Tag Archives: family

beach weekend

Posted on by

Last year, Dave and I decided to take advantage of Memorial Day weekend and go check out the North Carolina coast. That trip came at the perfect time, we’d been stressed out and worried about a lot of things that were going on then, and we ended up having an absolute blast. It kind of sealed it in our heads: Memorial Day weekend, we go to the beach. A new tradition has been established.

Dave, me & Catie in the Atlantic Ocean

Of course, the problem last year was that Catie absolutely hated the beach. She hated the sand, and the waves, and all of it. But I’ve noticed that in the past year, she’s started playing in the sandbox at the playground, and she doesn’t seem to mind the texture of sand as much as she used to. So we thought it’d be worth another shot.

This time, we had much better luck.

Catie on the beach

Catie still doesn’t like the ocean. The waves came up way too fast for her, and the water was just a little too cold. But she had a great time building sand castles, digging big holes in the sand, and collecting seashells (most of which she threw back into the ocean, don’t ask me why).

sandy toes

This year we also decided to invite my brother and sister along, since they live in North Carolina too, and neither of them had ever been to Wilmington before. It’s a longer drive for them, but they took a shortcut across the southern part of the state and met up with us there.

It was great to have them there. It was a lot easier to make sure we had one or two adults on the beach with Catie, while the others were out in the ocean jumping waves. The higher the adult-to-kid ratio, the better.

Side note: At one point, Dave carried Catie out into the ocean. When she started to get a little bit scared, my brother Chris tried to make her laugh by acting like a goofball. And that’s how I ended up with this, one of my favorite photos of the weekend.
my brother trying to make Catie laugh
I love that I managed to get the picture of him while he was suspended in mid-air. Awesome.

So, yeah. We went to the beach, we hung out at the hotel pool, we ate a lot of delicious and fresh seafood, and we had a fabulous time.

jumping girl

How was YOUR weekend?

where I've been

Posted on by

I haven’t blogged in a week, which is practically unheard of for me, so y’all will have to indulge me here and let me do one of these recappy things to cover what’s going on here at Chez PooBou.

===============================
* Catie hasn’t had a single potty accident since last Friday (as in, April 23rd). That’s 9 days ago. I think, I mean I’m reasonably certain, that this means she’s… potty-trained? Like, we’re done? Quick, somebody knock on some wood for me!

She still wears a Pull-Up to bed, but she wakes up dry every morning, so we could probably ditch that as well. But she asks for the Pull-Up at bedtime, I think it makes her feel more secure. And that’s fine. We made a BIG DEAL out of putting her diaper pail in storage the other day (no more putting stinky poops in here! All your poops go in the potty now, right? Right! YAAYY!), and she was pretty excited about that.

And on the one hand, I feel like, wait, that’s it? We’re all done now? That was too easy! But then I have to slap myself and remember that we started this process a full freaking YEAR ago. So, no. It has not been easy. At all. But I think she’s got it down now. Finally. Praise the lord.

Future's so bright...

Also? She is so proud of herself, y’all. Last night we went to TGI Friday’s for dinner, and she introduced herself to the waitress. “Hi! I’m Catie W[last name]! I poop in the potty!” Dave and I almost died laughing. (And thankfully, the waitress seemed to think it was funny too, she didn’t look horrified.)

===============================
* I’ve been exercising like a maniac lately. It’s bizarre because I’ve always hated working out, but now I’m finding that I actually look forward to it. The exercises for my knee that the sports medicine doctor gave me have really helped, and I’ve been able to really push myself to work out hard, which feels great. I’m doing the couch-to-5K (although I’m stuck on week three because no matter how hard I try, I cannot run for longer than 3 minutes without feeling like I’m going to fall over and die; I’ve tried to move up to week 4 on a few different occasions, and nope, sorry, my body cannot run for 5 minutes; hopefully I’ll get there someday?) and I’m doing “The 30-Day Shred” in there on alternate days.

Yesterday, just to mix it up, I did my “Weight Loss Yoga” DVD, which I haven’t done in ages (btw, that’s another “Biggest Loser” by-product, and I do not understand why I’m suckered into buying these things when I don’t actually watch the show!). And it was a great workout, so I definitely need to start working that one in more frequently.

