Category Archives: Dave

soon-to-be working mom

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Ok, this is going to be quick because Cate is finally asleep and I need to get to bed myself. So I’m going to be lazy and number things. Sorry, it’s just easier for my frazzled brain.

1. I guess I kinda-sorta started my job on Friday, but all I did was find out the details about the project I’m going to be working on, signed human resources paperwork, etc. My official start date is tomorrow. AHH!

2. Dave is currently setting up a big fancy desktop PC (actually his old one, plus a few new bits of hardware) in my office for me. Because he’s a sweetie. And probably also because I’ve been kind of freaking out about this job – nothing major, I’m just nervous because it’s a bit out of the realm of anything I’ve ever done before. So Dave wants to do whatever he can to help me chill out. So I’ll shut up. I’m guessing.

3. We’re going to do a little experiment over the next couple of weeks to see if we can get away with sending Cate to daycare only three days a week. Since Dave and I both work from home, the hope is that we’ll be able to take shifts with the baby so we can each get our work done. I’m not sure how that’ll work, or how I’ll be able to concentrate if I hear her crying while Dave’s doing his shift, but that’s why one of the new hardware bits that we bought is a set of speakers. Hopefully I’ll be able to crank up some music and drown out whatever else is going on in the house.

4. Totally unrelated to the previous 3 points: today we got a visit from Liz, aka Lizardbreath, and her own little baby Catherine. That was a lot of fun.


She is such a cutie-patootie, blowing raspberries and smiling and everything. And she seemed to weigh nothing when I picked her up – which I know isn’t true, it’s just weird how you get accustomed to your own heavy load so any baby that’s slightly smaller is like, “woo! She’s a baby feather!”

It’s funny because we both named our babies for the same person (although, honestly Cat, as much as I love you, if your parents had named you Mildred or Bertha or something… um, yeah. That whole namesake thing probably wouldn’t have happened). And also funny because it occurred to me that I always write Cate’s name as – well, Cate – but when I’m talking to her or about her, I always call her Catie. Which is what Liz calls her baby as well. I imagine that it would’ve been really confusing for them if they’d been older. As it was, eh, neither one pays much attention to their name yet. Lucky for us.

Ok, bedtime. Work tomorrow. Woo-hoo, paycheck!

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.

First Father's Day

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In honor of Dave’s first Father’s Day, last night we had our first official Date Night. Dave and I haven’t had an evening that was just the two of us since Cate was born, so it sounded like a good idea. Kris came over to baby-sit, while we went to dinner and a movie. It was so nice. We went to this great little Italian place for dinner, and then we went to see “Ocean’s Thirteen”. (Which was surprisingly entertaining. And hello, two hours of Clooney. No complaints here.)

I had called Kris to check in between dinner and the movie, just to see how things were going. She said she was in the middle of giving Cate a bottle, and everything was fine so far. I set my cell phone to vibrate in case Kris needed anything during the movie, and we sat close to the aisle so I could easily jump out of the theater to answer the phone if necessary.

Two hours later, we got home, and the first thing I noticed was that Kris had pulled her hair back into a ponytail (it was down when we left) and she wasn’t wearing the same shirt she had on earlier. She also had that sort of wild-eyed, crazed look that I imagine people have after they’ve just emerged from some sort of battle. Uh-oh.

She was so apologetic, all “oh my god, I hope I didn’t traumatize her for life, she didn’t stop crying for TWO SOLID HOURS, and I didn’t know what to do, but I didn’t call you because I didn’t want to ruin your date night.” There was apparently also a rather huge barf incident, which explained the wardrobe change. (Cate was also in a different outfit, but she was asleep in the swing when we got home, so I didn’t notice that right away.)

I felt so bad. I knew Kris was kind of nervous about being alone with the baby for the first time, and I was really hoping that Cate would go easy on her, but no such luck. And all of my little tips that I gave her – all of the things that I do to calm Cate down when she gets fussy – failed miserably.

