Category Archives: Lucy

Saturday at the farm

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So, I guess after you do something two years in a row, it officially becomes a “tradition”? It feels like it, anyway. The past couple of years, I’ve taken Catie to this great local farm here. (Last year, I didn’t bring Lucy because she was too little to enjoy it.)

I was thinking that we were going to miss the farm this year because we hadn’t done it yet, and I don’t even know if they’re open after Halloween, and the forecast this weekend looked sketchy at best. (Oh, hi, Hurricane Sandy! Thanks for going a little farther north than us.)

As it turned out, on Saturday afternoon, it was overcast and windy, but there wasn’t any rain, so my mom came over and suggested we take the girls to the farm. I was supposed to meet up with one of my friends and her daughter for a playdate, so I called and asked her if she wanted to go to the farm instead of her house. I think she was relieved to not have to host a playdate at her house, because she jumped on the idea immediately.

Catie impresses me every time she decides that she’s going to “be brave” and try something new. This year, I didn’t have to coax her to climb on the hay bales. She was all over them, and climbed as high as she could go.

Catie on the hay bales at the farm

She stood up there with the wind whipping all around her and shouted that she was queen of the world. It was a very Titanic kind of moment.

She also posed with her friend Morgan for me.

Catie and Morgan at the farm

Is it possible to get a photo of 5 year-olds where they aren’t giving you fake smiles? I’m highly doubtful.

I plopped Lucy about halfway up on the hay bale stack, and she loved it. (I wasn’t too worried about her falling off, because I was within arm’s reach of her, and also there are several inches of hay-padding on the ground.)

Lucy on the hay bales at the farm

(Note the mud on her pants & shoe. If there is a mud puddle anywhere within a mile radius, Lucy will find it and fall in it. I cleaned her up the best I could, then figured the hell with it, she was fine and her clothes were all washable. She didn’t seem bothered in the slightest.)

The pony ride is always Catie’s favorite part of the farm, and this year we thought Lucy might like her first pony ride too. My mom walked beside her to make sure she didn’t fall off, and she LOVED it.

Catie on the pony rides

Lucy's first pony ride (with assistance from Mimi)

Another thing she and her big sister have in common, clearly.

After a couple of hours, the kids were worn out. We stopped at the pumpkin patch to get a pumpkin before we left. I tried to get a picture of the three girls (Catie, Lucy, and Catie’s friend Morgan) next to the pumpkin measuring chart, and this is how the majority of my pictures turned out.

This is basically how most pictures turn out when you have 3 kids in the "5 & under" set.

Yeah.

I finally got this one.

The best group shot I could get.

Fine. That’s as good as it’s going to get.

Oh, about that pumpkin? Here’s my lazy mom shortcut tip: don’t carve the pumpkin. Just draw on a jack-o-lantern face with a Sharpie. It takes 2 minutes and you’re done. Plus, no mess. WIN.

Lazy mom shortcut: we don't carve pumpkins, we draw their faces with a Sharpie. Took 2 minutes. Done.

Overall it was a really fun day. I’m grateful the rain held off until later so we were able to enjoy the farm this year.

more whining about how tired I am

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Ok, I can’t leave that last post at the top too long because it’s making me uneasy to have my heart all splayed out like that.

Hey! How are you? Let’s change the subject, shall we?

So, yeah, to follow up on our sleep issues: Lucy is sleeping a little better. I took the advice of… oh hell, I forget, I think a bunch of y’all said it… and I switched the nighttime bottle to just plain ol’ water instead of milk. I think she’s starting to realize that it’s not worth the effort. She’s slept through the night a couple of times, but she still typically wakes up at least once. Which is better than three times a night, so I’ll take it.

Also, I think that maybe Lucy is about to hit another growth spurt, because lately, I pick up the girls from daycare, get home, serve them dinner, Lucy INHALES her food (like, every single thing I put in front of her and then she says “Mo’! Mo’!” while doing the sign for “more”). After dinner, I give the kids their bath, and by the time we finish that, she is usually losing her mind, screaming from exhaustion. She’s been in bed by about 7:30 the last several nights.

This also means she’s wide awake and ready to start her day at 6 a.m. Which, no. Mama is not a fan of this trend.

Oh! And? She’s been napping for like 2 1/2 hours at daycare every day and her teacher says she normally has to wake her up because Lucy wants to sleep longer.

I’m thinking that eating tons and tons of food, plus excessive sleeping, is probably a sign of an upcoming growth spurt, right?

Sigh. Y’all, she already wears 2T pants and 3T shirts. SLOW DOWN, LUCY! It’s not a race, for God’s sake.

