Ok, we’re not actually in the ER anymore, but we’re in the medical unit at Children’s Hospital.

So it looks like Cate has asthma. Not sure if it’s going to be chronic (like Dave’s), or if it’s just something that’s going to be triggered by colds and viruses (like this first episode was). Poor kiddo has been absolutely miserable, but she’s doing a little better tonight, and hopefully we’ll be discharged tomorrow. Worst case scenario is Sunday.

More details as soon as we’re home, I just wanted to go ahead and throw out a little prayer/happy thoughts request before Dave goes home for the night and takes his laptop with him. He was going to stay here with us, but the little couch in the room only sleeps one. The nurses here are awesome, I’m sure we’ll manage ok without him. Although I’ve warned him that he better get his little tush back here early tomorrow.

Today, my baby girl is 14 months old. And to mark the occasion, the boogers are back with a vengeance. I had to check my old posts to see when the last time was that Cate got sick because I couldn’t remember. It was mid-February. That means we’ve gone over a month without being sick, which is a record this winter. (Yeah, I know, it’s technically spring, but it’s overcast and 40-something degrees, so it doesn’t feel very spring-y.) So I suppose I should be grateful that the colds are starting to become fewer and farther between. And yet… no, not so much grateful. Just hating the snot that makes my poor girl miserable.

I don’t know if it’s a real cold or just teething; I know that the last time one of her bottom teeth broke through, she got all snotty-nosed for a week, and then it dried up the day that the tooth broke through. I’m hoping that’s what it is – she has 3 teeth on the bottom, and the fourth one has been working its way to the surface for ages now. (Oddly, her top two teeth made an appearance with nary a sniffle.) So I’m crossing my fingers that it isn’t a real cold, because those seem to take ages to recover from. The last time she got a tooth, I knew that it wasn’t a real cold because in spite of the boogers, she was still in a good mood all the time. Now… well, it’s kind of hard to tell what’s going on with the frequent toddler meltdowns. It’s rough, I kind of want to give her a multiple choice quiz.

1. Hey kiddo, why so upset?
a.) I have a cold.
b.) My teeth hurt.
c.) I’m just being a toddler, you stupid bee-yotch.

Seriously, if she could just communicate what’s going on, it’d make it so much easier to handle. Well, that, plus being able to blow her nose. That would help tremendously.

Anyway, enough of the Sicky Talk, here are some baby milestones:

* Walking! She’s still only going a few steps at a time. Dave and I recently noticed that she can go a lot farther if we pretend like we aren’t watching her. When we’re watching, we freak out and applaud and get her all excited, so she starts to do her little bouncy dance, at which point she falls flat on her butt. But if we aren’t watching her, she concentrates on what she’s doing a little more, and she went a good 15-20 steps one time. (I was watching her in the reflection of the window, she didn’t see me.)

* More talking. She’s got at least a half-dozen names for the cats, and I only know a few of them (gitty, giggy, ba-ba, daggy & dabby – those last two are easy to confuse with daddy, but you can usually tell what she means by context). She also says “no,” complete with a head shake, dada/daddy, mama, “atsy” (for Patsy), Buddy (Patsy’s dog), and a couple of other things. My favorite is that when she’s eating, she makes the sign for “more” and says “muh.” That’s a pretty huge deal, since this is the first sign I’ve gotten from her. She doesn’t always use it correctly – a lot of times she’ll do it when she already has a mouthful of food. I usually answer her with, “yes, I just gave you more, that’s right.” Hopefully we’ll get the correct usage figured out soon.

* The tantrums are a pretty new thing, although really, the less said about them, the better. I’m sure that y’all don’t want to read about my baby screaming any more than I want to hear her scream myself.

* She’s starting to try a few new foods, which has been good. I have a feeling she’s going to go back and forth on this one a lot over the next few years, so I’m trying not to make a big deal out of it. Also, while we were in Raleigh, she learned how to drink out of a cup with a straw. I bought her some spill-proof straw cups when we got home (aside: the spill-proof claim? Lies. All lies.), and she really seems to like slurping her water out of them.

There’s some other stuff that I’m sure I’ve forgotten. Mostly, though, she’s just been awesome and fun, and I love getting to spend time with her every day.

