Mmmm...Mmmm...Good!

Our friend, Tina, from our small group is also a teacher.  She knows how crazy the first day of school can be.  And she knows that the last thing any teacher wants to do on the first day of school is come home and make dinner.  So last week at small group she handed us a pan.  Full of yummy lasagna goodness.  All I had to do yesterday (the first day of school for me) was thaw it while at work and stick it in the oven for an hour when I got home.  It was delicious!  Cate loved eating (and wearing) it.  She promptly took a bath while Mommy promptly vegged on the couch in order to digest her three servings.

 

 

I also thoroughly enjoyed leftovers at lunch today!  Thanks Tina!


The first week of school-- all 2 days of it-- went really well.  My students seem like nice kids, I feel incredibly organized this year, and am confident that this year will be a good one.  Cate has been a little clingy when Eric drops her off at our sitter, but she seems to get over it quickly.  Hopefully as we settle more into the routine of school, she'll be less clingy when getting dropped off.  I think it's just because she actually recognizes us leaving and coming to get her every day (I'm greeted with "Hi Mommy" every afternoon).  But I'm stickin' to what I said in this post: Working makes me a better mom.  This week was a reminder of that.  (Sidenote...that post was in no way intended to offend all you stay-at-home moms out there, so I hope you weren't offended.  I love my job-- most days-- and that is how I find balance and what makes me better.  I couldn't be a SAHM-- it's just not in my personality...at least not right now).

Next week is a full five-day week of school.  Time to rest up this weekend.

Happy back to school everyone!

~Melody

12 Month Checkup

Cate had her 12 month checkup today. We are up to 21 pounds 4 ounces! She's just under 31 inches tall. Basically her height is in the 90th percentile while her weight is down around the 50th...so far she's tall and skinny (taking after her Aunt Catherine I see). Our pediatrician said everything looked great with her and Cate only screamed for about 5 seconds when she got her one shot (in the arm this time instead of the leg...what a big girl).

We expressed our concern that Cate doesn't really like veggies. It's mostly the texture of them, because she will eat baby food veggies (until she gets tired of us feeding her- she's so independent) or will eat veggies if they're mixed in with her pasta or mashed potatoes or something (but again, gets tired when we're feeding her this kind of stuff). The doctor suggested peppers since they're sweeter, but have the same nutritional value as the veggies she spits out (mainly broccoli and green beans). Luckily we had a red and green pepper at home. She ate slices of both and really seemed to like them. Hooray! The doctor also suggested putting a little cheese on her veggies since she likes cheese so much. I guess we'll try that next.

Tonight Eric, Cate, and I did something we haven't done for awhile. We headed through the Starbucks drive though and then went for a drive. For the first few weeks post-partum, I couldn't drive and was overwhelmed at the thought of taking Cate somewhere on my own. But I had to get out of the house. So just about every night, we'd do just what we did tonight. Eric had a gift card from commanding a great cheer station at the marathon in Phoenix and we had extra money in our gas budget since I had snow days a couple of weeks ago. It was fun to reminisce. We explored the Kentucky side of the river this time and found quite a few little shops and restaurants we want to check out.

Sorry no pictures to post, but I for my faithful few readers and family I wanted to make sure you got your Cate checkup update. :-)

~Melody :-)

Growing Up

It's still hard for me to fathom that this time last year, I was just at the beginning of my third trimester. Cate is a maniac, crawling all over the place. We're feeding her more table food now. She still eats baby food for lunch and some for dinner (since more of her finger foods end up on her and the floor than in her mouth). Zoey doesn't mind this new venture. Cate seems to love the chicken nuggets we got her (Whole Foods sells some yummy, lightly breaded, growth-hormone free chicken nuggets).
Cate is also quite the mooch. She ate quite a bit of my mashed potatoes last weekend at my in-laws and likes to share in my Sunday morning doughnut.

