Category Archives: Cate

over-overwhelmed

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I have about five or six pieces of paper floating around with various to-do lists written on them, so today I decided to get all organized and type up everything in a Word document. And can I just say? Holy crap, I have a lot that I need to do. I don’t know if the word “overwhelmed” even begins to cover how I’m feeling right now.

I feel like I’ve either been on the phone or meeting with various contractors all week for the ridiculous number of things we have to do to fix this place up (per the inspection report), and I’m wiped out. Oh, and something is blooming right now that is causing me some major allergy issues. So I’m trying to negotiate with contractors while on massive amounts of antihistamines. Good times.

So hey, should I lighten the mood away from my current state of anxiety and panic, and give you some fun baby updates? Sure, why not!
* Cate’s getting really good with names. She knows all the kids at daycare, and yesterday when we were leaving, I told her to say bye-bye to Patsy. She said, “Bass-y, bye!!” (That “P” sound eludes her sometimes. Oh well, we know what she means.)

* She figured how to go down the stairs. It sort of freaked me out at first, but now I let her do it for practice, as long as I’m right there to catch her in case she slips. But she basically lies on her stomach and backs down the steps, the same way that she goes up. Smart girl.

* The food texture issues seem to be starting to let up a little bit. The other day she actually touched a slice of banana and fed it to herself. Y’all probably don’t know how huge this is, but trust me, it’s big. She’s always been totally grossed out by anything with a vaguely squishy texture. She might eat it, but only if you put it in her mouth for her. So the fact that she’s decided that maybe she can stand to touch a non-crunchy food item is a pretty major milestone for us.

Oh, one other happy thing: while I was typing this, I got a phone call from Cat, and I think we might’ve found a house in Raleigh. Keep your fingers crossed. Yay!

ode to Patsy

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I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I absolutely love Cate’s daycare. I feel like we were really blessed to find Patsy. I was so worried about starting back to work and leaving my pweshus widdle baybeee with someone else, and I had all of the stereotypical Mommy Guilt issues about abandoning my child and all of that. But Patsy just made it so easy for us. Don’t get me wrong, Cate took a while to warm up to her, like she does with everyone. She’s a very cautious little girl who takes her time in adjusting to new situations. Leaving her at daycare the first few times was awful. She would scream and cry, and I would have to leave, because staying to comfort her would’ve only made it worse. Patsy was great, she’d call me five or ten minutes later so I could hear Cate laughing and having fun, and I’d know that she was fine.

As time went on, the adjustment got even easier. Cate now reaches for Patsy to take her out of my arms as soon as we get there. And half the time, if she’s busy playing when I arrive to pick her up, she ignores me and keeps on playing. (Although there are days when she’s obviously had enough and is ready to go home. That happens when I arrive and she starts saying “bye” to everyone before I even get her shoes on her feet.)

But also, I just really love Patsy. She’s had this in-home daycare business since her son was two years old (he just graduated from college), so she’s seen it all. I’d be willing to bet that she knows more than practically every childcare book combined. If Cate is showing some weird behavior patterns that I can’t figure out, I can usually bounce it off Patsy and she can give me some ideas on what it is or how to handle it. She’s so easy to talk to, she’s so non-judgmental, and I’ve never heard her raise her voice to the kids, ever. She’s just awesome.

Yesterday when I went to pick Cate up from daycare, Patsy told me that she had met with a parent that day, and that she already has a new baby lined up to take Cate’s spot after we move. I almost burst into tears on the spot.

Logically, I know that there are a lot of really great daycare providers out there, I just worry that I won’t find anyone in Raleigh that I’m as comfortable with, or who Cate and I both just flat-out adore as much as Patsy.

This move is mostly a really happy thing for us, and we’re really excited about it. But I have to be honest and say that there’s a heck of a lot of fear mixed in too. What if we don’t like it there? What if only one of us likes it and the other one doesn’t? What if it doesn’t turn out to be the financial life raft that we think it’s going to be?

And perhaps most of all, how will Cate adjust? She’ll be 18 months old when we get there, and I imagine that throwing her into a new daycare situation will be a lot harder than it was when she was only 8 months old. The last thing in the world I want to do is be like, “Ok, kiddo, I know we just up-ended your world completely, but here’s another new and totally unfamiliar environment. Mama’s gotta go now, see you later!” I think that would traumatize her.