Two events in the past 24 hours that are proving that Cate is becoming more and more of a toddler:

1.) I recorded “Monsters Inc.” when it came on Disney the other day because I thought she might like the animation. The scene at the beginning where they show the little boy asleep in his room? Cate laughed at it, until the monster showed up, and the boy opened his eyes and gasped in fear. Then she freaked out. I thought she was too little to be scared by movies, but apparently not. She was absolutely terrified, and it took a while to calm her down. I quickly turned off the movie – and erased it from the DVR, since obviously we won’t be watching it anytime soon. I thought it was a really cute movie, but I guess we can try it again in a few years, when she’s (much) older.

2.) This morning, she had a full-throttle, red-faced, real-tears-and-all temper tantrum. I had to set her down so I could get dressed, and I was trying to put her down with some of her toys and books to distract her. She turned her body all rigid, so I couldn’t sit her on the floor, so I was like, “ok, you want to be flat as a board, here you go,” and I lay her on the floor on her back. Hoo boy, the wrath. She screamed, sat up (still screaming), then threw herself forward so that she was lying on her stomach (again, still screaming). I actually had to turn away from her because the drama of it all was making me giggle.

It took less than a minute for me to change out of my pajamas and into my jeans and sweatshirt, and when I was done, I sat down next to her to wait for her to calm down. She didn’t. I pulled her into my lap. She kept screaming. I picked her up and stood up. More screaming. We went downstairs and turned on cartoons, and after screaming for a couple more minutes (you know, just for good measure), she settled down and was fine. Oy.

This is actually something that I’m having a hard time figuring out. Cate seems to want to be held and cuddled an awful lot of the time. On the one hand, I think it would be beneficial if I set her down more often so she can gain some independence, learn how to entertain herself, and just generally be more self-reliant. At the same time, it seems like maybe she wants to be cuddled because she’s feeling insecure, and I certainly don’t want to withhold any reassurance or love that she might need.

I’m not sure if the clinginess is a normal toddler development phase, if the need to cuddle is just part of her nature (since it seems like she’s always been this way), or if she’s feeling particularly insecure because she’s noticing all of the boxes and other various changes that are going on in the house. She acts the same way at Patsy’s house, at least as far as wanting to be held all the time, so it isn’t something that she’s turning on just for me. I’m just not quite sure how to handle it: be her personal pack mule, or plop her on the floor with some toys and let her learn to get over it. It seems like I’m going back and forth between the two a lot, which I worry is doing more harm than good.

Did anyone else have super-clingy babies? How did you deal with it so that they became strong, independent little people?

Since I mentioned getting a video of Cate walking in the last post, here it is. It’s only about 20 seconds, but this is about as good as she gets right now.

Note that “The Sound of Music” was on TV in the background, and you can hear the end of “My Favorite Things,” which I thought was appropriate, since her little smiling face is definitely number one on that list for me. (Although my mom pointed out that it would’ve been funnier if the song had been “Climb Every Mountain.” Heh.)

There are a few other videos of her walking with her toy car for support that I also uploaded, mostly for the grandparents, which you can see here if you want.

Cate’s been taking a few steps on her own here and there over the past few days. I have yet to be able to capture it on video, because even if I have the camera on me, by the time I turn it on and hit “record,” she’s already stopped. I have been able to get a couple of snapshots of her walking while pushing her car in front of her, though.

“Outta my way, coming through!”

She’s a little speed demon with the car, but when she walks by herself, she goes verrrry slow, with her arms out for balance. I think Shannon nailed it when she said that babies look kind of drunk when they first start to walk. The more Cate does it, the more I’m realizing that she looks an awful lot like me after I’ve been in the French Quarter for a couple of hours. (Hee!) Anyway, it’s really cute, and I hope to be able to get a video of it soon.

Speaking of videos, here’s a little rant about something that’s been bugging me. I get Parenting magazine every month. Somebody got a me a subscription when I was pregnant, I can’t remember who. One person gave me Parenting, and someone else gave me Parents. Both magazines are basically bathroom material that I toss in the recycle bin as soon as I’ve finished reading them.

