Category Archives: Dave

first post of '09

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Ok, enough of all that sappiness. Y’all just want to see a hyper-after-her-bathtime toddler shake her groove thang to a Dixie Chicks song, don’t you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKWdoQkuI8g

You’re welcome.

(Oh, and apparently when I thought she said “funny” in the middle when she starts doing that floor-hop thing? Yeah, she actually said “bunny.” Which is why she was bouncing like that. Way to pay attention there, Mama.)

We had a lovely, lazy New Year’s Eve. We finally got Catie settled down and asleep around 11 p.m. (I know!) After she was finally out, Dave and I settled in on the couch to watch the countdown coverage and have a drink. (Ok, I had two. Or maybe 2 1/2, depending on how you measure. But I woke up today with no trace of a hangover whatsoever, so the point is that I didn’t overindulge.)

Dave and I managed to stay awake until midnight, at which point we gave each other a kiss and said happy new year – you know, as you do – and then we immediately clicked over to Noggin to make sure it was still there. Romantic, right?

Apparently Time Warner and Viacom settled their beef, although it’ll probably mean an extra $10 a month on our cable bill. Oh well, no matter. Those Time Warner people don’t know the kind of fury that they would’ve had to deal with if they took my Jon Stewart away from me. Not to mention that in Catie’s world, a day without the Wonder Pets is a day not worth living. So hooray, we have all of our channels. Oh, and we now have Bravo too! Yay! I’ve already recorded a Project Runway marathon, I can’t wait to catch up on most of this past season that I missed.

Today I’ve spent a good chunk of the day putting away Christmas decorations and trying to clean up the house. I’m sad to see it go, because it’s been such a fun holiday, but it’s nice to get the house back to normal. Catie came outside with me when I took our outside lights down, and she didn’t freak out and cry like I expected. In fact, she was pretty happy and adorable.

playing peekaboo around a tree

When she asked what I was doing with the lights, I told her that they had to go bye-bye for now, but we’d put them back up next Christmas. Of course, she has no concept of time so for all she knows that means they’ll be back tomorrow, but she accepted that and was fine with it. When we headed inside to get lunch, she said, “Bye, lights! Bye, Missmas! See you later!” Darn right, baby girl. Darn right.

a New Year's love letter to my husband

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Dear Dave,

I know this past year has been pretty rough on us. The moving expenses really hit us hard, and the stress from your job has been truly overwhelming for you – and by extension, Catie and me too. We’ve also had to deal with some pretty significant illnesses: Catie’s asthma diagnosis, the two different hospital stays that it’s entailed, plus all of the medications and doctor visits in between. Then there was also my mom’s chemotherapy and surgeries, your root canal, plus all of the other minor little things. And even though the move was something that we both wanted, it’s been hard on both of us, leaving our friends and all of the comforts that we had grown accustomed to in Washington.

But this has also been a really good year for us too. For one, we sold our house in the middle of a recession, which you have to admit was pretty damn fortunate. And even with as much as I miss Seattle and our friends there, I know without a doubt that we are exactly where we’re supposed to be. Every time Catie and I go outside and the neighborhood kids spot her and come running toward her screaming her name because they’re so happy to see her, I know that we are so lucky to have found this house in this neighborhood. (You know the livestock in Duvall was never that excited to see us. The horses would sometimes come to the fence to say hi, but it’s no comparison to the adulation that she gets now.) It’s been so easy for us to make friends here too, which has made the transition to a new state (heck, a new time zone) significantly nicer.

