajamas and change her diaper, but then she refused to put on her clothes. She thrashed and squirmed and made a huge stink about it. I told her that she could either get dressed or go to time-out. She continued to thrash around, so fine, time-out it is. And “the frog movie” (which is what she calls the LeapFrog DVD) was promptly turned off.
(For the record, time-out at our house is a spot on the dining room floor. There really isn’t anything in that room except some boxes, certainly nothing that could qualify as entertainment for her, so it usually works.)
I left her in her time-out spot and walked into the kitchen – part of the deal with time-out is that I ignore her for the two minutes that she’s in there. I heard her making some odd grunting noises like she was struggling with something. When the two minutes were up, I walked back into the dining room and saw that she had taken off her diaper and flung it across the room. So there she was, still sitting in her exact time-out spot, hands in her lap, head down and bottom lip stuck out… and stark naked except for her socks. I had to turn around and look away to try to regain my composure, because I seriously almost died laughing right there.
It took a minute, but I got my Mean Mommy face back on, and I went over to her and sternly put her diaper back on her, then escorted her back to the living room and got her dressed. And she was fine after that, she didn’t act up at all. I know it would’ve made the situation worse if I had laughed, but man alive, it took just about every ounce of energy I had to not crack up.
So what I’ve learned is that parenting a two year-old is both incredibly frustrating and completely hilarious. I sort of knew that already, I just didn’t expect it to be both at the same time.