As for Kris’s fear that she traumatized Cate, I think we don’t have to worry too much about that. She seemed to have recovered completely by this morning.

I don’t know if I can say the same for Kris, but hopefully she’s ok and will be willing to baby-sit for us again. Even if it isn’t until Cate is in kindergarten.

step one of a major transition

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So, remember how I said that Dave and I decided we didn’t want to move to the Bay area? And that we were kicking around some other ideas?

Well, we started doing some research on Dave’s employer, and it turns out that they have lots of satellite offices all over the US. For a while, we were thinking about Colorado: it’s a nice state, a bit closer to our families, cost of living is cheaper, yadda yadda.

Then Dave found out that there’s an office in Durham, North Carolina. When Dave told me that, I started jumping up & down saying, “Can we move there? Can we? Can we? Huh? Pleeeeease? Can we???”

The ironic part, of course, is that for years I swore up and down and all around that I would never live in the South again. Ever. I hate the heat, I hate the bugs, and I hate the racism/sexism/homophobia. I’ve now moved around enough to realize that insects and discrimination are everywhere. And the heat in North Carolina isn’t as bad as Mississippi. At least everywhere is air-conditioned there, which is way more than I can say for Washington.

I guess the explanation for my total change of heart is that – surprise, surprise! – it’s actually true what people say about how having kids totally changes your priorities. The idea of a simple two-hour flight to see either my parents or my sister (as opposed to the six or seven hours it currently takes), and being just down the road a bit from my brother in Charlotte suddenly sounds really appealing. There’s even a direct flight from Raleigh to London that’s only 7 1/2 hours, rather than the ten hours it takes now. So Cate would be closer to her grandparents on both sides, which can only be a good thing.

Plus, let’s not forget one of the biggest perks, which is that Cate and e-baby could grow up having regular playdates! How awesome is that?

I was trying not to talk about this at first, mostly for fear of jinxing it, but Dave talked to his boss, who basically said that it was cool for us to move wherever after Dave finishes his current project (read: December). And that’s fine because we apparently can’t sell our house before May 2008 anyway (damn you, AmeriQuest, damn you all to heck!!). Unless we want to fork over several thousand dollars as a “pre-payment penalty” on our mortgage, which, no thanks. But it looks like this could very likely happen next year.

Of course, it also depends on Dave and I taking a trip there to check out the area, and making sure that both of us fall in love with it. Which I don’t think is going to be a problem. Right now I’m totally addicted to looking at houses online, and oh man, the houses there are so pretty. I love the Pacific Northwest, but the houses are seriously dull-looking. And North Carolina real estate is so much cheaper than the Seattle area! We could be debt-free and have a decent savings built up in just a few years. College funds and everything. I can’t even fathom it. Sounds like bliss.

home again

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Obviously we survived the flight home from San Jose. It was pretty uneventful, except for the stupid satellite lot where we parked our car, which promised to have vans every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day. And we waited 45 minutes for a van. With the baby. Who had been good all day, and was starting to get very cranky. I was enraged.

To be fair, it wasn’t entirely the parking lot people’s fault. There had been one van that came by earlier, but the other people who were waiting saw us with all our baby gear and bolted for it, so by the time we got to the van, there was no room left and we had to wait for the next one. Jerks. I hope they all got speeding tickets on their way home.

The trip did, however, accomplish one goal, as far as deciding whether or not we could move to the Bay area someday. The conclusion that Dave and I came to? Probably not. The minute we got back to Seattle, we were both like, “Ah, trees! And clouds! We’re home!”

It’s not the weather, which was honestly fine the whole time we were there. The lack of trees was sort of unnerving (no shade! anywhere!), although I could deal with that if I had to. Really, it’s just the idea of dropping over a million dollars on some teeny-tiny house that doesn’t seem very realistic. Our financial stability is already iffy with me not working. I know that people somehow do manage the cost of living down there, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how they do it.