Cate also outgrew her baby bathtub. She's been trying to climb out of it for awhile, but we didn't have a bath mat to keep her from slipping. Tonight we finally bought a bath mat and Cate couldn't be happier to have full reign of the tub (with Mommy and Daddy's supervision of course).
I think she especially liked that she could "crawl" after her toys.
People weren't kidding when they said the time flies by so quickly.

~Melody :-)

Tunes, Pancakes, and Ike...oh my!

What started out as a semi-normal, uneventful weekend, definitely didn't end that way. But let's start at the beginning.

On Friday evening, Eric and I decided that the off-and-on rain was a little too unpredictable for our taste and instead of heading for the football game, we decided to check out Shake It! Records in Northside. We're big fans of independent bookstores like Joseph Beth and the Blue Manatee; independent coffeehouses like Pleasant Perk, Rohs Street, and Coffee Emporium; independent restaurants like Indigo, Arthurs, and Zips. So it's no wonder we're also big fans of independent music stores, like Everybody's Records, which is right up the street from us. Shake It! is another such place. And we're in love with it. The pros of Shake It!: Better selection of used and new music, other random stuff for sale (they have the hamburger phone like Juno has), and more of that High Fidelity feel. The con: they don't have the CD listening station where you can scan any CD barcode and listen to all of the tracks (not only do places like Barnes and Noble have these, but Everybody's Records does too). Shake It! picks about 30 different CDs to showcase at random listening stations throughout the store and that's it. But it's still a cool place, and all of you music lovers out there should check it out. Honey, another cool independent restaurant, is right down the street and very yummy should you need foodage while in Northside.

Anyway....we almost didn't get to go to Shake It! because Miss Cate was falling asleep after dinner- as evidenced by the video below. She woke up once she realized we were filming her though.



Cate got in on the tunes at Shake It! and zoned out a little.
On Saturday morning we made pancakes and with a little leftover batter, I made Cate one of her own.
She wasn't sure about it at first.
But ended up liking it and ate about a fourth of it before it became a gooey mess.
She has top teeth coming in and we know table foods are just around the corner. In fact, we try to let her taste as much of our food as possible.

On Sunday, Ike found us...yup, all the way here in Cincinnati. We didn't have much rain, but there were 80 mile/hour winds! Yikes! We lost power around 2:45 on Sunday and didn't get it back until about 3:45 on Monday. Eric was the hero of the day and official milk-saver. As many of you know, once Cate dropped a couple of feedings this summer (which correlated with her increating solid food feedings), I continued to pump. As a result, I had 90 bags of milk in our freezer so that I could stop pumping at school after Christmas and only pump in the mornings and evenings. There was no way we were going to lose that milk. So 3 hours into our power-outage, Eric went and got dry ice for our freezer. When it looked like it was going to be awhile...he threw all of it in a cooler along with some of our other groceries and we headed to his parents' house (they never lost power). We came back to our house Monday afternoon and when the power came back on, we opened the fridge and freezer to assess the damage on the stuff we left behind. Everything actually still felt cold and frozen stuff was still rock solid. Eric trekked back up to his parents' house to get the milk and other stuff (we left it there because we weren't sure if we'd have power when we returned to the house). All 90 bags made it! Eric is a hero.

Needless to say, I didn't have school on Monday. We had a two hour delay today since about half of my students and coworkers are still without power (and could be until this weekend). It's the same tomorrow.

So I'm enjoying my extra sleep and hang out time with the family. Here are some pictures I pilfered from cincinnati.com of the common sites around here.


~Melody :-)

Messy Face

Cate had a lot of fun making a mess with a biter biscuit, as the pictures below show.  The good thing is that she is learning to mash food with her jaw.  As she'd soften up pieces of the biscuit by gumming it, the pieces would break up and she'd continue to gum/chew them even though her only two teeth are in the front (on the bottom).  

Tomorrow begins my first day of school with new students.  I recognize several last names as siblings of students I've already had.  What's even crazier is that the students I had my first year of teaching 8th grade are seniors now.  Yup, this is year 5 for me.  

