Category Archives: Cate

pretty in purple

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I have a feeling that I’ll be doing a lot of these photo entries when I have nothing else to write about for NaBloPoMo. These are some that I took this morning, that I just think are insanely cute.

walking to the grocery store

Cate and I walked to Food Lion this morning for some groceries. We do this at least once a week, when we only need a few things from the store. Cate rides in the stroller, and I put everything in the bottom of the stroller to haul it home. She gets fresh air on our walk, I get some exercise, and it’s environmentally friendly. It’s a win-win-win situation.

Cate loves autumn

After we got home from the store, she ran around in the yard, enjoying the satisfying crunch-crunch-crunch of the leaves under her feet.

Cate loves autumn

Do you see all those leaves? Would you believe that I raked the yard TWICE last week, and it still looks like that? Our next-door neighbors have offered to lend us their leaf blower, probably less from a sense of generosity and more because they don’t want our leaves to end up in their yard. I never understood the purpose of a leaf blower before, but after trying to rake the yard myself multiple times per week and still not staying on top of it? Heck yeah, I’ll gladly borrow that leaf blower, thank you.

Cate loves autumn

But you know, I’ll worry about the yard later. Right now I want to go chase my baby around some more and listen to her fantastic laugh.

toddler excerpts from today

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1. Playing outside in the yard this morning, Cate walked over to my car and tried to open the driver’s seat door. I opened it for her, she climbed in and started pretending to drive. I know all kids probably do this at some point, but this was a first for us and it cracked me up. Then she saw herself in the vanity mirror, laughed and said, “It’s Catie!!” She doesn’t usually say that to the mirror (or identify herself in the third person), I guess she just wasn’t expecting the vanity mirror to be there.

2. She plays with her toy cell phone a lot, and usually she answers it with “hello?”, then she babbles for a while, and finally says, “ok, bye!” as she hangs up. That’s pretty much a dead-on impression of me on the phone. But after tonight, I’m thinking she has a career ahead of her as an impatient, bossy, high-powered CEO. Her toy cell phone rang, she flipped it open, and barked “WHAT?” into the receiver. Heck yeah, that’s my girl. For the record, I have no idea where that one came from. Yes, the robocalls over the past few weeks really did get on our nerves, but I swear that neither Dave nor I are ever that rude on the phone.

Later, she hit one of the buttons on her phone that played a pre-programmed message. It’s a recorded voice that says, “Hi there! Wanna come out to play?” Cate shrugged and said, “OK.” Totally nonchalant, just yeah, that’s cool, whatever.

3. Tonight after her bath, I brought her into Dave’s office to say goodnight. (Lest you think he’s slaving away working on Sunday night, rest assured that he wasn’t. He was watching TV.) On our way out, she waved and said, “Bye, Daddy! See you! Bah-duboo!” That last word right there is the closest we’ve gotten so far to an “I love you,” and I have to say, that was pretty awesome. I’m only a tiny bit jealous that she said it to Dave first.

biking with my baby

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I don’t have much to report, but since it’s NaBloPoMo, and my sister requested pictures of Cate in the bike trailer because she had no idea what a bike trailer was, here goes:

going out for a bike ride

Please ignore the mushroom head effect that my bike helmet gives me. And I don’t know what’s going on with my face, I seem to be baring my teeth more than smiling. Eh, they can’t all be great pictures, right?

going out for a bike ride

You can’t really tell because we weren’t moving yet, but she does like the bike a lot once we get going. Well, most of the time. Today she screamed the whole way home because she wasn’t ready to leave the playground when it was time for us to go – also probably because she didn’t get enough sleep last night and she was due for a nap. Her bike helmet is a little large on her (why on earth don’t they make helmets for kids younger than 3?), so at some point during her meltdown, she thrashed her head around and knocked her helmet forward so she essentially had blinders on. I had to stop to help her readjust; it was kind of hard not to laugh when she looked like a giant helmet with a nose and mouth underneath it.