I’ve decided that after we move, I’m going to keep Cate home with me as long as it’s feasible (assuming I’m not in the middle of a work project, but right now there’s nothing on my calendar for the rest of the summer, so that shouldn’t be a huge issue). I might hire a baby-sitter to come to our house for just a few hours here and there to help us get by, and that will give me time to explore other options. Hopefully, if I give us a nice big window of time to adjust, we’ll be able to find a daycare that we love almost as much as Patsy. Fingers crossed.

random stuff

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1. We survived our house inspection yesterday, although we don’t really know the upshot of it. We heard back from our realtor that the major things we needed to be forewarned about are (a) a leak in the roof over the garage, which we wouldn’t have noticed because it’s way up in the eaves, but we’re going to have to get it fixed, and (b) “signs of rodent activity” in the crawlspace under the house. Which is apparently true of pretty much every house out here – I mean, hello, we’re in the boonies, of COURSE there are field mice everywhere. But they’ve done some damage to the insulation down there, so we’ll have to get that fixed too. But overall, it doesn’t sound like there are any humongous expenses that are going to come out of it. Which is great news.

2. The buyers’ realtor told us that she could use a barn cat or two, so she offered to adopt Cleo & Greta. I think that would work well for Greta, but Cleo is really a mostly-indoor cat. She only likes to go out when it’s really warm, and she’s not much of a hunter at all. So it might end up that we separate them and try to find another home for Cleo, which I didn’t want to do, but as long as I can find places where they’ll both be happy, I guess that’s all that really matters. Dave thinks that Greta would be really happy as a barn cat, since she isn’t very social at all, and she’s great at killing small things. Maybe he’s right. Anyone want to adopt Cleo? She’s a super-sweet cuddler and she’s got those awesome paws with “thumbs” (6 toes) that make her look like a little ballet dancer.

3. Even though we’ve technically sold the place, we had another showing this morning. Apparently this guy was bummed to hear that we had sold the house and asked his realtor to make an appointment so he might have a chance to make us a counter-offer. Hmm. Yeah, ok. I’m not holding my breath, and I’m fine with the offer that we got. I was mostly just annoyed that I had to clean up the house again for this guy to come see the place.

4. I think Cate is getting her molars. She has a runny nose, which initially made me think it was a cold, but she’s also been drooling like crazy and trying to shove her entire hand in her mouth. Poor baby, she really seems to be pretty miserable. And she woke up about once an hour last night, so neither of us is what you might call “well-rested” today.

5. My amazing cousin Cat and Cara (the lovely realtor that Cat & Tony introduced us to) are going to act as our representatives in North Carolina and go find us a rental house this Friday afternoon. I’ve told them that I’m relying on their fabulous tastes to make sure we get a nice place. Whee!! I can’t wait!

Cate's first sentence, for real this time

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There’s a little 7 year-old girl who goes to daycare at Patsy’s house a couple of days a week after school. Her name is Faith, and Cate adores her. The feeling is absolutely mutual; I’ve noticed since Cate was born that babies are like crack for little girls from the age of 5 to about 12 or so. Faith is no exception, she wants to carry Cate around and play with her all the time. It actually took a long time before Cate allowed that. Faith was a little too up-in-her-grill at first, and Patsy had to teach Faith some boundaries, but they worked through it and now they are best buddies. It’s gotten to the point that on the days when Faith is at daycare? Cate basically ignores me when I arrive to pick her up because she’s having too much fun playing with Faith.

So, it wasn’t really surprising that yesterday afternoon, Cate happened to be looking out Patsy’s front window, saw Faith get off the bus, and announced, “Here comes Faith!”

I kid you not. I wish I’d been there to hear it, but Patsy swears that’s exactly what she said. Other stuff that’s come up recently:

* I know I mentioned this before, but she knows that the kitty-cat says meow. Granted, every animal we name also says meow, but who cares? Animal sounds!

* As for the actual animals, she knows kitty, doggy, horsey, birdie, and bunny. I haven’t gotten her to say “cow” yet, everytime we visit the cows across the street, she calls them horseys. (Eh, they’re both really large mammals who hang out in fields all day, right? Close enough.)