~Melody :-)

So Long Summer

The bright yellow ice cream truck hasn't played it's annoying little melody on our street this week. Our little community pool closes on Friday. The school supplies are on sale EVERYWHERE you go. The buses are out practicing. The end of the summer and start of the school year is definitely upon us.

Today was my last day at home with Cate. I had kind of wanted it to be spectacular...but let's be realistic- Cate is 6 months old. We started off the day early at Children's Hospital. Cate is fine! Better than fine actually. Remember that flat spot she had on her head as a really little baby? Well, the doctor had us make an appointment with a plagiocephaly (flat head) specialist back in June. At Cate's six month checkup last week, we asked her if we needed to keep our appointment. Dr. Brown's recommendation was to go ahead and keep the appointment just in case since it took us two months to even get in. So today was the appointment and after 4 hours at the hospital, Cate came home with a clean bill of health. No helmet or therapy necessary. Her tummy time, rolling over, and sitting up have all contributed to it correcting herself. Needless to say, Cate was exhausted when we got home and slept for almost 2 hours.

When she woke up, she had a late lunch. Cate is in a phase right now where she wants to eat her bib the second food isn't in her mouth. I discovered today that finger puppets (which we keep in the diaper bag to distract her when she gets fussy when we're out) also keep her from trying to eat her bib during meals.
The finger puppet above is from the new pack of puppets I got at IKEA yesterday. That's also where I bought this cute frog organizer.
Cate's room is themed Animals and ABC's and the frog matches perfectly. It's the best place to keep some of her odds and ends like pacifiers, swimmy diapers, and sun hats. Cate cracks up just looking at him.
We spent some time hanging out on the floor, practicing our sitting up.
We also played a little in our exer-saucer.
After daddy got home and we ate dinner, we decided to head up to our community pool for a little swim. The pool closes on Friday so tonight will probably be the last night we make it up there. We did find out though that our pool passes (which were a whopping $10 each) are good through December at any of the 3 indoor pools that Cincinnati Recreation Center has. So we might get to swim some more this fall. Cate loves going to the pool.


So tomorrow Cate starts at her sitter. It'll be weird not having my little sidekick with me all day. I don't have to be at school tomorrow for anything, but I wanted to make sure that Cate had a day where I could be reached in case there was an issue. She'll actually be the only one at the sitter's tomorrow which will be a nice way for her to get acclimated. One of the other babies will join her on Friday and then all three (well, one is part time) will be there next week. I have everything ready to bring with me and am praying that Cate adjusts well and "fits in." I know she will though.

It's been fun being home with Cate all summer. And while I did shed a couple of tears as I nursed her tonight and just held onto her in those moments before she slipped into sleep, I know that this is all going to be great. I love my job! I love Cate! And this year will be about figuring out balance. I already proved to myself last year that I could leave work at work (I only brought papers and projects home to grade two or three times throughout the year). Cate's only with someone else for 6 hours a day too and she'll make friends!

~Melody :-)

Splash and Swing

It's official...Cate now sits up in the bathtub...and splashes EVERYWHERE!  We now put her small over the sink tub into the big tub since she has a tendency to soak the kitchen.  We'll definitely be purchasing a bath ring/seat for her soon (and something for mommy and daddy to sit/kneel on).

Hudson is home to Step 2 and Little Tikes (both makers of sturdy plastic things).  Step 2 was having a sale while we were in town, so Cate's Nana (my mom) bought her a swing.  We have it hanging from the front porch right now and there are already hooks in the basement from the previous owners so she can swing in the winter as well.  We also inherited a porch swing for grown-ups.  My mom and dad got it on their first wedding anniversary and not too long afterwards, they moved to a house without a porch.  It's been at my grandmother's ever since (my parents have never bought a house with a big enough porch since then).  She recently purchased an easier to maintain glider for her porch...so now the swing is ours and we are loving it!  Both swings are the perfect late summer additions to our home.

And speaking of late summer...I made my first homemade baby food today...green beans.  While visiting some family in Stanton, KY yesterday, we came home with a ton of half runner green beans.  After de-stringing them and cooking them, I put them in the mini-food processor and voila...green beans for Cate.  Eric and I preferred to enjoy our green beans by cooking them in a stock pot with ham, new potatoes, and corn...yum!!!  We're definitely getting back to my family's southern roots with that one.  

