Category Archives: Cate

after-effects

Posted on by

It’s been a few days since the whole house break-in incident, and I have to say, I’m not doing so well. I’m not usually prone to anxiety attacks, but something about pregnancy hormones, plus Dave being gone, plus the whole “strangers were inside my house while my baby and I were asleep” thing has turned me into a giant mess.

Case in point: Catie drew this picture on her Magna-Doodle. When I asked her what it was, she said, “That’s Mommy’s sad face. See the tears?”

I asked Catie what this was. She said, "Mommy's sad face. See the tears?" Oh god.

There is absolutely nothing about that picture that doesn’t break my heart.

The night after the break-in, I woke up what felt like every 20 minutes, totally panicked at some teeny-tiny noise. Even though I knew that the locksmith had replaced all the locks on the doors, and I’d verified that they were all locked at least 3 times, I still couldn’t relax. At one point, I ran into my mom in the hall because I was sure I had heard a noise and I went flying out of bed. And yeah, I had heard something. My mom had gotten up to use the bathroom. That was it.

The irony, of course, is that I had to cancel my OB appointment on Thursday morning because I had no purse and no keys to get to the doctor’s office. And I had already been planning on discussing some of my anxiety problems with my doctor. Then this happened, and… well, let’s just say that I thought I was having anxiety before, but this cranked it up to 11.

So I called the doctor’s office on Friday morning, and I basically unloaded on this poor nurse about all the stuff that’s been going in my life lately and how stressed out I am, and oh GOD I certainly don’t want to sound like I’m drug-seeking, and I don’t want to take anything that could hurt my baby, and I don’t want to take anything that will turn me into a zombie, but I really need some help here, and I’m sure I’m not the first pregnant lady they’ve ever encountered who has had anxiety issues. The nurse was fantastic and so nice, and said she’d talk to my doctor and call me back immediately. She did, and they called in a prescription for some xanax for me. They also re-scheduled my appointment for Monday morning so I can get in to talk to a doctor immediately.

[Side note: Who knew that xanax was on the list of medications that are OK to take when you’re pregnant? I certainly didn’t.]

My brother was so worried about us that he drove over from Charlotte on Friday afternoon to spend the night. That was a nice distraction, especially for Catie.

Catie says, "Hey Chris, we're like rock stars!"

She really does adore her uncle Chris.

And I have to say, knowing that my brother was sleeping on the couch downstairs did help me relax. Just knowing that he was there and would hear it if anyone tried to break in was a very welcome relief, and I was able to sleep a lot better that night.

(Btw, you already know this if you follow me on Twitter, but the day after the break-in, we were on our way to the police department to get a copy of the police report, and I had a tire blow-out. Bent the wheel base and all. And nobody has my particular wheel model in stock. So I’m driving around on the spare since the ordered one won’t arrive until later this week. Fabulous. And don’t ask how much it’s going to cost because it makes me want to cry to just think about it.)

My mom leaves on Tuesday, and I am totally terrified of being alone in the house after that. (Well, not alone, but I’ll be the only adult on the premises.) Dave offered to fly home early, but I told him not to. I miss him terribly, and yes, selfishly I absolutely do want him to come home right now. But I also know that this is his last chance to get some one-on-one family time before the baby comes, and he’s been needing this vacation for a long time.

I might ask my brother to come back again next weekend. Or maybe Catie and I will take a road trip someplace on our own. I haven’t decided, but I’m pretty sure that we need to do Something Fun to snap ourselves out of this funk.

home invasion

Posted on by

So, my mom got in late last night, as I mentioned. Catie was totally psyched to see her Mimi, and instead of being tired (as she should have been at 10 p.m.), instead she was totally wired and hyper.

Rockin' some serious fashion at the airport.

So, we got home and didn’t get Catie in bed until sometime around 11:15. My mom and I sat at the kitchen table talking for a little while after that, and I collapsed in bed a little after midnight.

I had an OB appointment at 10 a.m. today, so I got up, got dressed, and got ready to leave while my mom and Catie settled in on the couch to watch a movie together. Only when I was ready to walk out the door… I couldn’t find my purse. Which was weird, because I always leave it in the kitchen – usually on the table or a chair.

My mom and Catie helped me look (Catie likes to use her “I’m a good finder!” street cred; she has found Dave’s lost glasses and keys more times than I can count), but we couldn’t find my purse anywhere. My mom said she remembered seeing it in the kitchen right next to hers, because we both have black purses.

I went outside to double-check that I hadn’t left it in the car, and that’s when I noticed that the garage door was open and the door from the garage to the house was unlocked. Apparently the previous night, I’d been so tired that I hadn’t thought to double-check all the locks like I usually do. (Dave usually checks them when he’s home, but since he’s been gone, I’ve been extra vigilant about it. Or at least I had been, until the exhaustion kicked in on Tuesday night.)

