Allie tries to be very fair. She’s not for gender bias at all. In fact, when we’re out, half the adults who mill over to admire her think she’s a boy. “Awww, what a cute little guy!” too many people said on Sunday while we were at the Irvine Spectrum, which prompted Mr. W to immediately spend $40+ on head wraps with interchangeable bows and flowers. Allie wore one immediately, as you can see in the photo of her asleep in the car an hour later.
(We’d missed her naptime by minutes, so she went to sleep in the car on the drive home. I waited out the nap with her in the car parked on our driveway, knowing it’d be a short one. Her late afternoon naps have become half an hour long, just enough to get a little refresher before she goes down for the night at around 7p.)
When Allie’s in a good mood, she babbles and coos and blows bubbles. Her new favorite sounds, aside from the “pptttthhh” of bubble blowing, are a high-pitched “Aah!” and “Haaa-ummmmm” and “Hhhiiiii.” We’ve been trying our best to familiarize her with words we expect her to use first. “Mamamamama? Papapapapa? Allieallieallieallieallie?” She would just smile silently in return. When we came home from work yesterday, Jayne (with her younger teenage daughter, playing with Allie in the backyard) said excitedly, “She said her first word today!”
“Really? What is it?” Mr. W asked. The moment it took for Jayne to respond was suspense-filled. Would it be mama?
Would it be papa?
Jayne said, “It was ‘hi.’ ”
“She’s been saying ‘hi’ all weekend, I don’t think it’s actually a word,” Mr. W laughed.
Jayne looked disappointed. “Oh, really? But we even said it back, and she repeated it! She said it like 5 times in a row!”
Hmm. Maybe Allie DID mean to say “hi.” How politically correct to not “choose” a parent as her first word.
I guess I’ll respect that Allie’s first word is a greeting to the world. Hello, world. Yes, I’m happy with that. As long as her second word is “mama.”
My parents came over today after not seeing Allie for the last 2 weeks because of our road trip. I get a lot of emails from my mom about how much she and my dad miss Allie when they’re not able to come by. Once in awhile she bothers to throw in that she misses us, as well. That’s nice of her. They brought Allie an electronic learning toy that turns into a push-walker when Allie starts walking, and a cute little halter swimsuit. We gave my mom her Mother’s Day present early: an iPad 3 which Mr. W preloaded with photos of Allie. My dad says she sits in bed at night and watches and rewatches videos and photos she’d taken of Allie in the past months on her laptop, giggling like an insane grandma. Now she can do the same thing with a lighter object on her lap. The back of the iPad is inscribed “Happy Mother’s Day” with my mom’s name, and “Love” from me, Mr. W and Allie. If someone stole it they’d have to prove a lot to claim it’s theirs.
It’s interesting seeing Allie thru my parents’ eyes. Because they only see Allie for a couple of hours once a week, they don’t realize all the progress she makes. So my dad will make comments like, “She’s making deliberate audible vocalizations now! I think she’s learning to talk!” “She now looks straight at you and concentrates on your mouth when you talk! She’s learning!” “She’s starting to grab things on purpose! She knows what to do with her hands now!” These are things she’d been doing for weeks to months, but I don’t say anything and let them make their own discoveries. No need to make them feel worse; they already feel like they’re missing out.
When my parents first arrived, Allie was in the second hour of what turned out to be a very nice 2-hour noon nap. It was needed, because after she was put into her crib for her morning nap, she popped up and rolled onto her back. After crying for awhile like that, she sucked her thumb until she fell asleep, but woke up with full-body nocturnal jerks every minute (I was watching the timer on the monitor), then every 45 seconds, then every 15-20 seconds, then every 30 seconds…basically she woke up at least 60 times, falling back to sleep each time only to wake up again with another jerk, until she gave up trying to nap after 40 minutes. (She sleeps all night on her back just fine, but then she’s laying on her fuzzy bear.) Poor baby. It was worse than when she was in the car being woken up by Mr. W’s aggressive driving on the road trip. I was really hoping her nervous system had outgrown the jerking; this was why we started napping her on her stomach to begin with.