~Melody :-)

PS...It appears that there is some issue with the blogger site itself when it comes to posting videos.  Once that issue is resolved I fully intend to post my cousin's Godspell song and a cute video of Cate swinging today.  

Growing up too fast!

Cate sits up very well with assistance (leaning against something or with pillows around her in case she starts to lose her balance) and can sit unassisted for about 30 seconds on her own. The last time she went grocery shopping, she was very frustrated to be in her infant carrier in the cart (not to mention that her carrier doesn't fit very well in the small carts at Whole Foods where we've been doing most of our shopping for the last 6 weeks or so). So I decided to try her in the big kid seat in the cart with her grocery cart cover. There's a back support that you can't really see and she was strapped in- both of which helped to stabilize her better. She smiled the whole time and seemed to enjoy the view (and being close to mom). We picked up some rice rusks while we were there (Baby Mum Mum is the brand for those of you looking for a good rice cracker for a new-to-foods infant). The rusk dissolved quickly as she gummed it and wasn't too messy. She enjoyed it as well.
She's doing new things each and every day and we never cease to be amazed by her.

Tooth update: One lower one has pushed through the gums, but is not all the way up. We feel another bump lurking below her gums right next to it.

~Melody :-)

New Milestones

Guess who started sitting at the table rather than on it? That's right, our baby girl! We can't believe how fast she is growing up. And it honestly seems like she grew and gained about three pounds just in the last 4 days. She is heavier, and longer, and just won't stop. We love her though. She will be coming up on her 6 month birthday fairly soon (same day as her daddy's birthday). She's got a bit of a packed weekend and week ahead, but plenty of people and attention to take care of her. She'll be seeing extended family this weekend at her geegee's house (great grandmother) and then heading up to Hudson with her mama, to see her nana and her aunt Catherine. And she'll come back to her daddy even bigger. We love her.

- Papa E

Daddy Daughter Date . . . and more

So, Friday morning, I took Cate away from the house and out of mommy's hair for a while, so we started our day getting coffee and cinn-a-melts from McDonald's. Cate seemed to be happy to be out wherever we happened to be. From there we trekked to Target and picked up a few essentials such as charcoal, and baby wipes. Daddy wanted to treat Cate to a toy though, so he picked one out, and her teeth loved it. :)
After that, we ventured to Meijer to look around and get mommy a new pair of slippers. Cate helped pick those out too. We came home and surprised mommy and she had gotten rest and some work done so, Daddy's date was fun and productive.
Later that night she tried her first pears which she ate without any grumbling. All in all, it was a good day. Till next time...
- Papa E

Picnic, Pool, and Applesauce :-)

The best girls really are from Cincinnati :-) But maybe I'm just biased since I was born here too. :-)
Our summer in Cincinnati adventures continue! Tonight we packed a picnic basket full of yummy Panera treats (I had giftcards from my students to use) and headed up the street to the park and community center. Cate napped the whole way up there and through all of dinner. We were afraid at first that she might sleep through our real objective though...the pool. I wanted to make sure that Daddy was there for her first swimming experience...and she did wake up. So here are some of our favorite pictures from the evening.
Seeing as her head circumference is in the 90th percentile (can you say future valedictorian...just kidding), her swim top didn't fit. So we'll probably be buying a new swimsuit this week since she only has one other one. Thankfully Cate has no modesty and has a preference for being naked anyway.
The little handle on the front of Cate's float made a perfect teether too.

