Category Archives: Cate

time bomb go kaboom

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That BabyLax stuff really works. Holy god, does it ever.

It kicked in about 2 minutes after we used it – I had enough time to get Cate’s diaper back on, and then I picked her up so that she was up against my chest (the doc said to keep her upright, since gravity can help). She bit into my collarbone as hard as she could and screamed the whole time. It was awful, I felt so bad for her being in so much pain and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

And for the record, the poop that came out was bigger than the poops that Kris’s 35-pound dog creates. And totally solid. Poor baby.

Of course, I’m only blogging about this so someday she can read it and be mortified that I wrote about her bowel movements on the Internet. Hee. Mama’s gotta get some kind of payback for all of the worry and torment that she puts me through, right?

ticking time bomb

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Ok, I know every mom in the world has a list of things that they never knew about themselves before their babies were born. Here’s mine:

1. I can, in fact, push another human being out of my body and not die.

2. I will wipe boogers off of my baby’s nose without even flinching. In fact, the first time I did it was when I realized that I really am a mother because I didn’t hesitate or gag or anything.

3. Another person’s bowel movements will occupy way more of my brain space than I ever thought possible.

Which is why I am currently freaking out, because certain little babies in my house have not pooped since Friday. This means we are on Day 5 of No Poops. I’ve tried everything I can think of. I’m feeding her fruit like there’s no tomorrow (even pureed prunes!), I’ve added a little sugar to her bottles of formula, and nothing. It’s getting to the point where she cries every time she toots because she’s in pain.

I talked to the pediatrician’s office this morning (who I keep referring to as the vet, because I am insane), and they gave me a couple of options. The first involved the words – disguised for Google freaks – “an@l mass@ge.” Which, can I just say, yikes. The second involves a product called BabyLax. Sort of like a teeny-tiny enema. I’m sure that’s going to be fun for everyone involved.

Wish me luck, because Cate is supposed to go to daycare tomorrow, but I can’t possibly leave her there if she’s still in her current state.

P.S. Since this whole post has been all about my baby’s hind parts, I would also like to add that Costco generic diapers are the work of the devil. They leak and they don’t pull the moisture away from her, so she has diaper rash for the first time in her life. Unfortunately, I still have well over 100 of them left in the box. I’m thinking I might call it a loss, drop them off at a women’s shelter or something, and go back to name brand diapers. [/end indignant consumer rant]

hypothetical quandary

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Say you’re in a relatively family-oriented restaurant – like, oh I don’t know, Outback Steakhouse. Just as an example. And say you have a 7 1/2 month-old baby with you. She’s hanging out in her high chair, and she’s being a bit loud, but it’s all happy baby yelling, she isn’t crying or anything like that. You’ve given her some toys to play with, and a spoon to bang on the table, so all is relatively well. Plus it’s not even 5:00 in the evening, so you figure that it’s probably ok to have a loud baby with the early dinner crowd, since most other patrons also have very small children with them.

When the server brings you your food, he offers you animal crackers for the baby. She’s never had them before, but hey, she eats Cheerios, so it’s more or less the same texture and consistency, right? You think you’ll just break them up into Cheerio-size pieces and all will be well.

The baby is getting fussy in her high chair, and you’ve managed to wolf down half of your dinner, so you set it aside and sit the baby in your lap and let her play with the animal cracker pieces. She tries unsuccessfully to eat them a few times. Finally, she gets a piece in her mouth. Then she starts to make a gagging face. You and your spouse suddenly realize that this baby is about to blow chunks from here to kingdom come. You have about two seconds to make a choice:

A) Aim her toward the inside of your booth, so the other restaurant patrons will be spared the sight of the barf spray. This would seem the courteous thing to do for folks who are trying to eat, however keep in mind that should you choose this option, it means that your fancy-shmancy diaper bag that you love will also be covered in baby barf. (And the bag is open, so… yeah. Lots o’ mess.)

B) Aim her out and toward the floor. In this case, other people will witness the barf, but clean-up will be minimized. There’ll be less barf on yourself and the baby, and it would seem to be easier for the restaurant people to mop a section of the floor than to have to get inside a booth.

Which would you choose?

For the record, I chose B. I think Dave was horrified that I didn’t choose A, but you know, the two tables closest to us both had babies with them, and I thought they were sympathetic. (Ok, maybe not the people with the newborn, but whatever. They’ll learn.) Cate was already sitting on the side of my lap that was closest to the outside of the booth, and I didn’t know if I would have time to maneuver her toward the inside of the booth before VomitWorks 2007 started. It’s certainly not like I had time to run her outside or to the ladies’ room, which would’ve been ideal.

I apologized about a hundred times to the wait staff who came over to help us clean up, and I way over-tipped to compensate for the grossness. I felt really bad about it, but I didn’t know what else to do.

So am I a horrible person for potentially ruining a few people’s appetites in exchange for not ruining my bag? It sounds awful when I phrase it like that, but it all happened so fast, I honestly didn’t have time to think it out that much.

Also, option B doesn’t mean that you won’t get any barf on you, it just means that there’ll be slightly less barf. So if you’ll excuse me, I have to go take a shower right this second, and everything I’m wearing has to go in the washer immediately. Yuck.

my mobile baby

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Today was Cate’s first day at daycare, which I have to say was far less traumatic than I was expecting. For me, anyway. According to Patsy, Cate had a few meltdowns during the day, but she also took a couple of naps while she was there, she enjoyed playing with the other kids, and she loved Patsy’s cats (which I kind of figured, since she loves ours). So it all went much smoother than I anticipated.