Daycare is closed. Having breakfast with my buddy.

All I can say is, thank God I saved all of Catie’s hand-me-downs, or I’d go completely broke trying to keep this child in clothes at the rate she grows.

Still sleepy

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So, the big-girl bed transition for Lucy… God. I swear this child is going to be the death of me.

On the upside, she doesn’t climb out of the bed or anything. She goes to bed easily. As long as she has her Yo Gabba Gabba dolls to cuddle with (specifically Muno and Foofa, I don’t know why they’re the chosen ones, but whatever), she settles down and goes to sleep when I put her in the bed.

But she still wakes up at least 2 or 3 times demanding the bottle. She doesn’t climb out of the bed, she just sits up and screams until I come to her. (I’ve started packing a mini-cooler with an ice pack & a couple of bottles to leave in my bedroom, so at least I don’t have to run downstairs to the fridge. Small things, I guess.)

Bedtime prerequisites: bottle & Yo Gabba Gabba dolls.

I took the advice of y’all who suggested an extra bedtime snack. She usually has some fruit before bed (usually blueberries or grapes or whatever fresh fruit I happen to have in the house), but the idea of extra protein hadn’t occurred to me. So I’ve been giving her whatever I can entice her with – leftover rotisserie chicken, bologna, cheese, etc. – and I’ve tried adding more simple carbs (usually Ritz crackers or something similar) to see if maybe it would keep her full longer. So far, it hasn’t helped.

As for co-sleeping, I would TOTALLY let her sleep in the bed with me. It’s a king-size bed and I’m the only one in it, so it’s not like I’m hurting for space. But she cannot seem to sleep with me. One night I tried it, and she squirmed and thrashed around for nearly an hour, then finally she sat up crying and screamed, “Nigh-niiiiiiight!!!” She was exhausted but couldn’t get comfortable in my bed. I said, “You want to go back to Lucy’s bed?” And she said, “Yah!” So I took her back to her bed and she was asleep in about 20 seconds.

To be fair, Lucy has never been a co-sleeper. I wanted her to be. When she was a tiny newborn and Dave was sleeping down the hall in the guest room and I was all alone with her, I desperately wanted her in the bed with me so I wouldn’t feel so lonely and isolated. But she couldn’t sleep there. Every time I moved, it woke her. She couldn’t even sleep in the pack & play next to my bed. She was in her crib in the nursery with an air filter for white noise by the time she was 6 weeks old.

Oh, I also tried taking the girls to the playground after daycare in the evening to see if maybe a little evening fresh air would help her sleep better. Or if, at the very least, she might burn enough energy to really exhaust herself. No luck there either.

As for the bottle issue? Ok. Yes, I know that she’s 16 months old and should be weaned off the bottle now. I know this. Catie was off the bottle by the time she was 14 months old. But with Lucy… no. I don’t have the internal resources to wage that battle. She doesn’t get the bottle during the day at daycare, because they don’t give bottles once the kids move up to the toddler room. And she’s adjusted fine to that. But when I go pick her up, I better have a bottle with me or she is going to FREAK THE EVER-LOVING HELL OUT for the entire drive home.

The bottle is her comfort thing. And you know what? It’s FINE. I don’t care. I don’t have the energy for this fight. I can almost guarantee you that she won’t still be asking for the bottle by the time she’s in elementary school. So for now, I don’t really give a crap about the bottles. She can keep them as long as she wants.

So… yeah. Meanwhile I’m still being woken up multiple times a night and I feel like death.

This too shall pass, right? I mean, eventually? She has to sleep through the night SOMEDAY, doesn’t she? (Please say yes.)

Official

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I got an email from my attorney a few minutes ago that I am officially divorced.

It feels weird that I didn’t have to be there for it. I had all these little fantasies about how this would play out: I’d show up at the courthouse in a fancy dress and tiara, and write “Just Divorced” in soap on the back windshield of my car as I drove away.

But none of that was necessary. My attorney went to the courthouse for me, she handed the judge the decree, the judge signed it, and that’s that.

Pretty anti-climactic, no?

I had planned to meet up with Laura this evening to get pictures taken of me and the girls. A mini-celebration of our new little family unit, just the three of us. It felt appropriate.

Then Lucy crashed on her tricycle at daycare. The director told me she had “a little boo-boo under her eye.”

Ummm…

Well, we WERE going to have family pics done tomorrow, until someone fell off a tricycle & got her first black eye.

