On Choosing Your Battles

Admittedly, I can be pretty intense with Cate. She goes to a quiet room by herself, not the foyer to play, when she misbehaves at church. She sits in a regular chair, not a high chair, at restaurants. And, until recently, she didn't sleep with anything because I didn't want her to need a crutch to fall asleep.

I'm big in to her doing what she can for herself, which at this point includes being in charge of putting the dish towels away, getting her own dishes for meals, putting her used dishes in the sink, wiping off the table after dinner, putting her clothes away in drawers, emptying the trash from her room, bringing the brush and dustpan when I'm sweeping, and keeping track of her own shoes. More recently, she's learned to Swiffer (seriously, I showed her once and she did the whole front room!) and she's taken on a whole host of chores on Peter's behalf, including pacifier monitor, bottle picker-upper, and post-burp face wiper (not to mention chief entertainer).

But for a whole variety of reasons my own childhood was essentially void of whimsy, and I'm determined that will not be the case for Cate and Peter. We dance almost every day. We clap and squeal when the postman delivers our mail (Cate gets all the window envelopes and advertisements, her "paperwork"). We make silly faces. I can hardly wait till Cate understands sprinkles so that we can put them on everything. I've got big plans for finger painting with pudding and popping popcorn in the middle of the room with the air popper lid off and eating dessert first sometimes. And for a surprise hookey day during the school year when they each get to skip school and have their own all-day fun-packed date with Mom and Dad. We're big in to applause and giggles and high fives and tickles and hiding and chase.

And ... I let her spill her water pretty much wherever she wants. It's just water. We live in Houston, where it's always hot. We only have carpet in one room, and a tiny bit of water isn't going to hurt the carpet. When she spills it on linoleum or hard wood, she immediately gets a towel and cleans it up herself. I can't resist her squeals of delight when she pours it on her head. It's so cute when she splashes her hands in her tiny indoor puddles. And for all my intensity, in those moments when we are both splashing our hands in that tiny bit of water on the floor, I get to be my low-key Cool Mom alter ego. We both think this is great fun.

I had never given any thought at all to how this might play ... at someone else's house ... or with another toddler over. Until today. When I had a mom friend and her toddler over and I gave each of the girls about a three tablespoons of water in matching cups and Cate spilled a little. "Eh, you choose your battles, and that's not one I fight..." I said cheerfully, showing as much low-key, go-with-the-flow Cool Mom aloofness as I could muster. My low-key Cool Mom friend shrugged and smiled and I thought how nice that were both so totally, you know, Cool. And then Cate got the look of anticipatory delight she gets on her face every time just before she dumps the water all over herself. And then she dumped it. "Whoa," my low-key Cool Mom friend said, "that was totally deliberate, wilful spilling!" "And," she said, turning to her own 20-month-old, "We are not going to copy that, are we?"

Uh, low-key Cool Mom fail.

But here's the thing: I'm pretty sure one of the purposes of parents is to give the next generation something to stay up late talking with college roommates about, or to pass the time chatting about on a long road trip with a future spouse, or to pay a therapist $150 an hour to listen to sometime in their late 20s when self awareness and discretionary income hit their first peak simultaneously.

And for all the stuff we'll undoubtedly give her to talk about, there's one thing my Cate won't be saying: "I wish my mom had let me have a little fun. You know, I just wish she would have let me spill some water on the floor and play in it every now and then!" Not on my watch.

Goodnight Kisses

Happy Father's Day!

We took a few photos on Father's Day, including the one and only shot of my belly with Peter in utero. We had full on professional photos taken when Cate was in there, but, well ... it turns out what they say about second children is true. I figure it's lucky Peter's a boy, because how much is he going to care that we don't have pictures of my giant belly with him inside? Not too much, I don't think.

Here we are! As with Cate, it's hard not to wonder wehther Peter is all in my belly or whether he's also decided to spread out in my cheeks and arms, right?

Sure do love these two!

Cate loves giving kisses, and every one comes with a big "smooch" sound. And a wet cheek when she's done.

My girl and me.

I love how Cate's not even looking at me but she has her hand on her belly just like I do. So sweet.