Another upside of 2008: I have loved watching Catie grow from a crawling, barely-speaking one year-old baby to a running, talking little girl with a full-on, headstrong personality of her own. I love seeing all of the various traits she picks up, some from me and some from you. I try to imagine what she’ll be like this time next year when she’s an almost-3 year-old. She’ll likely be a fluent English speaker, she probably won’t want us to carry her everywhere anymore, she’ll be sleeping in a big-girl bed, and who knows, she might even be potty-trained. It’s almost impossible to imagine, but I know that at this time last year, I couldn’t have guessed what she’d be like now. That little girl of ours amazes me every day, and I especially love watching the way she interacts with you. The way you two have your own little games, your little Daddy & Catie snuggle time in the morning, and how whenever she and I go out to run errands, the second we pull back into the driveway, the first thing she says is always, “Go see Daddy?” I couldn’t have asked for a better Daddy for her.

I really have been so proud of you this year: the way that you handled the move so easily; the way you supported me during my post-move freakout; the job stress you’ve dealt with that would’ve given lots of people a heart attack by now; the weight you’ve lost and how hard you’ve been working to get healthy; and the fantastic father and husband you’ve been. I know there’s a lot of stuff that we need to improve in the coming year, but I also know that we’ll deal with it and we’ll be fine. I read once that moving is the #2 most stressful thing a couple can go through. A death in the family is number one. Considering how well we dealt with our cross-country move (with a toddler and two cats, no less!), I think at this point we can handle just about anything.

I love you and Catie both so much, and I can’t wait to spend 2009 – and all my future years – with this little family that we’ve created.

Love,
Cindy
xoxox

[Editor’s Note: I started composing this in my head around 2 a.m. last night, and I was going to handwrite it, but then I thought: hey, blog fodder. Not like anything in here is all that private or secret. And this way it never gets lost.]

back in NC

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The 6 p.m. flight home yesterday was indeed a very bad idea on my part. Our flight from Jackson was a little delayed, but not too major. We had an hour and a half to make our connection in Atlanta, so I wasn’t worried. But then we sat on the tarmac for half an hour because the Atlanta airport was apparently shut down due to bad weather. And once we finally got going, we circled Atlanta for over an hour, since the weather had caused a huge traffic backup. I couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or not that Catie took the opportunity to fall asleep – on the one hand, it’s nice that she wasn’t awake and cranky on the plane, but I also knew that her dozing off at 8 p.m. was going to cause us some major problems later on.

We should’ve missed our connecting flight in Atlanta because of the delay; we landed a few minutes after our next plane was scheduled to take off. I had been making a backup plan in my head, trying to decide what I was going to do if we were stuck in Atlanta for the night – try to get a hotel, call my uncle and cousin (who live in Atlanta) to see if we could crash with them, or rent a car and drive the rest of the way to Raleigh, praying that Catie would sleep in the car. Fortunately (I guess?) our connection was also delayed, so we made it. We got home a little after midnight. Blargh.

Btw, I know that toddlers are often quite literal, but I really have to start being more careful about how I talk to Catie. At some point during the flight, I had told her that after our ride on the airplane, we were going to see Daddy. She got down, grabbed my hand, and led me to the back of the plane. I thought she was just exploring, and at the back of the plane was the restroom, of course. I figured, what the heck, might as well go while we’re here, so I brought her into the bathroom with me. She proceeded to pound on the back wall of the bathroom, screaming, “Daaaaaddy!!! Where aaaaare youuuu?!?!!!” So yeah, she thought that “after the airplane” meant that Daddy was literally behind the plane. Oops. Poor kid, I have to figure out a better way to explain the concept of time to her.

Oh also, our descent into Raleigh was really bumpy, and Catie got sick. I could tell she didn’t feel well because of the way she was burying her face in my chest, then she coughed, then sort of cough/gagged, and I knew I had about 0.2 seconds until she barfed. I quickly aimed her head over my arm into the middle of the aisle, and just in time. She only heaved once, but still, poor baby. The lady sitting behind me tore up her SkyMall magazine to basically wallpaper over the barf so all of the other passengers wouldn’t have to walk through it on their way out. I was grateful, I knew I needed to cover it up somehow, but the magazine idea never would’ve occurred to me.

