Category Archives: Cate

do I sound defensive? Or normal? (And do I even want to know the answer to that?)

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Yesterday rocked my world in good ways and bad.

The Good
I woke up grouchy and decided to lie in bed for a while. When I finally dragged my butt downstairs, I found that Dave had cleaned up the house. All by himself, without my asking. THEN, he went out to run errands and took Catie with him so I could have some quiet time alone. And when they came home, the two of them brought me flowers. Which was Dave’s idea, but he let Catie pick them out. Her response when he suggested it? “Yeah, that’s a great idea! Flowers make Mommy happy!”

I seriously started to wonder if he’d been replaced by some type of cyborg husband by the end of the day, but I decided not to question it. Because my cyborg husband rocks.

The Bad
I got an email from Catie’s daycare provider that she’s worried that Catie has Sensory Processing Disorder (a disorder on the autism spectrum). I realize that it must’ve been very hard for her to write that email, because it’s got to be very awkward to discuss this sort of thing with parents, but still. Even knowing that, my initial reaction upon reading it was, “You think there’s something wrong with my precious little baby? ROAARR, MAMA BEAR ANGRY!!!!”

And I think I can say with absolute certainty that Catie does not have SPD, but I do think her behavior at daycare is very different than her behavior at home. These are the things that Nicole has observed while Catie is at daycare:

1. She doesn’t engage in imaginative play or seem to want to get involved in playing with other kids. This is COMPLETELY opposite of how she is at home. She is constantly running up to me and saying, “Mommy, you Dorothy! I Toto!” Earlier tonight it was, “You mama cow, I baby cow.” And when she’s playing with her toys, they have entire storylines that they act out.

And as far as getting involved with other kids, she interacts with her cousin Elizabeth when they play, so I know the ability is there. And I have seen her run up to a random kid she doesn’t know and say, “Hi, little girl! Wanna play wif me?” I’m not so much worried about her social development.

2. Her fine motor skills seem underdeveloped. Yes, this is a problem. This is also almost entirely my fault. I haven’t taught her how to use a spoon to feed herself because I hate messes and I’m lazy. So I feed her & save myself the clean-up. Yes, it’s bad, and we’re working on it. I guess it’s the curse of being an only child, I still think of her as a baby, so I don’t push her to try to do all the major self-sufficient things (like dressing herself).

3. She has issues with food textures. Yeah. She does. So does Dave. She’s getting a lot better about it – like, she’ll actually pick up a PB&J sandwich now – so I’m not terribly worried about it.

4. She freaks out at the playground. This is true. She doesn’t like swings, or slides, or any of it. I don’t get it at all, honestly. Maybe it’s because she feels out of control? When my in-laws were here, her Grandpa Roger wrapped her up in a blanket and swung her around in it like a hammock, then lay it flat and dragged her all over the house like she was on a magic carpet, and she loved that and couldn’t get enough of it. So… I don’t know. That one’s a big question mark.

5. She often seems to be on the verge of crying, and can get set off into tears at the drop of a hat. This confuses me, because it is SO opposite of how she is at home. And it would make me worry that maybe this daycare isn’t a good fit for her, except that she acts like she loves it and asks me every day, “I go to Miss Nicole’s house today?” And she gets mad if it’s not a daycare day. So, maybe it’s that only going two days a week isn’t enough for her to really get comfortable acting like herself there? Or maybe Nicole is trying to engage her in some activity that she’s not interested in, and rather than protest, she’s trying to be on her best behavior, so she’s just sort of disengaging and acting sad/pouty? I don’t get that one at all.

So, after I read and re-read her email a few times (and calmed down), I think that if these things were symptomatic of Catie’s behavior all the time, then it absolutely would be cause for concern, so I understand why she brought it to my attention. But I think – and after talking with Catie’s pediatrician about it today, I’m even more certain – that it’s less likely a sensory disorder, and more likely a major case of anxiety. Which I’ve long suspected. And lord knows it runs in her family, on both sides.

The problem is, I don’t know how much you can do for anxiety in toddlers. It’s not like they make pediatric Xanax, and she’s too young to talk to a therapist about her feelings. So I think we just have to keep doing what we’re doing, which is:
1. Reassure her constantly, and
2. Praise her like crazy when she tries something outside of her comfort zone.

stylin' girl

Personally, I think she’s going to be fine. I mean, girls with that kind of fashion sense can’t possibly go wrong.

the Almost-3's

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Catie is in this phase that… well, I don’t really know what phase it is. It’s not quite the Terrible Twos anymore. It’s more the Obnoxious Almost-Threes. So much of her is fun and delightful and wonderful (I mean, did you see this video?), and she makes us laugh like nothing else. But then there’s this other side, that drives me absolutely up the damn wall.

showing off her clean mouth after brushing her teeth

She’s starting to show this attitude, and I don’t really know where it came from, but I would very much like for the rudeness to stop, thank you very much. She’s good about saying “please” and “thank you” (although we sometimes have to prompt her for it), but then there’s this other stuff that just blows my mind.