So, yeah. I’m apparently becoming a workout nut. Bizarre. The diet part is trickier. I’ve lost about 5 pounds and I’m holding steady there. I know the foods I need to change in order to amp it up. I’m just having a hard time making myself walk away from the junk food. As usual.

===============================
* My job is busy. Trying to balance working full-time along with taking care of the house and the kid and all of that? It’s kind of kicking my butt. I think there are probably a lot of areas in which I’m failing right now – like, say, in the housekeeping division. But hopefully I’m going to be getting some help on that front very soon, because there is just no way I can keep this whole house clean on top of parenting my kid and working 40 hours a week. And Dave works even longer hours than I do. So I think a housekeeper is definitely in our immediate future.

===============================
* Spring means getting to hang outside more often, which probably accounts at least partially for my lack of blogging. Catie wants to spend every available moment playing outside with the neighborhood kids. And she’s too little to play outside by herself, so that’s where I am too.

Spring also means the return of Drum Night. The last Friday of every month, we go to see a band called Rhythmicity that plays at an outdoor mall near us. The kids love it.

Catie rocking the tambourine at drum night

Elizabeth boogies down with the belly dancer
(Catie & her cousin Elizabeth both liked the belly dancer, and I have to admit that she was pretty awesome. I admire anyone who can get up in front of a crowd and shake their stuff the way that she did.)

===============================
So, yeah. If you don’t hear from me as much on the blog here, don’t worry about me. We’re all good.

t-shirt headdress

In fact, I think we’re better than good.

A weekend in Charlotte

Posted on by

Since both of my siblings now live in Charlotte, which is a mere 150 miles away, this past weekend Catie and I decided to pack a bag and make a mini-road trip to visit them. Catie’s pretty easy to travel with, and we thought it would be fun to check out Charlotte for the first time. I mean, I’ve been to the airport a few times, and I’ve driven through Charlotte, but I’ve never really checked out the city before.

Since my sister Tracy just moved from NYC (she lived in Manhattan, and yes I’m still slightly bitter that she moved in April instead of August, because I could’ve totally had a free place to stay for BlogHer!), she thought it might help her transition to life in the South if she moved downtown, instead of out in the suburbs. I think that makes sense, and it helps that Charlotte has one of the prettiest downtown areas I’ve ever seen (with exceptions for Seattle and Portland). She found this really cool building that had been a department store in the 1920’s or 30’s, and it’s now been converted to condos. It has these amazing huge ceilings with giant windows in her living room.

Tracy & Catie in the window

Playing peekaboo in the windows

Those windowsills are just about the only place to sit too, because Tracy has no furniture, since her movers are scheduled to show up with her stuff from NYC this week. But Catie travels with her own little suitcase full of toys for entertainment purposes, we had an air mattress for Catie and I to crash on, and we had a great time.

Catie & Chris playing peekaboo

I also got to see my brother’s apartment for the first time, which I felt slightly bad about, since we’ve lived in North Carolina for a year & a half, and this was our first trip there to visit him. (Forgot my camera for that part!) It wasn’t an intentional slight at him, just the way it works out. He usually comes to our house when we visit each other.

There wasn’t anything major that happened – we hung out together, we rigged up some iPod speakers and danced to silly kids’ music around Tracy’s empty living room, we ate out at a couple of really great restaurants, and we walked around downtown Charlotte a bit to explore Tracy’s new digs.

My view on the walk to brunch

yelling to Tracy & Chris to come see the "waterfall" (fountain)

And best of all, Catie got to hang out with a couple of her favorite people. (Two of my favorite people too, actually.)
Chris, Catie & Tracy

It was a really good weekend.

Christmas Recap

Posted on by

Since I never followed up on this: we had fun with Dave’s dad and stepmom. This was the first time Catie’s gotten to meet this set of grandparents, and she had a great time getting acquainted with her Granddad and Grandma Sue.

