Mommy/Daughter Weekend (Part One)

As many of you know, Eric is in Lake Tahoe with the TNT team for America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride. He left dark and early this morning by cab and arrived at about 3pm Ohio time. He picture-messaged me a shot of his view from the hotel and it's pretty incredible.

So that leaves Cate with me for the weekend. And this time she is a lot needier than she was when he went to Tucson in November (when she was still growing inside me).

Today hasn't been so bad. I was actually a few minutes earlier to work than I have been since I went back, but I think a lot of that is because I was really movin' fast this morning to make sure I'd have plenty of time to take Cate to my grandma's and still get to school. Thankfully it is the end of the school year (only 2 more days to go- and a brief teacher workday on Wednesday), so if something were to cause me to be late, it wouldn't be a huge deal.

Cate was very patient with me as I did all of my normal after school stuff (putting her things she used at my grandma's away, changing my clothes, getting the expressed milk from school into bags for the freezer) and even while I dealt with a little insurance thing. She is really starting to love being in her ExerSaucer and the Bumbo seat. She likes holding her head up and when she's in a reclined position, she's always trying to pull her head forward. She's also starting to pay a little more attention to the Baby Einstein DVDs I occasionally put on TV for her (trust me, she "watches" it maybe a few times a month).

After dinner tonight we headed down to Oakley After Hours. On the last Friday of every month, all of the shops in Oakley (most are along Madison Road) stay open until 10. There is a lot of live music and wine tastings and food samples. Tonight we discovered Red Tree, a coffee shop and art gallery on Brazee (a street off of Madison). Here's Cate at the coffee bar.
The store NEST is right on the corner of Brazee and Madison and we did pop in there to look around. Cate started to get a little fussy, and it was a little hot in there, so it's somewhere that we'll have to go back to. If you've never been there, it's a cute little boutique with a little bit of everything to decorate your home and yourself. :-)

Our next stop was the Blue Manatee children's bookstore. We browsed the books there for a little bit and sampled one of their mini waffles that they sell at the "de-cafe" (get it?)...which is their kid-friendly cafe in the store. They were giving out whole king-size "art bars" which is a dark chocolate candy bar with art inside the wrapper. I don't know what kind of art I'll get as I think I'm going to save my chocolate bar for the last day of school (unless I crack before then).

We took a quick stop into the Spotted Goose, a baby boutique. They sell the Hooter Hiders nursing covers, which I must say has been one of the best things I bought for use with Cate. And finally we ended up at King Arthur's Court Toys, which is where I wanted to get Cate an O-Ball. Here she is playing with it in the store.
We took the tag off of it as soon as we left the store and she held onto it the rest of the way to the car. If you don't know what an O-Ball, it's a great toy for small infants. Cate still hasn't discovered her hands yet (but I think we're getting close), so she loses her grip on bigger toys a lot easier and then gets frustrated. Because of the way the O-Ball is designed, it stays in her hand even if she slackens her grip a little bit. Of course I have to put it in her hand, but once it's there the other hand quickly grabs on and she pulls it towards her mouth. The other nice things about it are that it's dishwasher safe and it's very smushy, so she can't hurt herself on it. I highly recommend it to those of you with babies. They make football shaped ones and really big ones (like soccer ball size) for when they're older.

After that we came home, Cate took a bath, ate, and now she's sound asleep. So my first day as a single parent really wasn't too bad. Please pray for us that the weekend continues to go well. They're predicting some severe weather tonight, so I'm a little anxious about that. Eric will be back on Tuesday night and we can't wait to see him as we miss him already.

~Melody :-)