For Allie’s 3rd nap, even tho she fell asleep on me, as soon as I put her in her crib she popped up and fussed. I picked her up, resoothed her to sleep on me, and tried again. Same thing. Wide awake in her crib. I finally walked out to let her soothe herself to sleep in the crib. It didn’t happen; for the first time ever, she cried and screamed through the ENTIRE duration of her nap period, from 3:30p in her crib until 4:15p when I went and got her. She was in fine spirits after she was picked up and played until almost 6pm with my parents, so it kind of looked like she had a bit of habitual tiredness for that nap, but didn’t really need it. The Sleep Book says that at age 5-8 months, 84% of babies have 2 naps and have dropped the 3rd, the late-afternoon nap. She could be phasing that nap out on her own already. I advanced her bedtime a little bit, we gave her a bath (my first time bathing her sitting in the adult tub with her, while hubby helped and gave pointers from the toilet seat), and she was falling asleep nursing by 6:30p. By 6:45p, she was sleeping in her crib. She’d gone to bed at 6:45p plenty of times before, but we’ve been letting her sleep in until 7a to help her catch up on the missed sleep from the road trip, so she’ll still be getting her 15 hours of total sleep this 24-hour period, even with the missed 3rd nap. I think knowing that babies her age are starting to eliminate her own last nap is what kept me from freaking out while I sat and helplessly watched her scream for 45 minutes earlier (while my mom got tutoring lessons from Mr. W on the iPad). I looked back on her charts to see how she eliminated her 4th nap before. It seemed to be sporadically missed until we just stopped forcing it on her, and she did fine with that extra awake period before bedtime. This was when she was doing 1-2 hours of awake periods, before she started hitting the clock-time naps every 8:30a, 11:30a, and 3:30p. That 3rd nap was always a variable “as needed” nap, anyway. Guess she didn’t really need it today.
So many changes, so little time. And with her 6-month birthday coming up in 19 days, we’ll be playing with solids soon.
Tuesday morning after breakfast and Allie’s first nap, we got ready to check out of the Plaza Suites in Santa Clara. I didn’t mention that a roller coaster theme park called Great America was across the freeway from our hotel. It would’ve been a fun place to explore, if Allie were only tall enough to ride the rides. Oh well, maybe next year. 🙂 Another great thing about the hotel location is that it turned out we were 10-15 minutes from just about all our friends, no matter what direction we were going. That was convenient. Anyway, Allie was a good girl and sat patiently in the Boppy with her hands clasped as we got ready to leave.
Here she is watching her daddy disassemble her pack-n-play.
And then we were off! Allie took a nice long nap in the car as we drove to Pismo Beach, listening to Baby Rock. What’s Baby Rock? Turn on your speakers. Mr. W even rocks out to some of these lullabies.
We checked into Pismo Lighthouse Suites, which is one of the cutest hotels we’d ever been in. Everything is lighthouse themed, and our 2-bedroom “family suite” was practically a condo. Allie had her own bedroom and attached bathroom. The property was also right on the beach. Mr. W read some reviews of local eateries, and decided to try some supposedly famous clam chowder that people drive from all over to eat, at a casual local joint called Splash Cafe near Pismo Pier. To continue with adventuring for Allie, Mr. W decided we ought to walk it.
Allie was very cooperative on the way there, but it turned out to be farther than expected. We were pushing her awake-time again.
Finally we got to the restaurant, and thankfully, despite what the reviews warned, did not have to wait in a long line around the block. We like Tuesday afternoon outings. We even snatched a nice street-facing window counter seat.
The chowder was good and extraordinarily creamy and rich. But it wasn’t very clammy. It did fill us up, though. Poor Allie didn’t get any, altho she took a swipe with her hand and dipped her fingers into Mr. W’s breadbowl. Mr. W got her hand just in time to wipe it off before she started solids without our permission. After that she was put in a corner to watch passerbys and munch on Sophie.
On the walk back, we stopped by a swingset on the sand and Allie got her first swing ride!
(Click play for 65 seconds of Allie giggling on the swing.)
And then Mr. W decided this would be a good time to let Allie sit on her first sand beach. She’d been to Seal Beach before when we visited Rebecca, but she was always in the carrier and we stayed at the town side and on the pier. Same thing with San Clemente Beach. She had also hung out on a blanket on the sand part of our Lake when she was 10 weeks old. Now for the first time, she got to interact with the beach.
As you can see, she dug around like a happy little crab. She had so much fun that we couldn’t get her back to the hotel fast enough after that; she hollered to nap, then finally gave up and started her nap on Mr. W before we made it back. She continued it in her pack-n-play back in the hotel room, and then after she woke up, we went to a nice fancy seafood restaurant a few doors down for dinner. There, Allie got to sit in her first high chair, since we decided to just hand-carry her there as it was so close to the hotel and therefore didn’t have her carrier. Turned out that altho she can sit upright on her own, the high chair was way too big and roomy. So we won’t try it again for awhile. Here is Mr. W instructing Allie on proper fine dining behavior. She did pretty well, no fits.
The next morning, we had kind of a disappointing continental breakfast at the hotel, since we had been spoiled by Plaza Suites’ hot breakfast buffets. Allie didn’t mind, tho, since she got her usual meal of fresh breastmilk anyway.
After her morning nap, we were off and got home a little before 2pm. Allie took a niiiice 2 hour 10 minute nap in the car on the drive back, so we didn’t even have to stop until we got home.