* She loves Johnny & The Sprites, perhaps even more than she loves My Friends Tigger & Pooh. (I like it because I kind of dig the music; it’s surprisingly good for a kids’ show, I think because the whole show is done by people who do a lot of Broadway work.) If she gets cranky, and I say, “Hey Catie, wanna go watch Johnny?” She’ll start screaming, “Shonny! Shonny!” She stomps her feet and dances around in a circle during the opening credits, it’s hilarious. I’m going to have to get a video of that at some point.

* She knows the sign for “more” and she says it at the same time that she signs it. Especially when we’re eating strawberries. (Yum.)

* This morning she was in her high chair eating some Cheerios, and she pointed at the refrigerator and said, “Mehk!” Then she did this weird combo sign that she’s been doing for the past few days – basically, it’s the sign for milk, but she does it up against her mouth (because she wants to put the milk in her mouth, of course) so it looks like she’s drumming her fingers on her lips. Took me forever to figure out what the heck she meant by that.

* She says “hi” and “bye” to everyone, but because she repeats back what we say to her, most of the time she says “hi, baby” and “bye, baby.” So it’s pretty funny when we’re leaving in the morning and she says “bye, baby,” to her daddy. Sort of like she’s a cool 60’s hipster, very Austin Powers-ish. Yeah, baby!

I’ve heard about the “language explosion” that happens during the second year, and it seems like we’re right at the very beginning of that. And seriously? It is blowing my mind. My child can TALK. She understands what we say, and she responds. It is the weirdest, coolest thing in the world, and I love it.

for your amusement

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Cate is sporting a stylish new ‘do today:

rockin' a new 'do

Yes yes, I’m a horrible mother. I can’t help it, I think it’s cute. And her hair has been so shaggy lately, I just wanted to get it out of her face for her.

You know, I’m pretty sure that my sister and I both wore our hair like this in the 80’s. On purpose.

I'm officially scared of dogs now

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Poor Cate has had a rough day today.

We had a house showing at noon (another couple who came back for a second time; cross your fingers that’s a good sign), so we took Cate to the park right at what should have been her naptime. Brilliant idea, no?

There was a dog at the park whose owners (a group of older kids) insisted he was friendly, and I pet him and tried to slowly introduce Cate to him. She reached her hand out to touch his nose. Before she got there, he bit her. There was no damage at all, I couldn’t even find a single tooth-dent on her, but it scared the bejeezus out of her (and us too, to be quite honest). The kids who owned the dog had been very friendly with Cate and they were so upset about it because I don’t think they’d ever seen the dog do that before, so I couldn’t get mad at them. I think the dog just didn’t know how to react to a toddler, and he was warning her to back off, which is why he didn’t bite her hard at all. After the initial “holy crap my baby’s entire HAND was in that dog’s mouth” shock wore off and I realized she was just freaking out because she was scared and not hurt, we distracted her and she was fine. But we thought it was probably a good idea to leave the park soon afterward, to avoid another incident.

We still had some time to kill before we were allowed to go home again (the showing was from noon to 1:00), so we went to the grocery store. Again, remember that this is in the dead-middle of naptime? Yeah. Great idea there. She started to have a meltdown almost immediately, and we caved in and tried to bribe her with a cookie from the bakery department, but it didn’t really help that much. We grabbed the stuff on our list and got the heck out of there. Poor kiddo fell asleep in the car, didn’t wake up when I moved her out of the car seat or when I put her in her crib, and slept for another 3 hours.

When she woke up, we went outside to play, and she fell on the gravel part of our driveway and skinned her knee. Ouch. Like I said, rough day. Not that you’d know it for the most part, she’s been pretty ok this evening, all things considered.

laughing at the birds overhead

Sorry, baby. We’ll try to make sure tomorrow is more fun.

P.S. Today when we were visiting our horse friend across the street, I asked Cate what the horsey says. She said, “meow.” Ok, not the right animal sound at all, but I wasn’t expecting her to say anything even close to an animal sound, so I was ridiculously excited. I told Dave, and he was like, “Oh, you didn’t know she did that?” Nice.

Cate's first sentence

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This morning, she announced:

“I BE SAVED!!”

Apparently we’re raising a born-again Christian. Dave and I are very worried.

I promise you, though, the second she starts talking about what a great president Bush is, we’re going to find some sort of toddler-brainwashing camp and send her there.