Tag Archives: toddlers

Thanksgiving Recap

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My poor little blog has been pretty neglected for the past couple of weeks. Sorry about that. There’s a bunch of stuff going on right now with the holidays and family visits, and yadda yadda yadda… basically, it’s been hard to find the time to sit down and just write.

My family was here last week for Thanksgiving. Since we’re going to the UK for Christmas next month, this was our early Christmas. Which meant that Catie was overloaded with presents, because for some reason my parents feel like she needs multiple gifts for each day that they’re here. So when they’re here for a week, that adds up to a lot of toys. In fact, if I’m making a wishlist for Catie’s birthday, number one is that she needs a new toy chest because her current one is overflowing.

And not that I’m complaining, because I think it’s awesome how generous my family is – my brother and sister both bought Catie multiple presents as well. But I do worry a little about what her expectations are going to be when she’s older. I don’t want her to be the kid who says, “What did you bring me?” when family members come to visit. So, yeah. I guess this is just what happens when you’re the only grandchild/niece.

shrieking with excitement about PRESENTS!!

But we had a great time, and they all left yesterday, which put me in kind of a funk. Of course it’s nice to have the house back to just the three of us and to get back to some sort of routine, but I love having my family around, and I really wish they all lived closer.

I think Catie might like Tracy just a little bit

Chris & Catie dancing together

Mimi & Catie play with her new Magna Doodle

this picture of Catie & my dad cracks me up

It just got me thinking that you know, my parents are getting older, their health isn’t so great, and I worry about them a lot. My brother is in Charlotte, so we can get to each other in a couple of hours if necessary. But with my sister in New York and my parents in Mississippi, it just feels like we’re very spread out. My mom would move here in a heartbeat, but my dad is not a fan of change, and I think it’s hard for him to consider leaving the town he’s lived in for the past 40 years.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I spent a good chunk of my online time yesterday looking up houses in 55-and-older communities. You know, just in case I need that information someday.

Random Friday thoughts

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With headings, Mimi Smartypants-style.

JOB STUFF

I had a job interview today. The job would actually be pretty good – not super-exciting, but ok; I’m qualified for it, the people seem nice, etc. And the interview went really well, I won’t be surprised if they make me an offer. But I think I’ve talked myself out of it simply for the fact that it’s a full-time office job, and the office is over 30 miles away. That’s a long-ass commute. Especially if it means that Catie would be going to daycare full-time, tacking an extra 45-ish minutes onto the beginning and end of each workday just for the drive? I don’t think I want to do that.

Although, I would get to pass this sign every day, which might make it worth it.
I hear it makes for a really crappy commute *rimshot*
Yes, I actually pulled over to take that picture. Don’t judge me. (Oh, be sure to hover your mouse over that pic so you can see my Flickr caption. I’m kind of ridiculously proud of myself for my juvenile sense of humor.)

Anyway, I figure that any job interview is good practice for the next one, which might actually be for a job that I do want. So, eh. Moving on.

DAYCARE UPDATE

Of the two days that Catie went to daycare this week, one day was great and the other day not-so-great. On the really good day, Nicole (our daycare provider) set Catie and Kiersten (Nicole’s daughter who is Catie’s age) up with some toys in Kiersten’s room, and then Nicole left them alone, but listened to them from the next room. She said that they played really nicely together for a long time. They talked to each other, role-played with their Little People action figures, and had an overall great time. So that’s good.

One of the things that Nicole mentioned last week, which was really bothering me, was that Catie often seems to be on the verge of tears when she’s at daycare. I couldn’t figure out why that would be, since that’s not her normal personality and Catie tells me all the time that she loves going to Miss Nicole’s house.

Then the big “DUH!” hammer smacked me upside the head. Remember how I mentioned recently that Catie goes to bed way too late for a 2 year-old? Well, on normal mornings where she’s just hanging out at home with me, she wakes up between 6:30 and 7 a.m., she has some milk, and then we go back to sleep for at least another hour. But on daycare days, we just get up and go. So, hi there, Big Fat Obvious Answer that I overlooked: she’s tired! Of course she’s tired! DUH! I’m kind of mortified that it took me this long to notice that.