Cate and me ... and Peter

I took a picture of Sam and Cate in this chair last Father's Day (the day we got the call from Mark's about Sam being invited to interview here!) but I can't find it. I'm bummed, because I really wanted to post both pictures.

A butterfly card from Cate and a caterpillar card from Peter attached to Daddy's present.

Cate loves to help open presents! Daddy got a pull-up bar for his new P90X workout plan. He knows it's really a present from Cate and Peter because I'm not at all thrilled about the idea of having a pull-up bar installed in our house! Ack!

Too bad Peter didn't join us for Father's Day, but hopefully he'll be here within another week or so! 

Cate's First Concert

Sam's childhood piano arrived yesterday and Cate hosted her first concert this afternoon:

Horsing Around

Sam had to work this afternoon (bleh) and I had no idea what Cate and I were going to do for the afternoon once we got home from church. Thankfully, a friend saved the day when she called to suggest we go visit a family from church who hasn't been there in a while. C and I were game! Off we went ... and not only did we get to meet a great family, but that family just happened to have two horses in their backyard. So Cate's afternoon went from being woefully under-entertained by my best dramatic reading of The Little Engine that Could to sitting on a horse for the first time, being pulled in a wagon, and going in a swing at a new friend's house. What a lucky girl.

Back in Business!

Ack! Our camera stopped working right after Cate's birthday in December and we've been camera-less! We just can't seem to get organized to pick a new one. But my mom came to the rescue when she was here visiting for Easter and not only took plenty of pics of Cate but also left her camera with us! Thanks, Mom!

And now for a sampling of what Miss Cate has been up to:

Hanging out at the splash pad that's right across the street from our house! (One more reason to love Houston.)

Scooting through her new tunnel:

Squeezing in a little reading while on her fire truck:

Eating Easter dinner hors d'oeuvres with Booker:

Enjoying some morning berries in her undies:

Visiting the Blue Bell ice cream museum (notice the Blue Bell hat):

Having a Blue Bell fruit bar after the Fun Run:

Getting ready to head out to the beach with Grandma wearing her sunglasses from Nana Major and accessorizing with her hat and bag from Grandpa Kennedy:

Strolling the streets of Galveston:

Now that we've got a camera I'm hoping to post some photos more frequently. Let's be honest, though: you didn't want picture-less posts, did you?

Oh, and one more thing: Did this girl win the hair lottery or what:

IT'S A BOY!

Cate is going to have a little brother and we couldn't be more thrilled about it.

Doc sent us home with some photos of his bum, but there's no way I'm posting them. Not even saving them, in fact. I feel like we've violated the little guy's privacy enough already.

Suffice it to say, IT'S A BOY!

We love you already, Peter Boy!

A minus

Cate had her 1-year check up Friday and she passed with flying colors. She is 30 1/4 inches long (80 percentile) and 22.5 lbs (67 percentile). She got an A+ from the doctor and I got something closer to an A-.

Doc wanted to know if Cate is sleeping through the night. No, she's not. Why not? Well, because Sam and I snuggle her and feed her when she wakes up. Yes, we know it's a bad habit. Yes, we know that she's not going to start sleeping through the night if she knows she can have a snuggle and a snack in the middle of the night. Yes, we know that children like boundaries.

Well, doc says, I will tell you a couple things to help talk you out of nighttime feedings. First, now that she is drinking whole milk instead of formula she is going to get real chubby real fast if you feed her 8 oz of whole milk every day in the middle of the night. Second, it is good for her brain to rest from eating for 12 hours. "Oh," I say, "So you are telling me that if I stop feeding her at night I'll help her be smart and skinny?" Well, yes, basically, says the doc.

Now, honestly, what better gift could a mother give her daughter?

And so, that's what I'm going to tell myself over and over when she wakes up until she gets the hang of it and starts sleeping all the way through. Truth is, I could use some sleep before Peter/Elisabeth arrives so hopefully doc's encouragement plus that thought will help me (us) resist the urge to snuggle her.

Post-post: Last night was our first night on the new program and guess who slept 12 hours and 15 minutes without making a peep? Cate Major.