This picture doesn’t do it justice. Girlfriend has a full-on shiner now. I feel like I need to put a sign around her neck that says, “She’s just an accident-prone toddler, nobody is abusing her at home, I swear.”

And then Catie got sick with a cold. She’s had the sniffles for a while, but it got really bad last night. Bad enough that I let her stay home from school today, and she’s currently laying on the couch watching some random dinosaur cartoon on Netflix.

Honestly, it’s kind of nice to have her around.

This day feels so weird. I am happy that it’s done. I really, really am. This process was so ridiculously long and drawn out, I feel like a weight has been lifted knowing that it’s done.

It’s also a little surreal, and I think it might take a while for it to sink in that it’s finished.

But black eyes and sniffles and canceled plans notwithstanding, it’s a good day. It really is.

And P.S., a heartfelt f*** you to the state of North Carolina and their ridiculous mandatory waiting periods. This whole process was made so much more agonizingly painful than it needed to be. As much as I love everything else about this state, that’s really the only advice I have from this whole thing – don’t get divorced in North Carolina. Ever.

in dire need of Mr. Sandman

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Ok, this might make me a terrible person, but I’m going to complain about my baby here for a minute.

Back before I got pregnant with Lucy, I used to joke that Catie had such horrible sleep habits as a baby, that God owed me a good sleeper on the second kid.

You know what? GOD STILL OWES ME. Only I don’t want more babies, so maybe He can make it up to me another way. A million dollars and a weekend spa retreat would be a good start.

Lucy's big grin
Don’t even try to act like you’re all sweet and innocent here, missy.

Back in January, I let Lucy cry it out a few times, and it seemed to work. We had a few blissful months at the beginning of the year where Lucy slept great. We eventually settled into a pretty predictable routine – I’d put her down around 8 or 8:30, then she’d wake up around 10:30 or 11 for what I call her “bonus bottle” before she’d settle down to sleep for the night.

I’m not sure exactly when it all changed, but it was a couple of months ago. She started freaking out when I put her down and waking up several times a night. At the advice of our pediatrician (who gave me a good long lecture about how learning to self-soothe is a skill that has to be taught), I managed to bust out some CIO techniques again to get her to go to bed without screaming.

The problem is, she’ll go to sleep with no problem. But she wakes up every 3 hours or so, screaming, “Mama! BAH!!” (Translation: Bottle!). And I don’t know what to do about that. It’s not like she’s up for very long. She sucks down her bottle and goes straight back to sleep. But the sleep interruptions are KILLING me.

I’ve tried out a few different theories. Is she teething? I tried some baby Motrin at bedtime. Didn’t help. Is she waking up because she peed and it feels uncomfortable in her (cheap, Target generic) diapers? I invested in some expensive Huggies Overnights. While they do help with leaks, it hasn’t helped with her sleep at all.

A couple of nights ago, she woke up & started to fuss right as I was walking past her door. I crept in & saw that she had rolled over and banged into the railing of her crib. (Her crib doesn’t have a bumper – partly because the AAP says not to use them anymore, but mostly because the one from Catie’s bedding set ripped and I was too lazy to buy a replacement.) I rolled her back over and patted her until she went back to sleep.

So, I thought… Maybe the problem is that she’s just too big for her crib? It certainly makes sense, right? She’s only 16 months old, but she’s wearing a 2T (and a 3T in some things), so girlfriend is *big*.

I threw the question out on Facebook (is 16 months too young to move up to a regular bed?) and got lots of positive feedback from my friends & family. That helped me feel a little bit validated.

My parents had a spare twin-size bed in their attic, so yesterday, my dad and I got it down, hauled it to my house, disassembled the crib, and set up Lucy’s bed. (I’m not using the frame because I want it low enough where she can climb in & out herself. It’s just the mattress & box spring on the floor with a guard rail to keep her from falling out.)

When Lucy got home, she seemed to dig her new big-girl bed.

Lucy was very excited about her big-girl bed when she got home tonight.

And she went down for the night with no problem at all.

Tiny girl, big bed.

So, I thought, oh see? This is just perfect. We will all sleep blissfully well through the night from now on! Huzzah!

Then Lucy woke up basically every hour on the hour last night. She never tried to climb out of the bed, she just sat up and screamed. Over and over. All night.

My guess (because, really, all I have are guesses when it comes to this kid) is that she woke up and everything looked unfamiliar, and that’s why she freaked out. So maybe tonight will be better? Because I’m not putting the crib back together. I’m not. I refuse. I hate the crib, I’m so done with it.

Hopefully this phase will pass quickly, for my own sanity if nothing else.