So, we’re working on bedtime. I’m trying to bump her bedtime back about 10-15 minutes earlier every night. Last night she was in bed at 10:00, tonight I’ll aim for 9:45. I know you 8:00 bedtimers are still appalled that my child is up that late, but whatever. That’s the first time she’s been in bed that early since we left Washington. (Hey, maybe that’s the problem! She’s still on Pacific time! Even though we haven’t lived there in over a year. Hmm.)

THE REASON FOR THE SEASON

Catie has gone Christmas crazy. She’s absolutely berserk for the cartoons, the decorations, everything. And it’s only going to get worse because the child is essentially having FOUR Christmases this year. No exaggeration.
* 1st Christmas – Next week, when my family is here for Thanksgiving. Since we’ll be in the UK next month, they want to do our big celebration and gift exchange now. Which is fine with me, really.
* 2nd and 3rd Christmas – With Dave’s dad and mom, respectively. I guess this is when divorce pays off, the grandkids get two sets of presents from two sets of grandparents. Score!
* 4th Christmas – When we get home from the UK, because you know, Santa understands vacation plans, and he knows that suitcase space is limited. He doesn’t want to deliver Catie’s new toy kitchen to England and make Mommy & Daddy haul it through customs. So Santa will reschedule delivery for, I don’t know, maybe New Year’s Eve. It depends on how jet lagged we are tired he is after making all those Christmas Eve deliveries.

So, yeah, she is WILD for Christmas. It doesn’t help that Christmas decorations are currently everywhere, so she sees Christmas stuff every time we leave the house. She loves it. Everything is about “Santa and reindeer, and look, it’s a snowman, Mommy! A SNOOOWMAAAN!!!” It’s awesome to see her get so excited about it, because it reminds me of how magical Christmas was when I was little, but it’s also completely exhausting.

My Little Elf

She’s an awfully cute little elf, though.

do I sound defensive? Or normal? (And do I even want to know the answer to that?)

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Yesterday rocked my world in good ways and bad.

The Good
I woke up grouchy and decided to lie in bed for a while. When I finally dragged my butt downstairs, I found that Dave had cleaned up the house. All by himself, without my asking. THEN, he went out to run errands and took Catie with him so I could have some quiet time alone. And when they came home, the two of them brought me flowers. Which was Dave’s idea, but he let Catie pick them out. Her response when he suggested it? “Yeah, that’s a great idea! Flowers make Mommy happy!”

I seriously started to wonder if he’d been replaced by some type of cyborg husband by the end of the day, but I decided not to question it. Because my cyborg husband rocks.

The Bad
I got an email from Catie’s daycare provider that she’s worried that Catie has Sensory Processing Disorder (a disorder on the autism spectrum). I realize that it must’ve been very hard for her to write that email, because it’s got to be very awkward to discuss this sort of thing with parents, but still. Even knowing that, my initial reaction upon reading it was, “You think there’s something wrong with my precious little baby? ROAARR, MAMA BEAR ANGRY!!!!”

And I think I can say with absolute certainty that Catie does not have SPD, but I do think her behavior at daycare is very different than her behavior at home. These are the things that Nicole has observed while Catie is at daycare:

1. She doesn’t engage in imaginative play or seem to want to get involved in playing with other kids. This is COMPLETELY opposite of how she is at home. She is constantly running up to me and saying, “Mommy, you Dorothy! I Toto!” Earlier tonight it was, “You mama cow, I baby cow.” And when she’s playing with her toys, they have entire storylines that they act out.

And as far as getting involved with other kids, she interacts with her cousin Elizabeth when they play, so I know the ability is there. And I have seen her run up to a random kid she doesn’t know and say, “Hi, little girl! Wanna play wif me?” I’m not so much worried about her social development.