Grandma Sue, Granddad, & Catie

For that matter, so did I, since this was my first time meeting them as well.

Oh, and I now have a pretty good idea of what Dave is going to look like in about 25 years.

3 generations, 1 face

It was a little creepy, to be honest. My father-in-law looks uncannily like Dave, but his mannerisms and the way he speaks are exactly like Steve, Dave’s brother. It was cool to witness it, but also totally bizarre.

We left Yorkshire and drove back to Carlisle on Christmas Eve. It was not anywhere close to being on par with our other marathon drives, it only took about two hours. Catie fell asleep a few minutes after we started driving, and she woke up as we pulled into the driveway. We told her that we were back at Grandma & Grandpa Roger’s house, and she applauded and yelled “YAAAYYY!!!” Ah, if only all road trips were that easy.

That night, we left our treats by the fireplace.

treats by the fireplace

Mince pies and milk for Santa, carrots for his reindeer. Naturally.

The next day, we opened presents.

opening presents is fun!
(Confession: I cut Catie’s bangs myself. I know they’re uneven and awful. I usually do a good job on her bangs, but I didn’t have the right scissors and she kept jerking her head away from me. The good news is that her hair grows insanely fast, so it won’t look bad for long.)

The only thing Catie asked Santa for was a stuffed reindeer that she saw at the grocery store. When she opened her presents and saw her reindeer, she exclaimed, “Hey, it’s the reindeer from Food Lion!” Yes, sweetie, I guess Santa knows where to shop.

Santa also brought her a metric crap-ton of other stuff that she didn’t ask for, which Mommy and Daddy are going to be frantically trying to cram into our suitcases for the trip home. I’m currently thanking my lucky stars that I decided to bring along an extra empty duffel bag in my suitcase. I suspected that it was going to come in handy.

Then we had our huuuuuuge Christmas dinner, courtesy of my mother-in-law, who is such an amazing chef that she should really have her own restaurant or something. That was fantastic.

Steve & Mags at Christmas dinner

me & Dave

me & Catie at Christmas dinner

And you know, no proper British Christmas would be complete without a flaming Christmas pudding.

Flaming Christmas pudding!

(And no, I don’t know why they call things pudding that are decidedly NOT pudding. Like, Yorkshire pudding is essentially a bread roll, and Christmas pudding is a type of fruitcake. I don’t get that at all.)

So, yes, it was a really great Christmas. Even though Dave and I are both still sick as dogs with this sinus infection/flu/tuberculosis/coughing-sickness-of-DOOM, we managed to rally for most of the day, and have a good time in between all the coughing fits and nose blowings. Getting to watch Catie enjoy the whole Santa Claus experience and open all of her presents was really the best part of the whole day. Although the fantastic meal didn’t hurt either.

Tomorrow we’ll be driving down to London (300 miles, not looking forward to that), where we’ll spend the night in a hotel, and catch an early flight out on Monday morning. Of course, because of that jackass terrorist, we’ve been warned that we should allow extra time for going through security, and that everyone should expect to be fully searched before getting on the plane, so “keep carry-on items to a minimum” (which, guess what? That’s pretty much impossible when traveling with a toddler!). So, yeah. Thanks a lot, a-hole.

Oh, and when I told Catie that we’d be driving down to London tomorrow, and flying back home the next day? She started to cry, and said, “No, I stay here wit’ my doggies!”

Grandpa Roger & Catie petting Zack the puppy

Sorry, kiddo, you’re not getting a dog. If there’s one thing your Mommy doesn’t need in her life, it’s another thing whose poop she has to clean up. If we bring one more pooping creature into our house, it’s going to be because I gave birth to it.

(And no, that wasn’t a hint that I might be pregnant. Not even a little. Being in a thin-walled house with one’s parents across the hall does not inspire The Romance. Neither does the feeling that both you and your spouse might hack up a lung at any given moment. So, no. No announcements here. But who knows what lies ahead in 2010?)

one thousand

Posted on by

This is my 1,000th blog post since I started this site back in August 2003. It’s strange, thinking about those first few entries, which started about nine months before I met Dave. If I could have imagined my life now, I’m sure that my imaginary future most certainly would not have included spending Christmas in England with my husband’s family, sitting at a cozy warm kitchen table with a cup of tea and my laptop, and looking up to watch sheep graze in the pasture behind my in-laws’ house. Meanwhile, my husband and our 2 year-old daughter take a nap together upstairs.