It's Been a Year

There are a few things I swore I'd never do when I was a mom, and here are a few I still haven't done:

1. Smell Cate's bum to see if she has a dirty diaper (It's a show-her-some-dignity thing; she's small, but she's a person.)

2. Taste baby food (Ick. I just can't stomach the thought, even if it's organic and even before I was pregnant.)

3. Lick a pacifier after it fell on the ground (Cate wasn't much for pacifiers anyway.)

4. Sanitize a grocery cart before putting Cate in it (She's been sick one time in a year and I swear it's because she gets plopped right into those carts with no wipe down.)

One year down.

Happy Birthday, Cate!

On our third date, Sam told me he wanted to make his kids cakes bigger than they were when they turned one:

Done and done. Cate's a little taller than this, but the cake definitely weighed more than she does. The bottom layer is actually a styrofoam dummy cake, because Sam tells me a 14 in. round like that one could easily feed 60 people! Who knew.

Here's one more shot of it:

The favors in the basket to the right are sugar cookies made using a recipe and cookie cutters from my great-grandmother (Cate's great-great-grandmother) on my dad's side. Aunt Dale gave the cookie cutters and the recipe to Cate when she was born.

My mom and I made this banner for Cate. I hope she likes it, because I really want to have a family tradition of making all of our kids birthday banners for their first birthdays and then putting them up every year. (If Baby is a girl we are probably going to name her Elisabeth, but while sewing this banner I started to wonder if maybe we should limit our name choices to four-letter names.)

I made this party wreath for the door:

(Some cameras make things look better in pictures than in real life. My camera is not one of them. This looks better in real life than in this photo.)

We hung the cutest balloons from the ceiling in the kitchen but I didn't take any pictures at all!

Cate got the hang of opening presents:

So that by Christmas she was really in the swing of things:

More Christmas photos and stories to come, but in the meantime, here is our Cate working on her very own 6-in cinnamon strawberry cake made by her favorite pastry chef. (My mom was appalled that she did this shirtless. I suppose I could have at least put her in a onesie, but ... too late now!)

Four

Baby Major #2

arriving June 2012

Our Blue-Eyed Pixie

I love this picture of Cate because it shows just how blue her eyes are.

She is still so tiny, and I love that you can tell just what a pixie she is here. Sam's eyes are hazel and mine are really more greenish than blue. We figure she must have gotten those wonderful eyes from my very blue-eyed parents.

We love our little blue-eyed pixie!

Some Photos

So I've finally managed to take some photos of Cate! Here they are, first at the Children's Museum, then at the park, then at home. Thanks for checking in!

Just one quick note on living in Houston: It is so crazy to hear people having conversations about "how great it is that it is getting nice enough to do things outside." Everyone's talking about it--in the grocery store, walking down the street, everyone! We were on a walk a few nights ago and someone just stopped us as we walked by his front yard to talk about how nice it is getting. I love this. I anticipate missing winter not. at. all.

Standing Room Only

I've found that the best way to feed Cate is with her standing up. The fact is, she can't stand up on her own and so if she's standing and eating her hands are tied up holding on to something. Which means she can't grab the pureed whatever with her hands and smear it all over us.

I know all babies are messy eaters at first, but I am telling you: you have not seen a messy eater until you have seen Catherine Lee Major with some pureed spinach. It is really amazing. Imagine one quarter teaspoon in her belly and one half cup spread between her hair, my hair, the inside of her nose, the inside of my ear, her arpits, my shirt, her knees and my elbow. Feeding her standing up doesn't prevent the smearing altogether, but it does improve the ratio of food in her belly to food on us significantly.

Of course, you might be thinking what I would have thought had I not been feeding this child for just over eight months. If you don't let her feed herself, how will she learn? Seriously? Think about that for a minute.

Yeah, that's why I've decided not to worry about it.