Then we realized that my mom’s purse was gone too.

I called the local police department. They sent an officer over. He said he was surprised that someone would come in the house, because in this area, typically most crime is just teenagers looking for cash, so they’ll check cars to see if they can find any unlocked doors and then grab what they can. Coming into somebody’s house definitely kicks it up a notch, because how do the thieves know if we have an alarm system, or a dog, or maybe just a pissed-off homeowner with a gun? He also said that usually with purses, they shake them out to grab what they want (the wallet or the cash inside it), then ditch the purse because they don’t want to get caught with it later. He walked around outside and checked our neighbors’ yards and and trash cans to look for any discarded purses. No luck there.

The big issue? My keys were in the purse. And Dave’s keys are with him in England. So I was essentially stranded. And there are thieves out there now, who have keys to my house and both of our cars.

OH! And! When the cop and I went out into the driveway together, I noticed that the driver’s door on Dave’s car was ajar, and I know for a fact that it was locked. So apparently they used my keys to open his car and check to see if there was anything worth stealing in there. (There wasn’t, thankfully.)

The Subaru dealership brought me a replacement key for my car for a whopping $10 (they took checks without photo ID, bless them), and my mom and I disconnected the battery leads on Dave’s car, so if the thieves come back and try to steal it, it won’t start. (Dave’s car is parked in the driveway, mine is inside the garage, and therefore a little safer.) I considered putting a note on the steering wheel, like, “Hahaha! Good luck, mother f*ckers!”, just in case they come back and try to steal the car. But my mom suggested that maybe it’s not a good idea to antagonize the bad guys. She’s probably right.

Anyway, with my new car key in hand, I got my birth certificate and social security card from the “Important Documents DO NOT LOSE!” envelope upstairs, and I set off for the DMV. I got a replacement driver’s license, and that plus my PIN number allowed me get some cash out of our bank account.

I had a locksmith come out and replace all the locks on all the doors of the house. He also took checks without a photo ID, so God bless him too.

My mom and I basically spent the rest of the day calling credit card companies, health insurance companies, AAA, and everything else imaginable to get all of our cards replaced. Between the two of us, we had about $500 in cash (I had just gotten $200 from the ATM that day, my mom had $300 for travel stuff). So that’s a total loss.

Oh, and since my mom’s wallet was taken? She has no photo ID to get on a plane to go home next week. We haven’t quite figured out what to do about that yet. I once had my wallet stolen and used a copy of the police report to board a plane, but that was pre-9/11, so I have no idea if that would work now. We’re going to call the TSA tomorrow to find out what she needs to do.

I had to call Dave in the UK to tell him what was going on, since I was going to have to cancel some credit cards and most of ours are on joint accounts (luckily we still have different card numbers, so the credit card companies were able to just cancel mine and leave his alone). I think I probably scared the crap out of him when he answered the phone and I was crying. He was so freaked out that something was wrong with me or the baby, I think he was relieved to find out that it was just money.

And in the end, it IS just money. A huge inconvenience, to be sure, but it’s not the end of the world. We’re all ok. The main thing is that I am totally freaked out that people were inside my house while we were asleep upstairs. It’s basically my worst fear come true. What if they hadn’t been only looking for a quick cash grab? What could have happened to us? Even with all new locks (and the fact that I’ve checked each of them at least 5 times tonight), I’m still totally wigged out. I took a whole Unisom tonight (instead of my usual half) in the hopes of knocking myself out.

And before anyone asks, my Next Major Purchase? Will most definitely be a home alarm system.

I’m also now considering getting a very large dog. Or maybe a pet puma. Something mean and scary.

The intentionally broken bedtime

Posted on by

It would appear that the combination of being on solo parent duty, being enormously pregnant, and being pretty much full-on racked with chronic anxiety (long story) has made me sort of forget about my blog.

But! We had a great time with my brother here last weekend. Even though I only got this one picture of him and Catie, when we went to IHOP on Sunday morning.

Catie & my brother at brunch this morning.

And on Saturday night, I managed to get this hilarious (very short) video of Catie singing “Just the Way You Are” by Bruno Mars. Apparently she learned it because it’s on a Kidz Bop CD that her teacher played at school, then we heard it on the radio in the car, and she was all, “Hey! I know this song!”


(Apparently you have to click through to see the video. Sorry about that.)

I can’t begin to tell you how much I love that.

Last night she put on another performance for me (after she dressed herself in a crazy winter hat, summer t-shirt, and PJ pants combo), this time singing her ABCs. She has a little trouble after J, but she manages to pick it up again quickly.