For example, the other night she didn’t want to sit and eat at the table at dinnertime. She threw herself on the floor and had a screaming fit instead. Which is similar to the Terrible Twos, except that her complaints are much more articulate now (“No! No dinner! I watch Yoke-yoke [Pinocchio]!”). When I informed her that she could either sit and eat her dinner or she could go to time-out, she opted for time-out. I waited the requisite two minutes, then went and asked her if she was ready to come eat dinner. She still refused, so I said, “Ok, you can come sit with us whenever you’re ready.” And I left. She sat in her time-out spot and pouted.

A few minutes later, Dave called from the table, “Catie, would you like to come eat dinner now?” Her response: “No, I too busy right now.” Seriously. Apparently her pouting schedule was so jam-packed that she couldn’t possibly make time to squeeze a meal in there. Ok then.

check out the HAIR

And yes, her mile-wide stubborn streak does in fact come directly from me. My mother makes a point of reminding me of that at every possible opportunity.

Then there is the small issue of her energy level.

Y’all, kids this age are exhausting. She goes non-stop every minute that she’s awake. She is a force of nature. She sucks all the air out of the room. She is impossible to ignore. She’s the reason I’m both excited and terrified to have another baby, because God help me if I have another one exactly like her. I don’t know if I can survive another two year-old that requires this much of my constant attention.

running at bedtime

And the sleep? Ok, when I joke about how whenever we have a second baby, God owes me a good sleeper? That is so not a joke. I hear all these stories from my friends, whose kids who go to bed at 8 p.m., and I kind of want to laugh and cry at the same time. If Catie is in bed before 10:30 p.m., we do a happy dance. Usually it’s after 11. Then she wakes up sometime around 7 a.m. This means that if I fall asleep at the exact moment that she goes to bed, I might get 8 hours of sleep. But somehow it never works that way. Because I always have to wash dishes and brush my teeth and all that other stuff before I can go to bed myself.

And honestly, I’m at a loss as far as what to do. Do I start cutting her nap shorter? Right now it’s the only two hours of peace-and-quiet “me time” that I get each day, so I’m hesitant to do that. If I let her skip her nap altogether, she’s asleep by 6 p.m., and then she wakes up at least 4-5 times during the night because her sleep schedule is all confused, so that’s definitely not worth it.

Do I try to cut all sugar out of her diet to see if maybe that’s what’s making her so hyper? And is it even possible to cut sugar out of a toddler’s diet? Seriously, I will take whatever advice any of you might have on this one. Because, seriously, I AM TIRED.

But of course, there’s also this.

morning after Halloween

And you know, she’s pretty freaking awesome. And I wouldn’t trade her for the world. Really.

But I’d be lying if I said I don’t look forward to the day she whines about wanting to sleep until noon on the weekends.

leetle peeg, leetle peeg, let me in

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We’re having a lot of fun with the in-laws, except for the fact that Dave and I seem to have come down with whatever cold Catie had last week. So we wake each other up coughing all night, and I’m losing my voice. Good times.

Of course, this is in keeping with our tradition that it is impossible for my in-laws to come for a visit and not be felled by some sort of plague or accident. Seriously. Let’s recap:
1.) Their first visit, December 2007 – we all came down with the flu.
2.) Second visit, December 2008 – Catie wound up in the hospital with a major asthma episode.
3.) Third visit, March 2009 – My mother-in-law fell in the grocery store & wound up in the ER with a concussion.

So, you know, by comparison, Dave and I being sick is not a huge deal. It could be worse. Lord knows it has been in the past.

But, since I’m feeling cruddy and hacking up a lung here, let me leave you with this (short, less than a minute) video of Catie telling the story of the 3 Little Pigs. Because it cracks me up everytime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLXTLI0otYw

You can also hear just how awful my voice is. It’s totally hot, right? Blargh.

Halloween round-up

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Forgive the quick entry, I only have a few minutes to type this up.

1. My in-laws are coming today! Catie is super-excited and keeps saying, “Grandma and Grandpa Roger are coming to see ME!” With her hand pressed to her chest for extra “ME!” emphasis. Yes, sweetie, they are. And now excuse Mommy while she panics and tries to clean the whole house from top to bottom.

2. I’m not doing NaBloPoMo this year. I thought it was fun in previous years, but with the visit from my in-laws and my entire family coming for Thanksgiving, there’s just no way on earth that I’m going to have time.

3. Halloween was so much fun! We went over to Cat & Tony’s neighborhood so the kids could trick-or-treat together. Catie had so much fun getting to hang out with her cousins, I think she’ll be talking about it until next Halloween.