And if anyone has advice on what to do with a child that seems to wake up “needing” a bottle every few hours (and believe me, it’s not that she doesn’t eat enough during the day because OMG she can out-eat her big sister any day), please let me know.

visitation

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(This post is a little rambly. Sorry I’m having a hard time collecting my thoughts lately.)

Dave flew back to Seattle on Sunday. All things considered, his visit here with the girls went exceptionally well. He texted me pictures of them when he took them out places (even the grocery store).

Girls take the wheel(s)! Look out!

In fact, one evening he came to pick up the girls a little early, and I had ordered pizza for them for dinner (because I thought he wasn’t coming until later and I knew they’d be hungry). So he hung out and we ate pizza together, and we talked about our kids and the upcoming election.

It was easy and familiar and completely freaking weird, all at the same time. I’d like to think that it’s the start of a trend, but I also worry that the other shoe is going to drop at some point. (It usually does, right?) But in the meantime, I have to think that it’s good for the kids to see us being pleasant with each other, so I’m hoping that we can keep it up.

On the nights Catie spent with him (we both agreed that Lucy is too young to spend the night away, she needs her crib and her normal bedtime routine), I made a point that I wanted to have a few minutes to either visit with Catie in person or Skype with her each day that she was away. It worked out really well.

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One time after spending 2 nights in a row with him, she started to whine that she was homesick, so Dave brought her home to hang out with me. This just happened to be on Friday, which was my mom’s birthday, so she and I put on our matching aprons and made Mimi a birthday cake.

me & my girls on Mimi's birthday
Ignore the fact that I’m a sweaty mess in dire need of lipstick. Look how proud of herself she is!

Oh, one more unnecessary picture because it cracks me up.
Happy birthday, Mimi!
That was taken while we were singing “happy birthday” to Mimi. The WTF-ness on Lucy’s face just slays me.

(And yes, the cake looks pretty awful. I am not a very good cake decorator under the best circumstances, but with my tiny sous chef, it was even more challenging. Doesn’t matter, though, because it was DELICIOUS.)

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So, that was Friday. Saturday, I took Catie to her cousin Elizabeth’s birthday party, and then the girls hung out with Dave for a few hours so I could take a nap (which was blissful). Saturday night, I had them both back at home because his flight left at 6 a.m. on Sunday.

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At this point, I know I don’t really have to worry too much about how Lucy handles things because she’s still so young and oblivious. She won’t be soon, and believe me I know that.

But I primarily have to keep a close eye on Catie’s stress level. I’ve figured out a lot of her stress indicators (crying frequently, getting physical with Lucy and pushing her, etc.), and I try to be sympathetic while not letting her get away with too much crap. I mean, hey, I get that you’re upset that you haven’t seen your dad for a few months, but that doesn’t give you the right to shove your baby sister to the ground, you know?

I’m also trying to get her to talk about her feelings more. One of the things she frequently and randomly bursts into tears about is because she claims she misses Teenie, our cat who passed away in February. And I’m sure she does miss Teenie, but I don’t think that’s the whole issue. The last time she had one of these outbursts, I said, “Baby girl, are you crying because you miss Teenie, or because you miss Daddy?” She cried, “BOTH!!!” And sobbed harder.

It’s so hard for her, and I try to make it easier where I can, but we have moments like that where she just breaks my heart and I don’t know how to comfort her because I can’t fix it.

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I knew it was going to be bad when he left, so I randomly said, “Hey, you know what? I know you’re going to be really sad after Daddy goes back to Seattle, so I think we should think of something REALLY SUPER FUN to do after he leaves, and I think you should pick what our adventure will be.”

She thought about it for a few minutes, and said she wanted to go see the dinosaur bones at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. She went there recently on a field trip with her daycare and she loved it.

Did I mention that admission to the museum is free? DONE.

Catie & Lucy at the NC Museum of Science

Almost every picture I took turned out blurry because both girls were having so much fun that they never stopped running the whole time.

I did, however, get one picture of my girl sitting with a dinosaur footprint.

My future paleontologist poses with a dinosaur footprint.

This is sort of how I see her as an adult, since she’s so adamant about wanting to be a paleontologist when she grows up. I can imagine her 30 years from now at a dig site in South America or God-knows-where, sitting just like this next to some brilliant discovery she’s made.

As far as distracting her from Dave’s departure? It kind of worked. She’s mostly been fine for the past couple of days. Maybe it’ll be a delayed reaction, I don’t know.