So while standing, Cate's absolute favorite thing to eat is Ella's baby food. I started off making all Cate's food myself, but that lasted for about three weeks. Then I found Ella's. It's all natural (no preservatives, no sugar, not even water added). It comes in crazy combinations, including C's two favorites: carrots, apples and parsnips and sweet potatoes, pumpkin, apples, and blueberries. The best thing about Ella's is that it comes in packages like Capri Sun with a handy screw off top and a little nozzle. Meaning you can just squeeze the Ella's right in to the little one's mouth. When I mentioned this technique to one friend she said it had never occurred to her do do that. Clearly, she is more refined than I am. Her baby eats with a spoon. Or his fingers. So sophisticated, you'd think he's the one whose dad is a chef at a fancy pants restaurant.

But the fact is, while our Cate is on the verge of walking she still has never held her own bottle, much less fed herself. (I imagine the experts would diagnose her with "delayed self-feeding disorder") Every now and then she manages to get a piece of food into her own pie hole, but for the most part she'd really just as soon have her people do it for her.

Oh, and did I mention: she refuses to wear a bib. Ever. She can get any kind of bib off faster than Houdini could get out of a straight jacket. Velcro, snaps, t-shirt neck, whatever. She can get it off.

Which means I typically feed her standing up, straight from the nozzle on the baby food container ... whilst she wears nothing but a diaper.

What can I say? She's a classy girl.

Rookie

Tonight I made dinner for a couple we know from church who just had a baby girl. Because Sam was working and Cate and I had no other plans, I made a fairly elaborate dinner. Nothing fancy--but it required a lot of chopping and a sizable collection of pots and pans. My sous chef is still not much for slicing and dicing and as a result I typically pull the Pack n Play in to the kitchen where she hangs out while I prepare dinner.

The immobile Cate of old actually seemed to like spending a few minutes in the Pack n Play each day. The turbo-mobile Cate of today does not. Never has that been more apparent than tonight.

For better or worse, the third prong of my very sophisticated parenting strategy (see previous post about first two prongs: speak to her like she understands English and give her lots of kisses) is: Do not respond to hysteria by caving. Never has that been tested like tonight.

Cate cried her little head off for longer than I'd like to admit while I prepared dinner. In my head, I imagined myself giving her a pep talk: "I know you don't like it in there. Sometimes we have to do things we don't like to do. You have your favorite toys and I am right here. You can choose to be miserable or you can choose to manage how you feel about this hard thing. I love you." But there was no pep talk. I just continued preparing dinner.

I finished dinner. We both survived. I swear she was glaring at me for an hour. We delivered our dinner and admired the new baby and the new baby's nursery. We stopped by the store, which is basically Cate's favorite thing in life, so I think I earned some points back there. We came home. And it was time to do the dishes.

To clarify, once she's in the Pack n Play I am all about her toughing it out. But I have a brain (and a heart). When we got home, I put her down on the floor in the room adjacent to the kitchen and got to the dishes. Within about 10 seconds she and a toy she had managed to lug along were in the kitchen at my feet.

And you know what? She crawled around in there checking stuff out the whole time I was doing the dishes.

And she's still alive.

She didn't open the door of the fridge, crawl in, and close the door on herself.

She didn't climb into the dishwasher, grab a knife, and cut herself.

She didn't find some quarter-sized piece of something on the floor, put it in her mouth, and choke on it.

She didn't claw her way on to the counter top, turn on the stove, and burn herself.

She didn't open the cupboard, unscrew the Windex, and drink it.

Shocker.

What a rookie I am.

Happy Anniversary!

It's been two years!

Us, newly minted as Mr. and Mrs.

We still remember the big day like it was yesterday. Apparently our photographer didn't realize how long it's been either, because we just got our wedding album this week.

Anyway, hoorah for marriage! Hooray for love! Sam's my favorite! I'm his! (He told me.)

I wondered a long time ago (before Sam and definitely before Cate) what I would say when my future children would inevitably ask me who my favorite was. I decided on my answer long before I met Sam: "Daddy's my favorite," I would tell them. Of course, I've thought a lot about this since Miss Cate came along. I love her oodles. Feeding her and changing her and bathing her and reading to her and snuggling her and playing with her and clapping for her is an unparalleled blessing and privilege. She is the cutest thing I've ever seen.