As for me, it was kind of amazing to have a few hours to myself in the house to do nothing but clean. You can get so much done when there isn’t a tiny person shrieking for you to pick them up every five minutes! The entire upstairs is cleaned and pretty much child-proofed. (Is there a way to child-proof a litter box? Anyone? Help?) The first floor still needs some work, but I’m saving that for when Cate goes back to daycare next week. But as nice as it was to get so much work done, I missed my little munchkin like crazy, which is bizarre since we were only apart for six hours.

When we got home, I made a video of Cate crawling. I know it might seem kind of weird to film her in the bathroom, but it has some of the best lighting in the whole house, plus she crawls better on the linoleum (I guess it’s easier to slide on than carpet?), and for a little extra motivation, Teenie was there and just hanging out as a big beacon of furriness for her to crawl toward. Worked like a charm.

(Warning to Angie: this video combines babies and animals. Your head may explode.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJMnaFh8gy8

birthday lift-off

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Today is Dave’s birthday. I normally make a big huge stink about birthdays, but not so much this year, mostly due to budget constraints, but also because I’m too tired to plan much of anything. He knows I haven’t forgotten since I keep whispering thirty-six to him, over and over, just to drive him crazy. (His usual response is to call me 32, which, whatever dude, some of us still have a few months left until our birthdays. So there.)

Cate, however, gave Dave his birthday gift last night: she crawled forward for the first time. Even better, she went straight to him. Woo-hoo!

After her bath, I was trying to get her dressed, which is always a struggle these days since she’d much rather be on all fours rocking back and forth, and do you have any idea how hard it is to dress a baby like that? I think it’d be easier to dress the cats.

Anyway, she started doing this new thing of raising herself up onto her tippy-toes, so she was more or less in a downward-facing dog position. It was really cute, so I yelled for Dave to come see, and she got so excited when she saw him in the bathroom doorway that she lowered herself back to all fours and crawled straight toward him. It was awesome.

We spent the next several minutes sitting in the hall trying to get her to crawl toward each of us, which she did. (Although we usually had to bribe her to come forward with a toy, or a cat, or a roll of toilet paper. Whatever works.) I’m going to have to try to catch it on video, because it is seriously adorable. I know all parents think that about their babies, and I don’t care because I think she’s just about the most brilliant thing on the planet. Trite and cliched, perhaps, but true.

Oh, and happy birthday, Dave. I love you so much, and thank you for giving me that fantastic little girl. And thanks for always being a few years older than me, so I can continue to feel good about my age.

not sure if horses apply to standard DUI laws

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Saturday night, I left the baby with Dave and met up with Cara for dinner and drinks. (And dessert. Way too many calories, but oh so yummy.) I don’t think we’d ever hung out together without our respective significant others, so that was very cool to have some girl time and talk about all the stuff we can’t write about on our blogs. In my case, this meant getting to freely use the f-word, which I try never to do here because my dad knows that this website exists, and oh lord I do not need that phone call.

And it was very sweet of Cara to not cancel on me, since Scott’s grandmother had just died and they were going to be taking a flight out of Seattle about 4 hours after she and I met up. I would’ve totally canceled if it had been me, but I’m a wuss like that. Anyway, it was great fun and nice to have some baby-free time.

True story that is totally unrelated to anything: recently when Cate and I were out for one of our evening walks, we ran into two of our neighbors, who were out riding their horses. This isn’t a rare occurrence; so many people around here have horses, to see them trekking up and down the street with the regular traffic isn’t at all unusual.

Anyway, they stopped to say hi to the baby and to let Cate get all excited about seeing the horses up close. (She did her happy foot-kick for them.) They were very friendly and nice, but I noticed that both ladies had a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. They would alternate which hand was holding the horse’s reins depending on what they needed to accomplish. Horseback riding, smoking a Marlboro, and swigging a bottle of Corona? Wow. That is multi-tasking at its finest right there.

When we got home, I told Dave that this is another reason we need to move. I am clearly not nearly bad-ass enough to hang with the women of Duvall. And you know what? I am totally okay with that fact.

got stress?

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I’m not sure what’s going on with me lately, I just have this general feeling of anxiety that I can’t seem to shake. I think it’s because there’s a lot of stuff happening that’s in a weird transition phase, and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. For example:

* My job will be starting sometime in the near future. I’m still not sure of my exact start date, which is annoying, but I’m more worried about the fact that I’ve been out of the work force for almost a year(!), and oh man, what if I’ve forgotten every blessed thing I ever knew about technology in the meantime?

* Cate will be starting daycare when I start working again. I found a wonderful woman who has an in-home daycare just a couple of miles from my house. I instantly clicked with her and just felt very comfortable with the idea of Cate staying with her, and her references were outstanding. But I also worry because Cate is at the peak of this separation anxiety phase, and I’m concerned about how hard it’s going to be when I have to leave her there. (And I mean that for all 3 of us – Cate, me and Patsy the daycare lady.)

* We’re actively working on getting our house ready to sell next year, with no real idea of where we’re going after that. I like to plan things in advance (Dave would say that I plan compulsively), so the fact that we have no Step B to follow our Step A is really stressing me out. We most likely won’t be staying in Washington, which makes me sad because I’m going to really miss my friends here, and I’m worried about how hard it’ll be to find a new group of friends wherever we go. Obviously, if we end up in North Carolina, I have a built-in support system already there, but it’s not the only possibility on the roster, and I’m a little unsure of how I feel about the other options.

So. There’s that. If you’re wondering why I’m not blogging as much lately, it’s because it takes away from my precious hand-wringing time. I’d like to start drinking again, but then I get all jittery about carrying Cate (especially up and down the stairs), so I don’t think that’s a very good solution. Rats.