Category Archives: Cate

Conquering the Slide

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This past weekend, Catie and I went to the playground. We’ve been doing this a lot lately, since the weather has gotten nice. We have a neighborhood playground which is ok but a little small; there’s a much nicer public park with a bigger playground about a mile and a half from our house. Catie particularly likes the sand pit.

Catie at the playground
(I didn’t bring my good camera with me, just my iPhone.)

She also likes the play structures, but usually she just walks up the stairs, hops around at the top, then climbs back down. She’s always hated slides and swings. I honestly don’t know why, she’s just a cautious kid, and she doesn’t seem to like motion that she doesn’t feel 100% in control of. She doesn’t care for tricycles either. Honestly, yes, I find this behavior a little strange, but I also try not to spend much time worrying about it, because I think most of it is stuff that she’ll outgrow in her own time.

And it turns out that my instincts might be at least partially correct. Because out of the blue, she turned to me from the top of the play structure and said, “I go on the slide?” I was kind of stunned, and I repeated, “You want to go down the slide?” She said, “Yeah. You help me.”

So I held both of her hands, and she scooted herself down the slide. And then she did it again. And about 25 more times after that. I was stunned. I couldn’t take any pictures of her in action because I had to hold her hand to get her to go down the slide, but one of the times she was running back up the stairs of the play structure, I tweeted about it.

tweet_slide
(I’m a little more free with my language on Twitter. Which is funny, since my dad apparently reads my Twitter stream. But he’s never said anything to me about my profanity there, probably because he knows I’d tell him to stop reading it.)

I was so proud of her for breaking out of her comfort zone. I think she was pretty pleased with herself too.

Catie at the playground

After the playground, we celebrated by going out for Mexican food, just the two of us. Such a fun day.

And I know it’s probably a cliche, but there’s something about having a kid this age, she seems to do some new amazing thing that completely surprises me every day. I love that. And I cannot wait to see what this kid will do next to knock my socks off.

like a damn deer in the headlights

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I forgot to mention that next weekend (March 26th – 29th), Catie and I are taking a quick trip to New Orleans. It’s my mom’s hometown, a bunch of my family is going to be there, and most of them have never met Catie. The last time I went to New Orleans, I was 6 weeks pregnant with Catie. And even though we were there for my cousin’s wedding, which was lovely and beautiful, I was also completely ill with morning sickness most of the time, and I couldn’t eat oysters or drink a hurricane or anything, so it wasn’t as much fun as I wanted. But I love New Orleans, it’s one of my favorite cities. It feels like home to me, even though I’ve never actually lived there. (I grew up going there all the time to visit my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.)

So, next Friday, Catie & I will be hopping on a plane headed south. My mom is going to meet us there, and we’re sharing a hotel room, so it should be a lot of fun. And as much as I love my family and look forward to seeing them, I’m mostly excited about the food. New Orleans has some of the best food in the world.

Oh, and when I told Catie that we’re going to the city where Princess Tiana (from “The Princess & The Frog”) lives? She responded, “I need a princess costume.” Umm. This is the first time she’s expressed any interest whatsoever in dressing up like a princess. I kind of figured this phase was coming eventually, and I swore I wouldn’t fight it. Most girls go through a princess phase, and most of them outgrow it in due time.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

(Yes, we bought the t-shirt and the DVD yesterday, as soon as it was released. I figure that as far as Disney princesses go, Tiana is probably the most empowered of all of them, and besides, the music in the movie doesn’t make me want to bash my head into a wall.)

Anyway, Catie happens to be lucky that her Mimi (my mom) is an excellent seamstress, because she is currently whipping up a custom-made princess costume for her as I type.

As for me, I was thinking about the fact that we’ll probably be taking pictures while we’re there, and lately I’ve been looking a bit like the sad slacker mom who doesn’t make much of an effort anymore. I made an appointment to get my hair cut, and yesterday I went to get my eyebrows waxed. I decided to try out a new place, because it’s closer to our new house and I’m lazy, and… hmm. Ok, well, let’s just look at the photographic evidence.

This is what I looked like before the eyebrow wax.

Mommy & Catie

Now, I realize that my eyebrows are way too heavy and they’re a big ol’ mess. So I needed to get them tidied up. I know that. But I think my eyebrow waxer lady yesterday might’ve been just a little bit overzealous.

Post-eyebrow wax

I look a little bit startled, don’t I? I mean, I’m intentionally not doing anything with my face in this picture, and still… Yeah. (Aside: good GOD, I look tired. And you can totally see my lazy eye in this picture. Lovely.)

I don’t think I’m at the point of breaking out the eyebrow pencil yet. But it’s weird. My face feels sort of naked and air-conditioned all of a sudden.

getting in the game

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I’ve noticed a shift in the past few weeks since Catie has started full-time daycare. I mean, of course there’s an obvious shift in her. She comes home every day spouting some new random thing. A couple of weeks ago she was telling me about Obama and George Madison (I guess they were studying U.S. Presidents for President’s Day; she apparently confused George Washington & James Madison, but I like the mash-up of their names), and then this past week she pointed at her stuffed cow (which is supposed to look like the one from Mr. Brown Can Moo) and said, “That’s from Dr. Seuss. It’s his birfday. He’s 1-oh-2 old.” So I looked it up, and sure enough, that day was Dr. Seuss’s birthday. He would’ve been 106, not 102, but she was still damn close.

Wait, what was I talking about?

Oh right, changes in behavior.