When we got back from the playground, she took a nice long nap and has been sweet as pie ever since. We went to the grocery store, came home, played outside with the neighborhood kids, and made dinner. She even got in some cuddle time with her Daddy.

I put a spell on you, ka-zam!

It’s been a good day.

proud of us

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I can’t stop misting up today. I rewatched Obama’s acceptance speech online and it made me start crying all over again. I am so, so happy. I love that this is the first presidential election since Cate was born, and that as she grows up, she will never know a world in which an African-American can’t be President.

Since I was talking about contrasts yesterday, I noticed another one: I think it’s interesting that when I look at the status updates of my Facebook friends, they’re pretty evenly split. Most of my current friends, people who I’ve met and become friends with as an adult, were elated about Obama’s win. But I’ve also reconnected with a lot of people from elementary and high school on Facebook, people who for the most part still live in Mississippi, and who are generally extremely conservative. From them, I see them say that they’re disappointed, afraid, worried, “praying for our government,” “just sick about it,” etc. It’s strange to see the reactions in such stark opposites.

So just in case any of them read this blog, or to anyone else who’s worried for our future, let me just say: RELAX. I think regardless of who won, the next four years are going to be pretty rough. We have two wars going on, an economic crisis, an environment that’s steadily getting shot to crap, and a whole host of other problems. So it’d be a tough road no matter who the president happens to be. But I truly believe that you doubters will find that Obama will have a broad administration that incorporates the interests of both parties, unlike the Bush administration that has consistently catered to the Republican base, while essentially ignoring everyone else.

Now, I realize that the Republican base is going to be upset because they aren’t going to be pandered to anymore. And yeah, that sucks for them. But politics is a cycle. The pendulum swings one way, and it has to swing back the other way. That’s democracy, that’s fairness, and it’s one of many things that makes this country great.

So really, people who are freaking out about Obama taking away your guns or mandating gay marriage or whatever? Seriously, chill. It’s not going to happen. He’s going to have way bigger fish to fry once he gets in office. The people who are freaking out about socialism and taxes? Look, your taxes will only increase if you make more than $250K a year. And if you do make that much money, consider yourself blessed and quit bitching about having to go back to Clinton-era tax rates (which is all that’s going to happen; Obama wants to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the super-wealthy, not raise them to historic new levels).

Personally, my family makes a pretty good living, but like 95% of Americans, we’re under that $250K line, so we’ll actually get THREE TIMES the tax break that we would’ve gotten under McCain’s proposed tax plan. You won’t hear any complaints about that from me.

And if any conservatives are reading this and are still upset? Well, now you know exactly how I felt in 2004.

Catie hearts Obama
Cate loves both blue and red. Left and right. Democrats and Republicans. And most especially, she loves the Nabisco Corporation for their Saltines. Mmm.

biking for two

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I haven’t decided if I’m going to do the whole NaBloPoMo thing this year – a post a day for the month of November. I expect it’ll be hard since I’m going to Mississippi for the second half of the month (I’ll save that story for another post), but I’m going to give it a shot for now.

Our next door neighbors are awesome. First they loaned us the spider costume for Cate to wear on Halloween, and then when I was chatting with them about getting a bike trailer, they loaned me their old one, since both of their kids now ride two-wheelers. Score!

Today I took Cate to Target and bought her a bike helmet. It’s probably not necessary in the trailer since she’s buckled in and it’s pretty stable, but we’re trying to implement the rule that bikes = helmets, so we won’t have to fight about it later. I got her a red helmet with Sesame Street characters on it (of course “Melmo!” is her favorite), because it seemed gender-neutral, and I’m all about being able to re-use things for any future kids that we might have.

I fully anticipated Cate freaking out over the helmet, because she hates anything on her head. Hats and hoods? No way. So I planned ahead: I rounded up a couple of other neighborhood kids to ride with us (who of course all had their helmets on), I put on my helmet, strapped her into the trailer, and then put on her helmet at the last possible moment before I hopped on and started pedaling.

