Category Archives: Cate

Our Weekend

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This weekend, Dave taught Catie how to develop game apps for the iPhone.

Catie's really into learning how to develop iPhone game apps

She’s totally into it, and taking it very seriously.

I love this because it looks like Catie has a freakishly large man-hand

She’ll probably design the greatest app since “Words With Friends.”

Oh, and I got an iPhone 4! Which shoots video! Related: we sang happy birthday to my sister, and filmed it since Tracy is currently celebrating her birthday with friends in Italy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_dJWOwLBBU

Of course, it didn’t really occur to me until later that my sister can only access her email on her Blackberry, which doesn’t have YouTube capabilities, so she won’t actually see it until she gets back to the US. Oh well. Happy birthday, Tracy!

We also watched a heck of a lot of Xanadu. (And I learned that if you turn the phone to a landscape setting, it automatically adjusts when you copy it over to your laptop. Nice job, Apple! I won’t make any more oddly narrow videos.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF38NO646cg
(I’m still trying to get a video of her really singing it. So far, she kind of goes quiet as soon as she sees the camera. You can still see her lip-syncing it, but hopefully I’ll get a real video of it soon.)

(Also? This is how she always watches Xanadu – with lots and lots and lots of random questions about the plot.)

Sunday afternoon, we went to see the Wiggles in concert.

Catie & Dave at the Wiggles concert
At first, Catie wasn’t too sure what she thought about the whole concert thing. But she took the popcorn very seriously.

Honestly? That might’ve been one of the most fun kids’ concerts we’ve been to (and I’ve been to a lot of them). You can tell that these guys have been doing this stuff for 20 years, and they just have fun with it and throw in all kinds of improv lines here and there, which makes it really funny for the adults in the audience.

That said, I’m glad I didn’t take advantage of the chance I had to get closer seats, because Catie got a little claustrophobic from the crowd, so we spent a lot of the show toward the back where it was emptier. She usually reacts that way in crowds, same as Dave, so I wasn’t too surprised by it.

I did manage to get one decent picture of all three of us, although the weird iPhone flash thing makes it look like we’ve been dousing ourselves in self-tanner.

Catie, Dave & me at the Wiggles!

Also? Sweaty. It was HOT in there. I don’t know how those guys on stage do it.

Catie with the Wiggles

Overall, though? A pretty great time was had by all. But I can’t quite believe it’s Monday already.

a million lights are dancing, and there you are, a shooting star

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Last night I was looking for something to watch on TV that didn’t involve either Caillou or Dora. Catie was still awake and I was trying to get her to eat a pre-bedtime snack since she’d hardly eaten any dinner. It’s our typical Nightly Bedtime Struggle.

I happened to see on the cable guide that over on HBO, Xanadu was on. This was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Between Xanadu and Grease, I wanted to be Olivia Newton-John. All of my toys were named either Sandy or Kira. Because of Xanadu, I roller-skated in a dress while wearing leg warmers, and I had my mom braid ribbons into my barrettes. (If you haven’t seen the movie, that probably makes no sense to you.)

And yeah, I’ve seen Xanadu again as an adult, and I’m fully aware that it is not exactly a high-quality film. In fact, I’m pretty sure the people involved in the production were doing massive amounts of cocaine. (It was the 70s, after all.) It’s cheesy as hell. The acting is terrible, the storyline is convoluted and bizarre, and the weird “dissolves” between scenes look SO corny now. But whatever, I still love the music. In fact, I still have the whole soundtrack in iTunes.

Catie is just getting to the age where she likes musicals. The kid-oriented ones, of course, like the Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, and the Wizard of Oz. And she’s seen a couple of (not risque) songs in Moulin Rouge and really liked them. So I thought I’d click it over to see what she thought of Xanadu. We missed the first half of the movie, and came in right around the beginning of the “All Over the World” song.


If you haven’t seen the movie, you might want to watch that to get an idea. It’s supposed to be a simple, “Let’s take Gene Kelly shopping to find him a snazzy outfit for his nightclub opening” montage, and instead it turns into… that. I don’t even know WTF that is, 30 years later.

(Also? Poor Gene Kelly. The guy is probably one of the most talented dancers of his generation – he did freaking “Singing in the Rain,” for God’s sake – and to get a gig in his old age, they put him on roller skates. Did your investments really turn out that badly, Gene?)