No, some of the biggest changes are in me. I think I was probably like a lot of stay-at-home moms for a while, and I was guilty of often phoning it in with regards to childcare. During the day, the TV was usually tuned into a cartoon channel (regardless of whether or not she was watching it), I spent too much time goofing off on my computer, and we just didn’t do very much together for fun. The functional stuff, sure. Mealtimes, bedtimes, grocery shopping, whatever. But playing games and that type of thing? Those things tended to fall by the wayside. Often.

But now that she’s gone so much during the week, my time with her feels more precious. So this past weekend, we (FINALLY!) had some really gorgeous, sunny, semi-warm weather, and we took advantage of it by spending a lot of time outside.

at the playground

I’m ashamed to admit it, but I am that mom who you see on her iPhone at the playground, usually playing Words with Friends or goofing around on Twitter while my kid runs around playing. But this weekend, I made the conscious effort to not do that. I checked my iPhone once, when she sat down to drink some juice, but the rest of the time, I played with her, instead of being a bystander.

And it’s probably no big surprise, but we’ve had a truly fantastic weekend. We went to three different playgrounds in two days, we played with some neighborhood kids, our lunches were backyard picnics, we drew pictures in the driveway with sidewalk chalk, we blew bubbles, and we had long talks about birds and airplanes and fire hydrants and a million other things that you see every day but never really notice. It’s been a blast.

static hair

Normally when Catie goes to sleep, I’m so exhausted that all I can feel is a wave of relief that she’s finally asleep, because it means that I can finally go to bed myself. This weekend, though? I felt sort of sad because I missed my sidekick.

It’s strange how something like a fun weekend goofing off with my kid can validate my gut instinct that going back to work full-time was absolutely the right thing for me to do. It was the kick to the head that I needed to make me realize exactly how fleeting these childhood years are, and just how much I don’t want to miss any of it.

just as she is

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So, to follow up on that last post, I started the South Beach diet on Monday. (With a few tips from the “Fat Flush Diet” thrown in, because I actually liked a couple of her techniques when I tried them last year.) Just your basic low-carb, low-calorie diet, and I’m trying to use The Daily Plate to help me track my calorie intake. Which is difficult, because it’s tedious and I tend to be lazy about documenting things like the handful of granola I grabbed as I walked past the pantry. (How do you even document that? How big a serving is a handful?) But I think it’s a good exercise because it’s making me a lot more thoughtful every time I shove something in my mouth (heh… that’s what she said).

And so far, it’s honestly been fine. I haven’t felt deprived at all. I’m staying well within my recommended daily calorie allowance, and I’m not starving. So it’s good. I figure that if I can stick with that ideal “lose 1 or 2 pounds a week” target, I should be down to my goal weight in about 4 to 6 months. It sounds daunting, but not nearly as daunting as it did when I was 265 pounds. Four to six months is nothing compared to that. It’s a drop in the proverbial bucket.

I’d really like to start working out too, but I can’t right now with my sinuses still all gunked up with this cold. Hopefully by the time my Vibram Five Fingers arrive in the mail, I’ll be over the majority of this cold and will be able to get started on my couch-to-5K again.

One thing that’s been on my mind a lot lately is how much of my mom’s body image issues I adopted as my own as I grew up. When I was little, I remember my mom always complaining about how fat she was, and she was maybe a size 8 or 10 at the time (so NOT fat in the slightest). I worry about passing those sorts of hang-ups on to my own daughter.

Catie in my winter hat

My plan is that if/when she asks me about my new eating habits (and I’m sure that she will, because the kid notices absolutely everything), to emphasize to her that this diet is so Mommy will be strong and healthy, and I will absolutely not say anything negative about my body in front of her (even though I might be thinking it). I just don’t want to put those types of ideas in her head. I don’t want her to internalize any of my own negativity or hang-ups.

pretty Catie with her flower

I never want her to think that she isn’t beautiful, just as she is.

Random stuff because I haven't blogged in a week

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1. Working full-time is kicking my ass. Hence the lack of posting. It’s good, I like the job a lot, and the people I work with are all great. It’s just that transitions are hard. I’ll get into a groove with it one of these days.

2. I’m trying to decide if I’m going to blog about my job and explain what it is I’m doing now. I wouldn’t mention the company by name, and I have nothing bad to say about any of the people I work with, so it’s probably fine, I just tend to be a little paranoid about those types of things.

3. I’m still sick. I caught Catie’s last cold, and while she managed to recover completely in about three days, I’m going on two weeks and still feel like crud. It’s not cool. I mean, the excuse to take copious amounts of NyQuil is nice, but that’s really the only perk.

4. My ribs, which I hurt falling down the stairs nearly three weeks ago? Yeah, they still hurt. Combined with the cold, I’m kind of a big whiny mess.

5. It’s Thursday and I still haven’t watched Tuesday night’s LOST, because I’ve just been that busy. This is practically unheard of.

6. Dave needs a haircut because he’s starting to look like Hugh Jackman in Wolverine. I mean, not with the metal talons or psychotic gaze or anything. Just the ridiculous volume of hair. I’m hoping that by mentioning it on my blog, I’ll shame him into going to get a damn haircut already. (Hi, honey!)

7. New Catie tricks (which we can entirely attribute to daycare because lord knows I didn’t teach her this): she’s trying to wipe her own butt and she’s flushing the potty herself. I know this is like the most boring child development update ever (unless you’re my mom), but it’s a pretty big deal around here.

8. Here’s a picture of a cute happy toddler until I can figure out what else to write about that won’t bore y’all to tears.

playing on the stairs

Happy almost-weekend!