Catie and I were both thrilled to see Dave at the airport; her face positively lit up the second she saw him. I drove home so he could ride in the backseat with her. They talked and giggled the whole way home.

As I expected, Catie was all well-rested from her nap, so she ended up not going to bed until close to 3 a.m. She woke up at 8:30, and Dave (God bless that man) got up with her and gave her some milk, then brought her to bed with us. It didn’t take long for her to go back to sleep, and we all slept until noon. I couldn’t believe it, she has never done that in her life. Since she slept so late, I figure that we’ll just push through her nap today and hopefully get to bed at a decent time tonight. Fingers crossed.

birthday shout-out for my hubby

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I’ve been a bad blogger this week. There’s lots of stuff swirling around in my head, but I can’t seem to figure out how to put it all into a string of coherent sentences. I’ll work on it and try to be better next week, I promise.

In the meantime: today is Dave’s birthday! So I just wanted to throw a little birthday shout-out for my favorite 37 year-old Brit.

So, to Dave: Thank you for always being such a great husband and daddy, and for putting up with us. We love you.

blogging from our new house

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We made it to North Carolina. The flight was relatively easy and uneventful, which is always a good thing. Cate was so happy to see Dave at the airport that when he picked her up, she buried her face in his neck and didn’t move for several minutes. Poor kiddo, I think she had decided that Daddy guy was gone for good. We’ve never seen her like that, it was sort of heartbreaking.

The house is super-cute and I love the neighborhood, so I’m really happy with our choice. But of course, it’s a rental so there are a few maintenance issues: the A/C works downstairs but not upstairs (a real problem, since it’s hot and upstairs is where we sleep), the garbage disposal is broken, the dryer took over three hours to dry one load of clothes, etc. So there are lots of little things. And the house doesn’t feel very clean to me, which I suppose is because the previous tenants had teenage boys. It’s not horrible by any stretch of the imagination, just maybe not quite as perfect as you’d expect a house to be that you’re moving into for the first time. I’m looking forward to getting unpacked and doing a really thorough scrub-down of the whole house. It’s sort of impossible to do right now with boxes everywhere.

Speaking of the boxes: my general rule for moving is to get the beds and bathrooms unpacked first, then you can take a shower, go to bed, and deal with everything else the next day. Makes sense, right? Well, I consider it a huge victory that among the hundreds of boxes in our house, I was able to find the boxes with our bedding in them (crib bedding too! different box!) and get everything fixed up with a very agitated 18 month-old running around demanding our constant attention. Score one for teamwork: Dave kept Cate distracted while I got the beds made.

The cats were delivered this afternoon, and the poor kitties are totally freaked out, but very happy to see us. Cate missed her little buddy so much, she and Beaumont have basically been making out for hours (lots of full-on face nuzzles). Teenie is so happy to see us that she’s even been letting Cate pet her, which is kind of a huge deal for her. And Teenie is usually the skittish one who hides under our bed all the time, but she’s been exploring both upstairs and downstairs of the house, so that’s great. She hisses at Beaumont when he gets too close to her personal space, but otherwise they’re both fine.

Cate didn’t go into her crib easily tonight, which I was kind of expecting, since it’s her same crib but in a totally foreign room. She freaked when I put her down, and I didn’t have the heart to make her cry it out on her first night, so I brought her into our bed until she fell asleep (which took about three minutes tops – baby girl was worn slap out), then I moved her to her crib. I’m wondering if I’m going to get a 3 a.m. wake-up call or not. Fingers crossed that we all sleep well this first night.

In Mississippi

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The moving and house closing went off as well as could reasonably be expected. I was surprisingly ok about most of it; I cried when I left our house and again when we left Patsy’s for the last time, but otherwise I kept it together. We had a great time with my sister, had dinner with Kris, took Cate to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle on Wednesday, and then flew to Mississippi on Thursday morning.