(Apparently you have to click through to see the video. Sorry about that.)

That kid cracks me up.

——————————————————

Unrelated: my mom is flying up tonight, and she’ll be here for a week. It’ll be really nice to have the help with Catie, and I know my mom has been jonesing for some Grandkid Time. So that’ll be great. I love having my mom around.

The only problem is that my mom’s flight doesn’t get in until 10 p.m., and I typically get Catie to sleep around 9 or 9:30. (All of y’all whose kids go to bed at 7 p.m. and sleep soundly all night? Unless you’re going to share whatever drug you spike your child’s milk with, just shut up. Catie went to bed at 11 p.m. for ages, so I consider her current bedtime a HUGE victory.) And since I’m solo-parenting it, I can’t exactly sneak out to the airport after Catie is in bed, since there won’t be another adult in the house. And, you know, I’d rather not go to jail for felony child neglect.

So, I’ve told Catie this is our plan: tonight after school, we’re going to have dinner, take our baths, get in our pajamas, and watch some Scooby-Doo. Then we’ll go to the airport to pick up Mimi. (And yes, I’m wearing my pj’s to the airport too. I mean, it’ll be maternity yoga pants and I’ll probably wear a bra, but still.)

Considering that we’ll have to wait at baggage claim and then drive back home, I realize this means Catie probably won’t be getting to bed until close to midnight. So I’ve made the executive decision to work from home on Thursday, and keep her home from daycare. There really isn’t any need to subject our sleep-deprived cranky selves to the rest of the world. So we’ll have a “chill out at home” day with Mimi, and hopefully recover quickly.

I do have a sneaking suspicion that she’s going to make me regret keeping her up so late, though…

The solo parenting gig, thus far

Posted on by

Dave left for England on Tuesday night, which means I’ve been doing the solo-parent thing for the past three days. So far, it’s going ok. Catie and I kind of have our weektime routine down: we get up, she goes to daycare and I go to work, we come home, have dinner, and do the whole bedtime routine. It’s been pretty easy to just coast on auto-pilot, honestly.

I told her I'd turn on cartoons if she smiled.
“I’m just taking it easy on her for now. Next week I unleash hell.”

A few things I’ve noticed, though:
1. I don’t sleep well when I’m the only adult in the house. Now, look, I didn’t meet Dave until I was 28 years old, so it’s not like I’d never lived alone before. But I was always in a tiny one-bedroom apartment. In our current house, I lie in bed and think things like, “Hmm, if someone broke in through the garage door, would I even hear it upstairs?” And I worry about things like what would I do if a fire broke out, things like that. Not exactly conducive to a good night’s sleep, obviously.

Oh, and related: I get very jumpy about unexplained noises in the middle of the night. Which is why I’m just about ready to throw Beaumont outside for good. Seriously, cat, it’s 2 a.m. Do you have to jump up on the kitchen counter and knock over a whole bunch of stuff now? (To be fair, he is totally thrown off by Dave’s absence. The past two nights, he’s been asleep in the hall when I got up in the morning. It’s like he’s trying to keep an eye on both Catie’s room and mine at the same time. “We lost one human, gotta keep a watch on the last two!”)

2. While the routine itself is pretty manageable, I forget how much Dave does in the evenings to help out. Because I’ve noticed that by the end of the day, my body just aches. I know it’s pregnancy-related (since it’s mostly my lower back and hips that hurt), but it’s like I hadn’t taken into account how little “sitting on my butt” time I would get while Dave was gone. I miss my sitting-down time. A lot.

3. I’m really lazy about meals when I’m the only one who eats “grown-up food.” Last night we had mac & cheese with a side of broccoli. Not exactly health food, but whatever, it was easy. (And I love that Catie will eat broccoli.) (Although we did have cupcakes for dessert. You can’t be good all the time.)

4. Trying to wash a four year-old’s hair in the bathtub when you’re 7 months pregnant. I have nothing else to add to that, except: good GOD. And, ouch.

7 months. Holy Moses.
This is not a shape that is meant leaning over the side of a bathtub.

5. As for housework: I give up. I’ve called in the housekeepers. I can’t do it all by myself, so I’m just going to throw some money at the problem and stop worrying about it.

—————————————–

My brother is on his way here from Charlotte to hang out with us this weekend, and Catie and I are both really excited. My brother is a great guy and Catie adores him, so it should be fun to have him around. No big weekend plans, just hanging out and enjoying some nice springtime weather. Should be fun.

Hope y’all have a nice weekend too, wherever you are.

spring-esque weekend

Posted on by

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.

excuse me while I whine

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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.