Also, a lot of the people seem kind of tense. You’d think there would be sort of a laid-back, west coast, surfer dude vibe happening, but there isn’t. Especially not on the freeways. I complain about Seattle drivers, but man, they’ve got nothing on the Bay area. I could see myself developing a major case of road rage if I had to battle that traffic on a daily basis.

That’s not to say we won’t relocate someday. Dave and I are kicking around some ideas on that topic, although I don’t know if they’ll turn into anything. I do love the Pacific Northwest, so no matter where we go, I’d be sad to leave. But we’ll do what’s best for our family, and in the immortal words of Tim Gunn, we’ll make it work.

Anyway, now we’re in trip recovery mode: tons of laundry needs to be done, the fridge needs to be restocked (you’d be surprised how much stuff can go bad in a week), and the litter boxes… man, y’all don’t even want to know about them. We paid the teenager across the street to feed the cats while we were gone, but I didn’t ask her to tend to the litter boxes, and hoo boy, they are scary now. So there’s tons o’ fun to be had for me!

beach trauma

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We flew in to San Jose on Saturday, which was one of those nightmare “everything you do only makes you an hour later than you should be” experiences. But we finally got here, settled into the hotel, and both Dave and Cate took naps. (I had consumed way too much Diet Coke, there were no naps in sight for me.) That night, we got to meet up with Cat, Tony & e-baby for dinner, which was great. I almost never get to see them more than once a year, so twice in less than three months is a real treat.

Yesterday, Dave and I went house-hunting. It’s an idea we’re kicking around – if he wants to stay at his new job long-term, it may require us to relocate to the Bay area. It’s not necessarily my preference. I love Washington, and I have friends there, so moving isn’t something I’d be terribly excited about. But if it’s important for Dave’s career, then that’s what we’ll do.

The problem is, the housing market here is so insane – we tend to think that the Seattle area is expensive until we come down here, and then it’s like, “wait, a 2 bedroom, one bath bungalow for $850K? Are you KIDDING me???” For what our nice big four-bedroom house on two acres is worth, we could maybe get a 2-bedroom condo in a sketchy neighborhood here. It’s unbelievable.

So we drove all over the place yesterday, and definitely found some places where we know we absolutely don’t want to live, but we found a couple of places that we could stand and which we might possibly be able to afford without selling any of our internal organs or our future children.

We ended up in Santa Cruz, which is one of the places where I would absolutely love to live – it’s a beautiful town, and there are parts of it that we could possibly afford, although the commute wouldn’t be very practical for Dave. While we were there, we went to the beach to dip Cate’s toes in the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt4GgZLFJoo

As you can see, she was not fan of the beach at all. Hopefully we didn’t traumatize her too badly, but we thought it was pretty hilarious.

Oh, and I surprised myself at the beach with my maternal instincts. There were dogs running around all over the place, playing frisbee and whatnot. After we filmed that video and Cate was still screaming, I lay her on a towel on the sand to try to calm her down. This little Boston terrier came over, probably just to check out the small screaming creature on the beach. I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm, but without even thinking about it, I yelled “no!” and shoved him away. Um, what? I normally wouldn’t touch a stranger’s dog, but I didn’t know the dog, I wasn’t sure if he was gentle or not, and my Big Ol’ Mama Bear instinct kicked in and told me to get him the hell away from my baby. His owners – two guys who were several yards away – saw me and called the dog back, and I thought about apologizing to them for pushing their dog. I know I didn’t hurt him, I just felt kind of rude. But then I decided that maybe they should have been more vigilant about making sure their dog wasn’t around any little kids, so whatever.

Oh, and remind me to tell y’all about how I scared the bejeezus out of some punk kids at our hotel. I’m pretty proud of myself for that one.

P.S. Pics from the trip so far are here. I’ll keep adding to that set as we take more photos.