2. Her fine motor skills seem underdeveloped. Yes, this is a problem. This is also almost entirely my fault. I haven’t taught her how to use a spoon to feed herself because I hate messes and I’m lazy. So I feed her & save myself the clean-up. Yes, it’s bad, and we’re working on it. I guess it’s the curse of being an only child, I still think of her as a baby, so I don’t push her to try to do all the major self-sufficient things (like dressing herself).

3. She has issues with food textures. Yeah. She does. So does Dave. She’s getting a lot better about it – like, she’ll actually pick up a PB&J sandwich now – so I’m not terribly worried about it.

4. She freaks out at the playground. This is true. She doesn’t like swings, or slides, or any of it. I don’t get it at all, honestly. Maybe it’s because she feels out of control? When my in-laws were here, her Grandpa Roger wrapped her up in a blanket and swung her around in it like a hammock, then lay it flat and dragged her all over the house like she was on a magic carpet, and she loved that and couldn’t get enough of it. So… I don’t know. That one’s a big question mark.

5. She often seems to be on the verge of crying, and can get set off into tears at the drop of a hat. This confuses me, because it is SO opposite of how she is at home. And it would make me worry that maybe this daycare isn’t a good fit for her, except that she acts like she loves it and asks me every day, “I go to Miss Nicole’s house today?” And she gets mad if it’s not a daycare day. So, maybe it’s that only going two days a week isn’t enough for her to really get comfortable acting like herself there? Or maybe Nicole is trying to engage her in some activity that she’s not interested in, and rather than protest, she’s trying to be on her best behavior, so she’s just sort of disengaging and acting sad/pouty? I don’t get that one at all.

So, after I read and re-read her email a few times (and calmed down), I think that if these things were symptomatic of Catie’s behavior all the time, then it absolutely would be cause for concern, so I understand why she brought it to my attention. But I think – and after talking with Catie’s pediatrician about it today, I’m even more certain – that it’s less likely a sensory disorder, and more likely a major case of anxiety. Which I’ve long suspected. And lord knows it runs in her family, on both sides.

The problem is, I don’t know how much you can do for anxiety in toddlers. It’s not like they make pediatric Xanax, and she’s too young to talk to a therapist about her feelings. So I think we just have to keep doing what we’re doing, which is:
1. Reassure her constantly, and
2. Praise her like crazy when she tries something outside of her comfort zone.

stylin' girl

Personally, I think she’s going to be fine. I mean, girls with that kind of fashion sense can’t possibly go wrong.

the Almost-3's

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Catie is in this phase that… well, I don’t really know what phase it is. It’s not quite the Terrible Twos anymore. It’s more the Obnoxious Almost-Threes. So much of her is fun and delightful and wonderful (I mean, did you see this video?), and she makes us laugh like nothing else. But then there’s this other side, that drives me absolutely up the damn wall.

showing off her clean mouth after brushing her teeth

She’s starting to show this attitude, and I don’t really know where it came from, but I would very much like for the rudeness to stop, thank you very much. She’s good about saying “please” and “thank you” (although we sometimes have to prompt her for it), but then there’s this other stuff that just blows my mind.

For example, the other night she didn’t want to sit and eat at the table at dinnertime. She threw herself on the floor and had a screaming fit instead. Which is similar to the Terrible Twos, except that her complaints are much more articulate now (“No! No dinner! I watch Yoke-yoke [Pinocchio]!”). When I informed her that she could either sit and eat her dinner or she could go to time-out, she opted for time-out. I waited the requisite two minutes, then went and asked her if she was ready to come eat dinner. She still refused, so I said, “Ok, you can come sit with us whenever you’re ready.” And I left. She sat in her time-out spot and pouted.

A few minutes later, Dave called from the table, “Catie, would you like to come eat dinner now?” Her response: “No, I too busy right now.” Seriously. Apparently her pouting schedule was so jam-packed that she couldn’t possibly make time to squeeze a meal in there. Ok then.

check out the HAIR

And yes, her mile-wide stubborn streak does in fact come directly from me. My mother makes a point of reminding me of that at every possible opportunity.

Then there is the small issue of her energy level.