As it turns out, I was expecting the Tuesday (the Move Day) to be the worst, but no, it was Thursday that was our hell day.

First, just as we were pulling up to the rental car return place, Cate projectile-barfed all over the car seat, herself, and the entire back seat. It was milk. Which – in reverse – smells like death and is all curdled like cottage cheese. Seriously, seriously gross. I held her out in front of me like she was a bomb and ran to the ladies’ room, where I cleaned her up with wet naps and changed her clothes while she screamed bloody murder.

Meanwhile, if rental car companies maintain any sort of blacklist, I’m sure that Tracy will be forever banned from Dollar Rent-A-Car, because she just handed over the keys to the puke-soaked car with a “um, sorry!” and took off. She was mortified, but what could we do? It’s not like we had the time or resources to clean it ourselves. As it was, the whole incident made us so late that we almost missed our flight.

But! We made our flight and Cate was fine all the way to Atlanta – she even slept for 2.5 hours of it. Yay! Then we get to Atlanta and find out that our connecting flight to Jackson was cancelled. Boo! So we spent over 6 hours hanging out in the Atlanta airport waiting for another one. Luckily Tracy is one of the Delta “Gold Crown” status people, so we got to hang out in the fancy club room with free cocktails (they also had both milk & apple juice for Cate, yippee!), which was better than your usual “stranded in an airport” scenario. So that was good, but it still sucks to be stuck in limbo like that.

Tracy was able to get on standby on the 7:20 flight since she has her fancy-shmancy status with Delta, but Cate & I were numbers 10 and 11 on the standby list because we aren’t Delta frequent flyers. I managed to get one seat booked on the 11 p.m. flight, and decided that I could just go with it and ride with Cate in my lap. She’s under 2, it’s legal.

After we talked about it, Tracy said she’d take Cate in her lap on the earlier flight, since it was better to go ahead & get the poor kiddo to her destination, rather than keeping her up past midnight. I agreed, then had a full-on panic attack when I saw my baby leaving to get on a plane that I wasn’t on. That was an irrational Mommy Phobia that I didn’t even know I had. What if something happened and I wasn’t there? I mean, if the plane crashed and we were both on it, yes that’s tragic and awful. But if something happened to her and I was left behind… I don’t know how I’d live with myself.

Luckily, when they started going through the names on the standby list, I was the LAST ONE called. I hugged the Delta ticket agent so hard that I dropped my water bottle, ran onto the plane, got the lady sitting next to Tracy (with a now-screeeaming Cate in her lap) to swap seats with me so I could sit with them. Once we were seated and everything was ok, I started to cry. I just couldn’t take it anymore, the panic effect wore off, I was so exhausted (we had all been up since 4:30 a.m.) and I broke down. I’m pretty sure it’s not the last time I’ll cry during all of this, too.

The 7:20 flight didn’t actually leave until almost 9:30, so we finally got to Jackson somewhere around 10 p.m. Cate didn’t fall asleep until almost 1, but at least she slept until 9 a.m. (apparently she’s still on west coast time, thank the stars).

Today’s been ok. It’s just been really hard because Cate doesn’t understand what’s going on so she’s been super-clingy and crying a lot more than usual. She pretty much freaks anytime I’m out of her line of vision. Going to the bathroom is a challenge. It’s upsetting for me because I know this isn’t her normal personality and I don’t really have any way to reassure her and make her feel secure that it’s all ok.

But it’s great to see my parents – especially my mom, who looks very cute with her little bald head. And I’m so excited about the people we’re going to visit with while we’re in town. (Danielle, email me if you’re around this week!)

I’m not sure if this makes sense, but it hasn’t quite sunk in that we’re not going back to Seattle when this trip is over. Weird.

Meanwhile, Dave is having all kinds of fun driving cross-country and sightseeing along the way. He’s extended his trip by a couple of days just so he has time to see more stuff. I think he’s in Minneapolis tonight. I’m just glad someone is having fun.