When we were done swimming, it was time to feed Cate. At the advice of our pediatrician, we can start giving her some yellow fruits (applesauce, bananas, pears), introducing one new one every week or so to make sure there are no allergies. Cate and I had stopped at Whole Foods earlier to pick up some applesauce (since the doc. recommended organic stuff), so that's what we're doing for this week. Eric and I want to make our own baby food, and our task for the weekend will be to read up on how to do that...so for now, this seems to work. Cate stuck out her tongue and made a face at the new taste...but otherwise didn't complain. Hopefully she won't have an allergy because I love apples and can't wait to introduce her to the winning apples/peanut butter combination when she's older :-)
We headed home tired and sun-kissed. :-) The pool is awesome. If you're interested in joining, it's only $10/family member for the whole summer. And you can get into any of the CRC pools. Keep in mind though that these are your basic neighborhood pools...there aren't lounge chairs for sunbathing or anything like that...but with a kiddo in tow (accompanied by the fact that I'm paranoid about skin cancer and wish I would've been more careful when I use to fry myself as a high school and college student), those sunbathing days are over anyway.

~Melody :-)

PS...I wanted to post a picture of Cate in the totally adorable shirt she had on today (thanks Andrea). I love that Pottery Barn makes clothes for babies too (as if I didn't already have enough stuff that I want from there).

SCHOOL'S OUT FOR SUMMER!

I'm really considering today my first official day of summer vacation. I realize that my students finished last Tuesday and I finished last Wednesday, but we left on Wednesday to head to Hudson for my sister's graduation and didn't get home until late Saturday night. Now that we're back at our house with a big pitcher of sweet tea, a stack of library books, fresh strawberries (grown locally), and Cate is settling back into her routine, summer vacation can finally begin. Our trip to Hudson served as sort of a mini-vacation for us. We decided to forgo the trip to Hilton Head this summer since Cate is so little and we didn't really think we'd get our money's worth. Plus, my parents are in the process of selling their house and moving to Atlanta- so if they get moved before school starts again, we'll be heading that way for another mini-vacation later on.

Anyway, here are some of the highlights from our trip:
My sister, Catherine (Cate is named after her), graduated from Hudson High School Wednesday night. It's weird to think that all 3 White children are now HHS graduates. She'll be heading to Akron University in the fall to study athletic training and is thinking about walking on to their track team, which would be really cool...we'd love to cheer her on at the collegiate level!
On Thursday we got together with my friend, Jenn (who was in town because her younger brother was also graduating). Cate met Jenn before (at Easter), but we forgot to take pictures. Jenn has been my best friend since middle school and was maid of honor in our wedding. We both share a love of books (I check her iRead on Facebook frequently looking for possibilities since she reads way more than I do right now) and have been through a lot since we first met in middle school. It was great to see her and catch up.

Cate also got to meet another friend of mine, Melisa, and her adorable son, Logan, who is only a couple of weeks older than Cate. We walked around Hudson Springs Park, but forgot to take a picture...next time.

Cate turned 4 months old while we were in Hudson, so above is her 4 month picture. She's in her little pop-up tent here (which is our new favorite thing so that we can get her outside, but out of the sun! And in honor of her 4 moth birthday, we gave her her first taste of cereal.
She's actually gotten the hang of it more since being in Hudson. We're only giving it to her once a day for now as Cate (and I) both still prefer to primarily nurse. But the cereal helps her feel full in the evenings and sleep a little sounder at night (she's always slept through the night just fine, but usually wakes up wanting her pacifier at about 3 in the morning....she hasn't been waking up for the pacifier the last couple of nights though).

My mom held my sister's graduation party on Saturday, so we thought it was the perfect opportunity to take some new pics of our little family. Daddy was playing around with the camera on the first one.

So now we're home and hiding in the AC since it's a typical Cincinnati summer- hot, hazy, and humid. I'm starting to work towards my +15 at school (15 graduate credits beyond my Master's to get the next bump on the payscale) and found a great distance program that's actually affordable. My materials for my first class should come in this week and I'm hoping to wrap up all 15 hours by January (in time to get the bump midway through the year). Once the weather cools down a little later this week, Cate and I are hoping to head to the zoo. Eric was super-excited to bike to work this morning since he doesn't have to worry about dropping Cate off at a sitter for the next 10 weeks. And since Cate is taking a great nap right now, I think some sweet tea and a book are in order. :-)

~Melody :-)