Y’all, kids this age are exhausting. She goes non-stop every minute that she’s awake. She is a force of nature. She sucks all the air out of the room. She is impossible to ignore. She’s the reason I’m both excited and terrified to have another baby, because God help me if I have another one exactly like her. I don’t know if I can survive another two year-old that requires this much of my constant attention.

running at bedtime

And the sleep? Ok, when I joke about how whenever we have a second baby, God owes me a good sleeper? That is so not a joke. I hear all these stories from my friends, whose kids who go to bed at 8 p.m., and I kind of want to laugh and cry at the same time. If Catie is in bed before 10:30 p.m., we do a happy dance. Usually it’s after 11. Then she wakes up sometime around 7 a.m. This means that if I fall asleep at the exact moment that she goes to bed, I might get 8 hours of sleep. But somehow it never works that way. Because I always have to wash dishes and brush my teeth and all that other stuff before I can go to bed myself.

And honestly, I’m at a loss as far as what to do. Do I start cutting her nap shorter? Right now it’s the only two hours of peace-and-quiet “me time” that I get each day, so I’m hesitant to do that. If I let her skip her nap altogether, she’s asleep by 6 p.m., and then she wakes up at least 4-5 times during the night because her sleep schedule is all confused, so that’s definitely not worth it.

Do I try to cut all sugar out of her diet to see if maybe that’s what’s making her so hyper? And is it even possible to cut sugar out of a toddler’s diet? Seriously, I will take whatever advice any of you might have on this one. Because, seriously, I AM TIRED.

But of course, there’s also this.

morning after Halloween

And you know, she’s pretty freaking awesome. And I wouldn’t trade her for the world. Really.

But I’d be lying if I said I don’t look forward to the day she whines about wanting to sleep until noon on the weekends.

leetle peeg, leetle peeg, let me in

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We’re having a lot of fun with the in-laws, except for the fact that Dave and I seem to have come down with whatever cold Catie had last week. So we wake each other up coughing all night, and I’m losing my voice. Good times.

Of course, this is in keeping with our tradition that it is impossible for my in-laws to come for a visit and not be felled by some sort of plague or accident. Seriously. Let’s recap:
1.) Their first visit, December 2007 – we all came down with the flu.
2.) Second visit, December 2008 – Catie wound up in the hospital with a major asthma episode.
3.) Third visit, March 2009 – My mother-in-law fell in the grocery store & wound up in the ER with a concussion.

So, you know, by comparison, Dave and I being sick is not a huge deal. It could be worse. Lord knows it has been in the past.

But, since I’m feeling cruddy and hacking up a lung here, let me leave you with this (short, less than a minute) video of Catie telling the story of the 3 Little Pigs. Because it cracks me up everytime.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLXTLI0otYw

You can also hear just how awful my voice is. It’s totally hot, right? Blargh.

semi-Wordless Wednesday

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The weather got wonderfully cool last week, enough so that we were able to break out our fall clothes for a few days.

showing off her new coat & shoes

I cannot tell you how much I love this outfit.

And then we also had a few days where the weather was genuinely cold, which of course just happened to fall on the day we went to the state fair.

on the merry-go-round at the fair

I forgot my camera, so I only managed to get two pictures with my iPhone. I think Catie is still a little young for the fair. She doesn’t like the crowds (although having the stroller helped; it seemed to give her a sense of personal space), and my cautious girl was too scared to try any of the toddler rides. We only barely managed to talk her into the merry-go-round, but she still wanted to sit on the bench rather than on a horse.

But, just like last year, she loved the petting zoo and feeding the carrot slices to the baby goats and alpacas. And we got her a trumpet from one of those little overpriced toy stands. She adores it.

showing off her trumpet from the state fair

Her other new favorite toy is this tutu that my sister sent her in the mail. It has a button on the waistband that plays “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” And yes, that does get old just as fast as you would imagine.

dancing with Daddy in her new tutu

dancing with Daddy in her new tutu

But, you know, it’s also really freaking adorable, so I can ignore the tinny electronic Nutcracker theme for now.