But even now I am so aware that Sam and I have each other forever and her only for now--that some day she will grow up and she will leave us. I think of her as a future grown up, I imagine her going to kindergarten and then to junior high and off to high school and college, and I believe my friends who tell me it will happen in the blink of an eye. I get a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes when I think about it (I know, she can't even walk yet), but the fact is she will grow up, and get married, and it will all start again, as it always has. And it seems to me that there are only a few things I can really give her along the way. And one of them--the confidence and certainty and security that will come with knowing she and her future siblings are decidedly tied for my second favorite--seems like the one to think about on the occasion of our anniversary.

How, you might ask, can Sam compete with this little bundle of cuteness:

It's not easy, but he does it. Day after day after day, he does it.

For our anniversary, Cate and I went on a tour of six Houston bakeries. We picked up a few treats from each of them, brought them home, and made this display to welcome Sam home from work:

Here are some close-ups:

Let me assure you that none of these treats came close to comparing to my Sam's treats. But we ate them anyway.

Sam gave me this Norman Rockwell print I've had my eye on for a while:

Don't you think that, in another era, this is how Sam and I could have met?

I love you, Sam. You mean the world to me. And Cate, you mean at least 9 billion planets to us both.

Our New Family Motto: "You Don't Have to Shovel the Heat"

Y'all heard it here first: We are moving to Houston, Texas!

Our departure date is July 28!

Here is Cate in her new Texas outfit:

Cate and I picked out this cowgirl onesie while Sam was at his audition--yes, audition--to become the Executive Pastry Chef at Mark's American Cuisine. We decided right then and there that if Sam got the job we would purchase this get up from the hotel gift shop.

After I found this job posted online we worked together to get Sam's resume, cover letter, and portfolio together. We sent it off in the middle of June and within a day the Executive Chef owner of Mark's had called Sam and offered to fly him out to audition in the kitchen. Thus began a feverish few weeks of at-home preparation. Sam practiced four plated desserts that he would make when he got there. Here are photos of two of them (these are the rough draft practice versions he made at home--they were even better for the real thing!):

First, bread pudding made with chocolate donuts. This is topped with an almond toile (uh, that might not be how you spell that) cookie and served with a pistachio macaroon and tart cherry sauce.

Next, a lemon tart served with mint granita in a meringue basket and raspberry puree. Those are Pop Rocks on the end of the lemon tart:

The other desserts were a peanut butter banana s'mores and a goat cheese Bavarian with strawberry watermelon salad, basil, and a balsamic syrup.

Getting to Houston meant that Cate took her first airplane ride. Don't you love how skeptical she looks in this photo:

But she got the hang of it pretty quickly. Here she is on the plane:

While Sam was at his audition Cate and I mostly just hung out nervously in the hotel room. At one point we took a nap together in the giant hotel bed and when we woke up I found myself thinking, "Please let it be 11:00" but it was only 10:04. Sam's audition was six hours, from 8 until 2. I put off going to the pool until about 1:15 so that we'd have something to look forward to during the nerve wracking part. Here is Cate just before we headed out:

This girl is a fish! She loves swimming lessons so much and now she really gets the hang of getting in her bathing suit. As soon as I get it out she wiggles her whole body and squeals in delight. We had a great time at the pool! (It was the 4th of July, and so of course she wore her red, white, and blue suit from Grandma!)

While we were at the pool I was checking my phone every two seconds and Sam finally called. He had been offered the job! The next day we checked out neighborhoods and found a place to live. Within a week all the details of the package had been finalized, Sam had given his notice at work, and we had started to pack.

We are sad to be leaving our friends in Salt Lake, but we are so excited for our new adventure! I can't wait for warm Christmas. I'm already thinking about how we can have an outdoor element to Cate's first birthday party in December.

On our third date, Sam told me that when his kids turned one he wanted to make them cakes bigger than they were. Thus began our love story.

Clearly, a cake bigger than she is is a possibility--Sam made this wedding cake this week and Cate and I went to check it out:

Here is a better shot of it:

Not sure if I'll get to another post before we head out, but I'll get back on the blogging once we get settled in our new home.

See y'all later.