And yeah, she did scream for the first ten seconds, until she realized that we were moving, and then she started laughing and saying, “Whee!! It’s funny!!” (She hasn’t learned the difference between fun and funny.) We rode to the neighborhood playground, which is about a 15 minute walk but took no time at all on the bike, and she had a great time playing with the two boys who rode over there with us. On the way back, she didn’t object to the helmet at all, because she seemed to get that it meant she was going for a ride again.

I’m so excited that she enjoyed it, I think it’s going to give us some opportunities for more outings this fall, and of course more exercise for me. The downside is that with all the excitement, she only took a 15-minute nap today (in the car on the way home from Target), so she conked out at 6 p.m. tonight. I’m fully expecting her to wake up around midnight ready to play. Hmm.

boo!

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Behold, the itsy bitsy spider:

itsy bitsy spider

Trick-or-treating was so much fun. People in this neighborhood really go all out. We met up with some of the neighbors that we’ve made friends with, and our kids basically traveled as a mob around the neighborhood. Even some of the parents dressed up. One of the dads was a lumberjack, one of the moms was “Jane the Plumber” (with plunger), and another mom was Sarah Palin (complete with toy gun and a toy stuffed moose). Those last two would’ve been a lot funnier if they were Democrats and being ironic, but sadly, they’re both huge McCain supporters. So… eh.

Things started off great. We dressed her up and took her outside to play while it was still daylight outside, and she had a great time seeing everyone.

Pikachu, Cate, and McKenzie the pirate

See? Hanging with Pokemon and a pirate girl. Awesome!

Once we started trick-or-treating, though, she got freaked out really fast. She didn’t know what to make of all the noise and the action, plus being outside at night, which almost never happens. (Although we found out a new word in her lexicon when she pointed at the night sky and said, “it’s stars!” We looked for the moon but it was hidden behind some trees.) I think overall the poor kid was totally confused by the whole outing. There are a couple of boys in the neighborhood who she would normally hug, but she didn’t recognize them in their costumes, and she was scared of them when they came over to say hi to her. So we carried her around during most of the trick-or-treating part, and that was fine. I’m glad Dave came with me, so we could take turns carrying her (kiddo is HEAVY).

Oh, speaking of which: since all three of us went out trick-or-treating, I left a bowl of candy on the front stoop and left a note that said, “So that everyone gets some candy, please take only 3 pieces each. Thanks, and happy halloween!” I figured that probably the first kids that came along would empty out the bowl into their pillow case and that would be that. But everyone was really good and there was still some candy left when we got home, which surprised me. I guess most kids were out with their parents, who were probably supervising the candy pilfering.

We only lasted about an hour. We went to very few houses, mostly just the ones where we knew the people who lived there. Then we came home and answered the door for about 10,000 more trick-or-treaters. We almost ran out of candy, it was insane.

I tried to get a video of her in her costume, but she just wasn’t cooperating with the camera at all. This is the best I could do: it’s actually 2 separate videos merged together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK8efWzpwuA

Oh, I also found out that in our neighborhood, it’s apparently common to have “treats” for the adults, in the form of cocktails. I think that’s awesome, we’re totally doing that next time. I’ll whip up a big pitcher of pomegranate martinis or something like that and pass out plastic cups for the grown-ups. Although as Dave wisely pointed out, we’ll have to have a kid-friendly version too. That’s fine, I’m already looking forward to next year.

trick or treat

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Not much to report here, just that I absolutely cannot wait to take Cate trick-or-treating tonight. I don’t know if she’ll actually go up to people’s doors or not, but we’re going to let her run around with the other kids in the neighborhood, which should be fun. And I bought her a little trick-or-treating sack just in case she ends up getting some candy, even though I’m sure either Dave or I will end up carrying it the whole time. Actually, Dave and I will probably end up eating most of the candy too, since there’s very few things she can have that aren’t choking hazards. Mmm… candy.

I’ll try to have pictures up tomorrow. Happy Halloween, everybody!

P.S. Less than 100 hours until the polls start to close on Election Day. Yay!