It’s not what I would have expected, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So, yes, obviously we made it to the UK in one piece. Catie did phenomenally well on the plane until the last half hour or so, but even with the one meltdown at the end, she did far better than we expected. We went through the border (where Dave got to through the fast & speedy UK/EU passport line, and Catie and I had to wait in line with all of the other “foreigners” – aka Americans, since I think most everyone else in line was on our same flight from Dulles). The very nice immigration lady told me that next time, Catie & I can go through the UK line with Dave, since we’re a family, even though Catie & I don’t have UK passports. Good to know!

We got our bags, got a rental car, and spent the night at a hotel near Heathrow. The next day, we got up and drove to Carlisle, where my mother-in-law, her partner/boyfriend (Grandpa Roger, as he’s known around these parts), and my brother-in-law Steve all live. It’s about a 300-mile drive from London, and it was probably too much to ask of Catie with the previous day being all travel as well. She did great for the first half of the trip, but the poor kid was just exhausted and bored, and she decided she’d had enough. We ended up pulling over and rearranging suitcases so I could sit in the backseat with her to calm her down, which (surprisingly) worked.

Also, from the backseat, I was able to effectively ignore Dave’s driving, which helped. I mean, he’s an ok driver, I just kept involuntarily reaching for a steering wheel that wasn’t in front of me, and almost screaming, “LOOK OUT!” because I kept panicking that we were on the wrong side of the road and the other cars were going to drive straight into us. It’s much easier to ignore the fear of your certain impending demise from the back seat.

We’ve spent the past two days just recovering from jet lag and not doing much else. This morning, Catie & I watched the UK version of the Wonder Pets. As in, the voices of Linny, Tuck & Ming-Ming are done by entirely different child actors with British accents. It blew both of our minds. (And, before you ask, no, the British version of Ming-Ming can’t pronounce her R’s either.)

Tomorrow, we’re driving up to Scotland – we’re spending one night in Inverness, then heading up to the Highlands to stay in our cottages. It feels weird to say they’re “our” cottages – like, oh so casual, “why yes, we own some land up on the northern coast of Scotland, doesn’t everyone?” But now that Dave, Steve, and their mom have made this a joint business venture, those two cottages really are ours, and someday they’ll be Catie’s.

I understand the cottages are near the cliffs and the ocean, and it’s supposed to be really beautiful there, so I look forward to taking a LOT of pictures.

In the meantime, here are a few of my favorites that I’ve taken so far. The rest of the set is here.

ready for take-off

Catie & I in the bathroom mirror

sheep pasture

random Wednesday stuff

Posted on by

1. It looks like we’ll be staying pretty busy with company for a while. My brother spent Saturday night with us, and shortly after he left on Sunday afternoon, Brittany came to visit. (Which, if you read her blog, you probably know exactly why she came on Sunday instead of on Thursday, which had been her original plan.) On Sunday night, my sister called – she had travel plans for this weekend that fell through, and she was wondering if she could change her plane ticket and come to Raleigh instead. Sure, why not! So we’ll have a continuous stream of visitors for over a week, which is actually kind of cool. Especially since it distracts me from the fact that…

2. Our house closing date is going to get changed. The closing depends on us receiving some funds from the UK (we’re taking out a business loan against a couple of pieces of property that Dave and his mom and brother own together), and we just found out from my mother-in-law today that it’s going to take longer than we thought, due to the fact that we have to wait for lawyers and surveyors and all sorts of legal mumbo-jumbo to finish up. And you know, that’d be fine, if it wasn’t for the fact that we have to be out of this house on July 31st, and if we can’t close by then, we’ll have nowhere to live.

So, we’re asking the sellers if we can rent the new house for the month of August (along with a letter from the bank in the UK promising that the funds are, in fact, on their way… at some point). And I’m crossing my fingers and praying that they say ok and don’t decide to walk.