Catie was absolutely riveted, because… well, probably because it looks completely surreal and bizarre.

And then, there’s the finale. Oh, the finale.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr6WidQqhu4
(Apparently if you want the full 8-minute finale and not a chopped 3-minute version, you have to deal with poor video quality. Oh well.)

Y’all, I couldn’t get Catie to sit down and eat her snack because she was too busy dancing around the living room (while keeping her eyes glued to the TV the whole time). As soon as it was over, she kept saying, “Again! Again!!” I had to search for the videos on YouTube for her to watch a couple more times.

This morning, as soon as she woke up, she asked, “We watch Xanadu again?” I said, sorry baby, it’s not on-demand and I don’t have the DVD, so we can’t watch it now. She said, “We can buy the DVD?” I told her I’d look to see if I can find it.

Since we couldn’t watch the movie, I turned the soundtrack on my iPod in the car when we drove to daycare. I had to explain to her daycare teacher why Catie might be singing, “Xaaaa-na-duuuuu” all day today. (Her teacher is in her mid-20s, has never heard of the movie, and likely thinks I’m completely insane based on my explanation.)

But you know I’m totally ordering the DVD on Amazon today, right? The only problem is that I’m not sure if Dave will ever forgive me for turning our daughter into an Olivia Newton-John fan.

the first time I've laughed at a joke about my last name

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Alright, this might get me some unwanted Google hits, but it’s also going to be particularly funny to those who know my family.

My maiden name is Butchee. Pronounced just like it’s spelled: BOO-chee. Like, rhymes with Gucci. It also rhymes with other words (hint: coochie) that made high school, shall we say, less than fun for me.

It’s a weird name, right? Turns out there was some dude about 200 years ago who came from Switzerland to the US. His name was Johannes Buetschi, but when he came here, his name was “Americanized” and he became John Butchee. If you meet any other Butchees, they’re probably related to me.

(Oh! Except! Y’all know I’m from Mississippi, right? When I was little, my grandmother had a housekeeper whose last name was also Butchee, which was weird since she was black. I didn’t quite understand how that was possible, until I was older and learned in history class how slaves sometimes took the last names of their owners and OMG, the Liberal Guilt. So yeah. Apparently my grandmother’s housekeeper’s ancestors and my family’s ancestors had, uh, some familiarity with each other. Yikes.)

(I also found out when I did some genealogy research that my great-great-grandfather – and all of his brothers – fought for the South in the Civil War. No, I’m not proud of that. AT ALL. But what can I do? It was 150 years ago. I’ll have a conversation about race relations with him when I see him in heaven.)

Growing up, I hated all of the jokes that were made about my last name. Even the good-natured jokes that my friends made still irritated me. In fact, when I reconnected with a high school friend on Facebook, she reminded me of this silly song she used to sing about my last name, and I finally got to tell her – 15 years later – “Yeah, I didn’t think it was funny then, and I don’t think it’s funny now. Sorry.”

Honestly, I jumped at the chance to change my name to Wilkinson when Dave and I got married. Can you blame me? It’s a name most people can spell and pronounce, and it doesn’t rhyme with any slang terms for female anatomy. I call that a WIN.

So, my sense of humor on the name-mocking? Eh, not so much.

But then, back in March, Catie and I went to New Orleans with my mom, to visit her family. Our hotel reservation was in my mom’s name, so my mom went to the front desk and told the lady her name: Carolyn Butchee.

Catie was standing next to my mom at the time. Her eyes widened and she repeated, “Caroline Boo-shee???” Then she collapsed into a heap of giggles like it was the funniest phrase she had ever heard in her life.

She kept repeating it over and over, “Caroline Boo-shee! Hee hee hee!!!” It became the big joke of the weekend, we could just say my mom’s name to her and she’d fall over laughing. (It’s also particularly funny to me because my mom has spent her entire life correcting people about her first name – it’s Carolyn, not Caroline – and the fact that her precious grandbaby pronounces it wrong slays me.)

And to this day, it remains one of her favorite jokes with my parents. Catie video chats with my parents on Skype pretty regularly, and my dad will ask her what his real name is. She says, “Pop-Pop Boo-shee!!” And then she cracks up. If we try to tell her that no, his real first name is actually Sam, that makes her laugh even more, because Sam is the name of her Grandma’s dog, so she thinks we’re totally yanking her chain and just making up nonsense names.