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Last night, she said that she wanted to make Daddy a card. I gave her one of my blank note cards, and she asked me to help her spell out her words. (We’ve been doing this a lot lately since she’s been practicing writing at kindergarten. I help her sound them out and try to help her figure out the next letter herself.)

She wrote on the card:

“I miss you Daddy. Love Catie and Lucy.”

Then she covered it in stickers and asked me to mail it. Even though seeing those words printed out in her little 5 year-old handwriting made me want to hold the card to my chest and cry, I put it in an envelope, stamped it, and shipped it off.

I have no idea if it’ll break his heart like it did mine. I guess that disconnect to each other’s feelings is just one of many reasons we aren’t together anymore.

Rainy zoo days

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(Warning: tons of photos ahead.)

Yesterday was gray and rainy, but it was also the first day we’ve had in ages where the high was in the low 70s. After how soul-crushingly hot this summer has been, that meant that we were going to get outside and enjoy the cool weather if it killed me.

With that in mind, we (meaning me, the girls, and my parents) loaded up into my mom’s mini-van and drove to Asheboro to visit the North Carolina Zoo. We’ve been to the zoo a couple of times before, although the last time I went, I was very newly pregnant with Lucy and wasn’t able to enjoy myself very much because I was kind of sick and miserable the whole time.

The main reason for the zoo trip this time is because Catie heard about the dinosaur exhibit there, and since she says she’s going to be a paleontologist when she grows up, she was DYING to see the dinosaurs. In fact, from the minute we got there, she kept asking, “Can we see the dinosaurs next? Where are the dinosaurs? Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, DIIIIINOOOOOSAAAAAUUUURS!!!!”

(It got old, is what I’m saying.)

Then we finally found the dino exhibit, and oh y’all, my girl was in heaven.

There’s one dinosaur near the entrance that you can climb on for pictures, but the rest of them are off-limits. These are really amazing life-size dinosaurs that move and roar and everything.

Catie and the dinosaur

I tried to get Lucy in one picture, but girlfriend was NOT having it.

Tried to get a picture of both girls on the dinosaur, Lucy was not having it.

Once we got into the exhibit, I basically only saw Catie’s back for the next 20 minutes. She would run ahead to the next dinosaur and then stand there and stare at it, absolutely transfixed.

little girl, big brachiosaurus

This was our view of Catie for most of the dino exhibit. She couldn't get enough of them.

(I basically have a lot of pictures of the back of her blue Tinkerbell hoodie.)

It kills me how much she knows about dinosaurs, and it’s all stuff that she’s learned on her own, because I certainly haven’t taught her this stuff. As we walked up to this one…

My mom: "Hey Catie, is that an allosaurus?" Her: "No, Mimi, it's an APATOSAURUS." And she was right. Of course.

My mom said, “Hey, Catie, is that an allosaurus?”

Catie replied, “No, Mimi, it’s an APATOSAURUS.”

And she was right. If you’d asked me what it was, I would have shrugged because I have no clue.

Anyway, the dinosaur exhibit was a major win.

The rest of the zoo was a lot of fun too. Lucy insisted on walking a lot of the time, which meant going really slowly. The zoo is divided into two major exhibits, the Africa side and the North America side. We only covered the Africa side, and left North America for another time. After all, Africa has all of the really cool animals that we wanted to see.

That's a lot of giraffes, y'all.
(Note the tiny baby giraffe sitting down. He was just born at the zoo recently. I love him.)

Lioness
Gorgeous. Think they’d let me take her home? I’ll bet Beaumont would like a friend.

Elephant

This was Lucy’s first time at a zoo, and I was interested to see what her reaction was. She was mildly interested in things like the elephants.

Me & Lucy checking out the elephants.

But it was the chimpanzees and the gorillas that really got her attention. I think maybe because the exhibits let you see them so close, but I got this picture after Lucy saw a gorilla up close for the first time, and I think it might be one of my favorite pictures of her.

Lucy's face after seeing a gorilla up close for the first time. Priceless.

She was just STUNNED. It was hilarious. After a minute, she got excited and spent the next few minutes saying, “ooh ooh ahh ahh” at them. As we left, she blew them kisses and yelled, “Bye-bye!!”

So, I think she’s a fan of the zoo.

Lucy in a (fake) ostrich egg.

My girls check out the safari helicopter

She got tired toward the end, and she only wants my dad when she’s grumpy, which led to this picture, which I love.

Tired girl only wants her Pop-Pop

It was a really great day, even in spite of the drizzly rain, and both kids were so worn out that they went to bed early and slept soundly all night, so who knows? We might go to the zoo every Sunday from now on. (Not really. But it’s a nice thought.)