3. In other real estate news, for the past two days I’ve been trying to help Brittany find an apartment in the Raleigh area. It’s been fun – her arm is all banged up and she’s taking Vicodin for the pain, so she’s been very giggly and stoned through the whole process. I’ve been her designated driver, and I’ve been taking lots of pictures of all of the apartments because I wasn’t sure she would remember anything that we saw. But we’ve found a few apartments that she likes, now we just need to narrow it down and pick one.

4. Today’s date is 07-08-09. Funny.

Happy Fourth

Posted on by

We had a nice fourth of July here. It’s odd because it isn’t really a date that we typically celebrate that much in our house, since 1/3 of our household comes from the country that sort of made that whole Revolutionary War thing necessary. But Dave’s a good sport about American holidays, and he wasn’t even offended when the neighborhood association stuck an American flag in our yard next to our mailbox. (Why, I don’t know. But it was awfully tempting to buy a Union Jack flag to hang up, just to balance things out.)

Anyway, yesterday morning, Catie and I went to meet up with my cousin Cat and her family (plus a couple of friends) at the Eno River Festival in Durham. That was a lot of fun – we ate giant turkey legs, corn dogs and other festival foods, wandered around, heard these guys, who were un-freaking-believable, and let the girls play in the river. The river, btw, was a hilarious example of how different Catie and Elizabeth are. Elizabeth sees the river, and immediately strips off her dress so she can swim in the river in just her underpants. Meanwhile, it took me 20 minutes just to get Catie to take her shoes off and stick one toe in the water.

Catie in the Eno River

This was the deepest I could ever coerce her to go, and she whined and cried about it the whole time. I wish I had a picture of Elizabeth for contrast, because it was a great visual example of Daredevil Child versus Cautious Kid.

After the festival, we came home and got cleaned up just in time for my brother to arrive from Charlotte. He didn’t have anything to do for the holiday weekend and wanted to know if it was ok if he came to visit. I said of course, so he drove over & spent the night with us last night. As soon as he arrived, we headed over to Cat and Tony’s for dinner.

I must say, I love hanging out at Cat & Tony’s house. It’s always relaxed and fun and easy. Plus, you know, I get to smoosh on this little guy.

Austin loves his thumb
Mmm, thumbs, nom nom!

Cat’s parents (my aunt & uncle) are in town, and a couple of their friends plus Tony’s sister Diana were also there, so it was a nice big group of us. We had grilled chicken, hot dogs, and I think I ate my weight in chips & hummus. Oh, and there were at least four desserts. Awesome.

As we were leaving to go see the fireworks (the viewpoint is about a half-mile or so from Cat & Tony’s house), Cat told Elizabeth to go get her shoes. Her shoes were upstairs, so she said, “Come with me, Catie.” Catie said ok and followed her. And they held hands as they walked up the stairs together. My heart almost exploded from the cuteness.

Catie & Elizabeth

I cannot tell you how much I love watching our two girls grow up together. Even when they fight (and there are occasional disagreements about whose turn it is to use a certain toy), it’s still great to see them interact.

Then of course, there were the fireworks, but I need a new camera, so most of my pictures were crap. This was the first fireworks experience for both Catie & Elizabeth, and they absolutely loved it. Our viewpoint was from a field a couple of miles away from the action, so we could see all the explosions and colors without too much noise. It made the whole thing much less scary for the girls.

Chris & Catie at breakfast

This morning, we went out for breakfast, and drove my brother past our new house so he could see it. He left to go back to Charlotte soon afterward, and Catie went down for a nap.

This evening, we’re getting a visit from the lovely and delightful Brittany. She has a few days off work, so she’s going to come stay with us to look for a job and an apartment before she moves here next month. Yay! I can’t wait!

Edited to add: I just realized that I wrote a post with this exact title, five years ago today. That was the first fourth of July that Dave and I celebrated, watching the fireworks from the roof of my apartment in downtown Seattle. We’d only been dating for about six weeks at that point. Aw, nostalgia.