It also works well in knock-knock jokes.

My dad: Knock, knock.
Catie: Who’s there?
My dad: Pop-Pop!
Catie: Pop-Pop who?
My dad: Pop-Pop Butchee!

Then Catie practically pees herself laughing. She has no idea that Butchee is honestly their last name.

What’s weird is that this is the first time in my life that someone has laughed at my last name, and I’ve laughed along with them.

Especially since, sorry kiddo, I know your last name might be Wilkinson, but you’re 50% Butchee yourself. Better get used to it.

weekend recap

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Saturday started with a trip to the kids’ hair salon.

Catie pre-haircut

It was far less traumatic than the last time we went (I still laugh every time I see those pictures of her screaming in the salon chair; 2 year-old Drama Queen). She was happy to sit in the chair this time.

getting set up for her big haircut

snip snip!
(That’s not a skeptical face, she had a mouth full of animal crackers. They give each kid a little Dixie cup full of them to snack on while they get their hair cut. Catie kept her cup hidden under her cape and would sneak the crackers out one at a time.)

She even laughed when the lady pulled out a blow dryer, which surprised me.

hair dryers are funny!
I honestly thought she’d freak at that point, but she handled the whole thing like a pro.

The kids get a “prize” after their haircut, which in Catie’s case turned out to be a purple rubber bouncy ball – the kind of thing you could get from a vending machine for a quarter. But she freaking loves that ball. You would’ve thought someone had given her the Hope Diamond, the way she reacted.

Since she was so good, afterward we went next door to Subway to get some lunch. It’s kind of a treat for us to eat out together.

post haircut
Showing off her haircut. Orange lips courtesy of the bag of Doritos she wolfed down.

————————————-

Saturday afternoon, it was my turn for a haircut. My last trip to a salon was back in March, and I never particularly loved the haircut that much. I’ve been feeling very “blah” lately, so I was excited to do something different.

Before:
me, pre-haircut

I thought about doing something drastic and whacking it off chin-length. In the end, I decided to go with taking about 3 inches off. Definitely a nice change, but without being too severe.

After:
me, post-haircut

I also had my eyebrows done, which always makes me feel better.

Now we just need to get Dave to get his hair cut too. He’s starting to look like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, and not in a good way. Catie told him, “Daddy, your hair is growing up too big!”

————————————-

Saturday night, Dave and I took Catie to drop-in daycare and had a little Date Night. We went to see “Inception” – which, for the record, was really good. Although I can’t really describe the movie at all because it’s kind of a brain melter. We went to the 6:30 movie, and it’s 2.5 hours long, so it was 9:15 by the time we got back the daycare to pick Catie up. Not a big deal since they’re open really late on Saturday nights, but it totally messes with the whole bedtime routine. I think we finally got Catie to bed around 10:30, and that was even with skipping her bath and just getting straight into her PJ’s when we got home.

I have to say, that’s another reason I’m looking forward to my parents’ moving here. Someday we’ll be able to do Date Nights without worrying about rushing home, because we can just let Catie spend the night with her grandparents. That’ll be nice. I know my mom is already looking forward to it.

————————————–

Sunday (today), Catie and I decided to take advantage of the sunshine and go to the neighborhood swimming pool. Quite a difference from last week, this time I asked Catie if she wanted to go to the pool, and she said, “Yeah! I stick my feet in the water!”

Catie, before going to the pool

She still only went to the 2nd step, but whatever. I didn’t press her to do anything else – I offered to carry her further into the pool a couple of times, she said no, and I let it go. She’ll do more in her own time.

The rest of the day has involved cleaning the house and conquering the mountain of laundry (3 loads washed & folded so far, 3 more to go). Not very exciting, just your basic real-life stuff.

Still, overall it’s been a really fun weekend. Hope you all had good weekends too.

bring you to your na-na-na-na-na-knees

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Backstory: the radio stations in the Raleigh area? Are pretty sucky. You basically have a choice of the pop station (which is ok, sometimes; I have no shame about the fact that I sing along with Britney Spears) or the rock station. And the rock station is more “classic rock” in that it plays a lot of stuff from 15-20 years ago.