And since I have to get to my last-minute frantic clean-up-a-thon, here are some of my favorite pictures from Halloween. The whole set is here.

Catie the dinosaur

Elizabeth the cowgirl & Catie the dinosaur

this picture makes me laugh every time I look at it

Elizabeth as a cowgirl riding a unicorn

Trick-or-Treat

Elizabeth in her chariot-wagon, Catie running alongside

Hey, Orkut? You suck.

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Fair warning: prepare to be outraged.

I don’t know how many of y’all who use Flickr have had this problem, but here’s the thing. Occasionally I get people who add me as their contact who speak very little English, and who have no pictures available in their photostream. If I ignore it, a couple of days later, I’ll get a Flickr message like this (honest to God, I’m copying & pasting one of the emails I’ve gotten):

Catie I found very beautiful, and I can use the photos of her. Please think well. The Catie is the most perfect little girl that I ever knew, I am photographer.
I found this very beautiful little girl, and in my opinion should be a model. She is simply nice, beautiful, sweet … I would like to know her better, and thus allowing me to use the photos of his daughter.
Many people use the photos of her daughter in ORKUT, if you want I can help it.
Kisses, good week and good night.
-name removed-

The first time I got one of these, I wondered what the hell Orkut was, so I did some investigating. Turns out, it’s a social networking site, sort of like Facebook or MySpace, but the users are predominantly in Brazil and India. It’s run by Google, and appears to be a legitimate website from what I can tell.

So, whenever this comes up, I always respond that NO, you may NOT use the photos of my daughter, and then I block them so they can’t see my Flickr pictures anymore. Lately, I’ve been even more proactive: if someone adds me as a contact and they have a vaguely foreign-sounding name and nothing in their photostream? I block them. No questions asked, they’re just gone.

Then, the other day I got an email from someone on Flickr with a link to a profile on Orkut. I followed the link and found this.

WTF?!?!!
(Click to enlarge.)

Somebody set up an account, claiming that they’re me, using my daughter’s picture as their profile pic, and acting all outraged that people are using Catie’s pictures on Orkut. And they add that “Bianca and Daph” (who??) are the only people authorized to use Catie’s pictures. What the ever-loving eff?!?!!

First, I reported this person to Orkut for identity theft. Then I started doing some investigating. Orkut is sort of like Facebook in that you can post a message called a “scrap” (sort of like writing on someone’s wall in FB). I left a message that was borderline hysterical, sort of “who the hell is this? You’re using my daughter’s picture and acting as though you’re me online? TAKE THIS PICTURE DOWN IMMEDIATELY OR I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND ARRRRGGGGHHH HULK SMASH!!!” Or, you know, something to that effect. I’m pretty sure I dropped an f-bomb. (Which probably has less effect on someone who speaks poor English.)

This is the response I got.

No I have not got it very badly and I really apologize, is that I see many people using photos of her daughter Catie and I decided to do this to stop using his daughter, if you are aware already found 5 girls who wore the daughter and she stopped using because I asked, even though I did wrong I have done something right, sorry about that

So… you’re just pretending to be me in order to protect my kid? Um, sorry, but NO. If you think someone is doing something unseemly with pictures of a stranger’s child, wouldn’t you, I don’t know, try to CONTACT the parent of the child whose pictures are being used illicitly? Maybe?

I took this screenshot & posted it on Flickr, and the person immediately contacted me and asked me to remove it. HELL NO, jackass. I responded and said that I would not be removing it because I wanted to warn the other parents I know to be on the lookout for this. Meanwhile, the profile appears to have been removed, so yay for that, I guess.

So, now I’m left with questions:
1. Why on earth would anyone have any interest in these pictures? It’s not as though they’re naked pictures of her that could be construed as p0rnographic. I don’t post anything like that. What’s the motivation for this? A quick search on Flickr shows that I am definitely not the only one having this problem. But why? What’s the purpose? Do I need to be worried that some Brazilian child sex ring is going to come to North Carolina looking for my daughter? (That’s what my mom thinks. She advised me to shut down my Flickr account AND my blog when she heard about this. And Mom, I love you, but no.)

2. What do I do now? I don’t want to set my Flickr account private, because then I won’t be able to use the pictures on my blog. How do I keep this from happening in the future? Do I stick a watermark on my photos? Would that even help? I mean, if they’re going to steal so blatantly, I doubt a watermark would be much of a deterrent.

3. How do I use my tiny little space on the Internet to try to make this stop? I doubt I can make huge websites like Flickr or Google listen to me. I’d love it if Flickr had some sort of option to block incoming links, so I could have an option that blocks anybody who’s clicking over from Orkut. But I doubt they’re going to make a major site design overhaul based on the complaints of a few people. So, what to do? I know some of y’all are way more clever than I am with this type of thing. If you have any ideas, please share them.