Parenting magazine in particular drives me insane because their tagline on every cover is “What Matters to Moms.” Um, sorry? But isn’t the magazine called Parenting, and not Mothering? So dads don’t count as parents? Or maybe dads have better things to do with their time than read crap magazines that are mostly designed to make you feel like you’re doing everything wrong? (It’s a good technique, really. They strip down your self-confidence so that you think you need the “experts” in the magazine, who tell you to do the things that you already knew, if you only listened to your instincts.)

Anyway, they do these polls online every month and then post the results in the following month’s magazine. The most recent issue published the discussion on “Is it ok for parents to upload a video of their child on YouTube?” And you know, a whopping 63 percent of people said no, you shouldn’t post videos of your kids online. It seems that most people are under the impression that if you put a video of your kid online, you’re asking for them to be kidnapped and molested. WTF??

So, let’s see. There’s a blurry video of my kid on the Internet, with no indication of what city or state I live in, and that’s going to give a pedophile just the info they need to hunt her down and abduct her? How on earth do you make that mental leap? Is it just that people are ignorant as to how YouTube works, or do they really live in that much fear?

Most of the moms I know in the blogging world post both pictures and videos of their kids online all the time without thinking twice about it, so the fact that the vast majority of the moms in this poll came out against it kind of shocked me. Do any of y’all ever worry about this stuff? Because it honestly never crossed my mind. I mean, I don’t put naked pictures or videos of Cate online (although there is a few seconds of bare tush in the middle of this one), mostly because I don’t want her to be embarassed about it when she’s older. And yeah, I do realize there are perverts out there who look for that stuff, but really, the paranoia factor is waaaay down on my list of concerns.

Honestly, I find the whole polling thing in general irritating. It seems as if they’re trying to pick a fight between various groups of mothers. Like we don’t already have enough of that in the world: the stay-at-home versus the working moms, the breast-feeders versus the bottle feeders, etc. It’s just setting up additional conflict where none really needs to exist.

Oh, and hey, if you click over to check out the poll results, be sure to note next month’s topic: Should a woman be able to use fertility treatments to get pregnant if she already has kids? (Shannon, I’d really love it if you wrote in to rip them a new one on that issue.)

Ok, enough of that. Look, a cute picture of a baby with a totally inappropriate pop song title spelled out next to her head!

“Me likey the Justin Timberlake!”

Cate’s pediatrician told me that the average age for most kids to start walking is around 15 months. So I took that nugget of information and stored it away, but honestly, I was starting to get just a teeny-tiny bit worried about Cate’s lack of interest in walking. I knew she was fine, my only concern was because most of the babies I know in real life started walking before their first birthday.

The thing is, she can stand up without holding onto anything for ages. And she can even do her little bouncy dance while standing up, so she obviously has the balance issue down pat. She just wouldn’t move her feet forward, and oh my lord, if we tried to hold her arms and help her walk, she would freak out. She has a little ride-on car, which she won’t ride on, but lately she’s been walking while pushing it in front of her. So, you know, that’s progress, right?

Last night she took a couple of steps sideways – which I guess makes sense, since she “cruises” sideways all the time holding onto the coffee table or the sofa. That was pretty cool. Then later, I was sitting on the floor and she took two steps backwards so she could plop herself down in my lap. That was cool too.

Then tonight, we were hanging out in the living room watching “The Riches” [aside: OMG, I cannot tell you how happy I am that show is back on. Love it, love it, love it!], and Cate was making a mess of her snack rather than eating it. (Bad lazy parent that I am, letting her eat in the living room so I don’t have to peel myself away from the TV.) Suddenly, she let go of the coffee table and took about 5 or 6 steps forward. We thought for a second that maybe she didn’t even realize what she had done, but then she started to laugh, so obviously she did. She didn’t even fall down, she just stopped walking and stood there bouncing in place and laughing at herself.

Later when we were upstairs, she was standing up at her toy chest, and I grabbed her xylophone and moved it just out of reach. She took a couple of steps again so that she could reach it. Whaddya know, I think we might’ve just hit a major milestone. Yay!

“Or not. Whatever. Meh.”

(The new outfit is courtesy of her fabulously fashionable aunt Tracy, who requested photos of her wearing it. The only problem is that she was a huge crank this morning, so that was about as happy as she got for the photo session. Looks like these toddler years are going to be a laugh a minute.)