For example, when we’d been living here for only a couple of months, my friend Kris came to visit and we had lunch together. I was still going through a bit of culture shock after moving here from Seattle, and we talked about how different North Carolina was by comparison. I told her how the radio here was so random, and that I’d heard “Love Bites” by Def Leppard more in the past 2 months than in the previous 15 years combined. After lunch, we got in my car to leave the restaurant, turned on the radio, and – no exaggeration – “Love Bites” came on before we’d even pulled out of the parking lot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7NkYu6SaPo
I know you wanted that earworm. You’re welcome. Also, how much hair spray and back-combing do you think was involved in the production of that video?

Sometimes I remember to bring my iPod and my little FM adapter thingy in the car, so I can listen to my own music, but the majority of the time, I forget it at home. And you know, it’s fine. Most of my drives are within a 5-mile radius of my house, so it’s not exactly worth shelling out for satellite radio. We have too many other things that require a monthly fee, I don’t need one more.

So, the point of all that? Is to explain this story about what a horrible parent I am and how I’m going to be responsible for my kid’s ensuing nightmares.

Honestly, I don’t know why it still surprises me when Catie suddenly catches on to something. I mean, she caught the lyrics to Lady Gaga. The kid notices everything.

So, we were in the car, and we happened to have the rock station on the radio. “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns ‘n Roses came on – which, really, is another good example of the kind of thing you hear on the rock radio station here. I left it on because Catie likes “Paradise City” (another song we’ve heard several times on that station) and you know, the lyrics are kind of screechy and hard to understand, and it’s not like she’s going to really understand what it’s about, right? And besides that, *I* happen to like the song. Heck, I like that whole album, seventh grade flashbacks notwithstanding.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1WUMRgbPR0
I love that Axl’s version of “acting” is to comb his hair down & wear a baseball cap. And that he has that freaking piece of hay in his mouth. Because I’m sure he’d still be chewing on that after the 2000+ mile bus trip from Indiana to Los Angeles. Whatever, Axl.

So we’re rocking out in the car, and then we get to this one part toward the end of the song…

“You know where you are? You’re in the JUNGLE, baby! You’re gonna DIIIEEEEE!!!”

I didn’t even think anything about it, but then suddenly I heard this very worried voice from the backseat:

“Mommy? Why the baby gonna die?”

Oh, shit. I mean, what do you even say to that?

So I quickly tried to do some damage control and I said, “No no no, he wasn’t talking about a real baby, he was just calling somebody baby, you know like how I call you ‘sweetie’ and I call Daddy ‘hon’ and that kind of thing? It’s just a nickname. And nobody’s really going to die, he just meant that… uh… that something they were going to do was going to be really, really hard. He was just using an expression.”

So! Lesson learned. From now on, I’ll remember to keep the iPod and the adapter in my purse so I always have it with me, and we’ll listen to nothing but the goddamn Wiggles until she’s in high school. Because I’m pretty sure they don’t have any songs about country bumpkins that go to the big city seeking fame and fortune who end up as drug-addicted whores.

I mean, unless “Fruit Salad, Yummy Yummy” has some hidden subtext that I’ve never noticed. I suppose anything’s possible.

Bratty kid, or parenting fail?

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When we were at the pool on Sunday, I noticed this stark contrast in child behaviors.

First, we met a little girl named Sophia. She’s 4 1/2, and apparently this is her first year taking swimming lessons. Her dad was in the water with her (along with her big brother, but he was 8 or 9 years old, and off in the deeper part of the pool with his friends), and she was practicing putting her face in the water and kicking. She came over to Catie and the two girls shyly introduced themselves. Sophia said to Catie, “I like your name,” which made me melt because I’m sure that an adult told her that’s a nice thing to say to make friends, but it was so sweet. I knew Catie wouldn’t know how to respond, so I said, “Well, I think Sophia is a beautiful name.”

She and Catie played together for a while, she showed Catie how she could put her face in the water, and Catie was duly impressed. Her dad was friendly and chatted with Dave and me while the girls played, and it was great. Soon they had to head home, and that was that.

Here comes the contrast.

Right as Sophia and her family were leaving, a new family showed up at the pool. Again, it was a dad (it seems the moms in our neighborhood get the day off on Sundays; I wish I’d gotten that memo), and there was an older brother and a little sister, but this time, the dad parked himself on a chaise lounge in the shade and started talking with another dad. The older boy jumped in and started playing with the older kids, and the little girl came over to me. Not Catie, just to me. She told me her name was Sarah, and that she was 4 years old. I did a kid introduction, “Hey Catie, this is Sarah. Sarah, this is Catie.” And I thought that maybe they’d play together nicely like Catie had just done with Sophia.

Um… not so much.

It became apparent pretty quickly that Sarah was in dire need of parental attention, and since her dad never once even glanced in the direction of the swimming pool to make sure that his kids weren’t drowning, she latched on to me. It started with her asking me a million questions and making me feel like I was in that Monty Python sketch about “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” Then she wanted me to watch her while she did all kinds of pool stunts… which, oooookay, but shouldn’t your dad be watching you?

Also, I don’t know what the heck this kid does in her off-time, but she clearly is not supervised nearly enough, because she was covered in band-aids, which kept coming off in the water. Every time one did, I’d point it out to her and ask her to please go put it in the trash can (which she did). Then I’d look at Dave and make gagging faces. Band-aids floating in a pool is just about one of the grossest things ever. And this is why Dave and I started referring to her (after we left the pool) as Open Wound Sarah.

Then she started to get a little obnoxious. She and her brother had brought a ton of pool toys with them, but every. single. item. warranted this high-pitched, eardrum-piercing “THAT’S MINE!!!” shriek from her – and I’m not even talking about Catie, I’m talking about when her brother tried to use the toys. Even the things they’d brought two of (like, say, beach balls or pool noodles), she insisted that they were both hers, she didn’t want her brother to touch any of them. And I think it’s worth noting that none of her shrieking fits warranted even a glance from her dad, who was still engrossed in his conversation.

Next, she turned her attention back to us. Catie was playing with her inflatable pirate ship, putting her toys in it and pushing it out to Dave and me in the pool. Sarah asked if she could ride in the pirate ship. I said sure, if she wanted to share one of her toys with Catie. She gave Catie a beach ball (which Catie was happy to play with), and we let Sarah play with the pirate ship for a while. That’s fair, right?

About ten minutes later, Catie decided that she didn’t want the beach ball anymore, she wanted her pirate boat back. Sarah refused to give it back. I kind of stumbled with that one while Catie gave me this, “WTF, Mom?” look. I honestly wasn’t sure how to handle it at first. Then I decided that you know what? These are not communal toys, we are not on a playdate, and this kid has about a bajillion things of her own to play with. So I said, “Sarah, you know, Catie brought this pirate boat to the pool, so it’s hers. And if she wants to play with it, she should be able to play with it. You have a lot of your own toys here, so maybe you should go play with them instead.” Sarah gave back the pirate boat, then turned around and kicked the water to splash both me and Catie in the face. I said, sharply (and loudly), “Ok, that’s not nice, we don’t do that.” Her dad? Yeah, he still didn’t notice.

Sarah took off for the chaise lounge where her dad was sitting, rummaged around in their bag o’ pool junk, and came back with one of those Super Soaker water guns. I looked at Dave and muttered, “Great. Now she’s armed.”

And as I predicted, she spent the next few minutes filling up the water gun and spraying it into the air so it would come down on Catie’s head (which, hello, I barely got the kid to go down to the 2nd step, don’t get her head wet or she might freak and never come back). I told her to stop a couple of times, then finally said very loudly, “Ok, Sarah, that’s enough!” Apparently that was loud enough to get her dad’s attention, and he looked over just in time to see me making a face at Dave that probably indicated I was about to throttle his kid. He called for her to come put away the water gun. Finally. But that was basically his only parenting contribution for the hour that we were there.

But she still wouldn’t leave us alone, she kept trying to boss Catie around and take her pirate boat away from her, and it was just aggravating. Finally I said, “You know, I think it’s time to go home for lunch!” By that point, all three of us, even Catie, were happy to leave just to get the heck away from that kid.

I still can’t decide, though. Is Sarah just a bratty kid? Or is this her parents’ fault for not paying enough attention to her, and causing her to seek attention in negative ways? I was only around the kid for an hour, so I probably don’t know enough to judge, but I’m leaning toward the latter.

I just really hope we can avoid that family at the pool in the future. I have a feeling I’ll end up snapping and yelling at the dad to pay attention to his children if we have to go through that again.