Although Allie’s naps were short on vacation (30-50 mins each on average), she did hit them all on time on her own and didn’t have a problem going down for the night, and slept through each night, so that was good. Poor Mr. W felt oppressed by the baby’s naps, tho, so this wasn’t quite a vacation the way he liked it. I felt bad, and asked him to think of it as scoping out places we can go for future vacations when Allie’s older. I’m really looking forward to the time when she’s old enough to really enjoy new sights and places. I think that comes at close to a year, right? Maybe a bit later? But by then food will be its own issue, when she’s eating solids but not adult-solids, yet. So I guess there’s always a challenge.
I couldn’t do any nap training while we were out because I didn’t want her crying to disturb other hotel guests, so when we got home, she fought me in her nighttime sleep and also in a few naps. That’s why we left half a week to readjust her, so that Jayne doesn’t have to do it. It seems like with so many babies, the issue isn’t that they don’t nap; it’s that they don’t STAY asleep. They wake up in 30-40 minutes after their first REM cycle and decide they’re done. As they get older, they fight more to stay up instead of go back to sleep when they find themselves awake. It’s interesting that the sleep book doesn’t really address this, only saying that after 4 months of age, any nap under 1 hour is not considered restorative, and gives advice on how to deal with the kid fighting going down for the night or for the nap. Here’s another challenge now: she rolls to her back, and doesn’t nap well on her back because nocturnal jerks wake her up. So if she’s up and fighting and starts rolling, if it’s at the beginning of the nap, she’ll jerk awake every minute or less until she gives up, and if it’s at the tail end of a REM cycle, the nap’s pretty much over. I’m looking forward to her outgrowing this.
We’re back from Allie’s first roadtrip. I think overall, it was a success. Sure, there were extra things to pack that we didn’t have to when Mr. W and I traveled on our own — there was Allie’s overnight bag, Allie’s pack-n-play, Allie’s diaper backpack, Allie’s changing area box o’ stuff, Allie’s Bumbo seat, and my breast pump and storage stuff. I still got up every morning before Allie did to pump and store, but I got to sleep in till almost 6am sometimes before I did that. Some things that surprised me — Allie is so obedient to her accustomed naptimes biorhythmically that she would fall asleep or demand to be put to bed. I don’t even know why I’d bothered wearing a watch. In the car, she’d just go to sleep at her naptimes. Her initial car naps were very light and short, because road bumps and the car moving around would wake her up, but she would keep falling back to sleep until about half an hour in. On the way home, as she got more used to the car, she had a nice 2 hour nap for her noon nap. Even when we couldn’t get her back in time for her nap, she’d be fussy, but if she were in the car, she’d fall asleep. I was unsuccessful several times trying to keep her up for even a few minutes as we rushed back to the hotel to put her in her crib.
It was a little tough trying to squeeze in all our friend visits in between Allie’s naptimes. When we arrived on Saturday afternoon, we checked in and went out to meet college roommie Diana, her husband Eric, and her new baby Alexis (2 weeks younger than Allie) at a Thai food restaurant for dinner. We didn’t take any photos as both babies were acting up in turn, it being close to their respective bedtimes. I think we all thought we’d all meet up again, but it didn’t happen because Allie and Alexis had conflicting naptimes all weekend. It was different and yet so similar to each other, seeing each other as parents of babies for the first time. Alexis felt like a compact little girl, since Allie is so tall and outweights Alexis by probably a couple of pounds. Diana offered to come by the hotel after the babies were asleep and hang out, but the suite turned out so small that we had to set up Allie’s pack-n-play in the living room area, so I didn’t want to walk in and out with her sleeping. She did go down without an issue in her pack-n-play every night and for every nap she took in it.
Sunday, for Allie’s second awake-period (the first was always spent eating the free breakfasts at the hotel), we drove out and visited Jimmy and Sabrina and their little girl Abby, now almost 2 years old. Abby was about 2 months old the last time I saw and held her. This time, she was a happy rambunctious little girl on the go-go-go! She ran circles around us with her toy shopping cart, stopping only long enough on occasion to give Allie a high-five.
Sunday’s third awake-period, we took a stroller walk to a nearby sandwich cafe and met up with Dardy. He hobbled in on crutches, and we were both very touched that he’d go through all the inconvenience to come out and see us. He took a couple of photos of Mr. W with Allie, and me with Allie. I’ll have to retrieve those from email and post them some other time when Allie’s not screaming and stressing me out (yes, she was napping when I started this post, but the next door neighbor’s gardeners came right when she went down so she woke up early and is now screaming. I wonder if gardeners even register that they wake up babies; I’m SURE she’s audible from outside.).
** Okay, evening edit: here are those photos from Dardy.
For Sunday’s fourth awake-period before bedtime, we went to visit Christi (flip flop girl) and Mike, and their kidlets Kyden (about 2 years old) and Sienna (9 months). Kyden wrote his own account of the day on his blog. 🙂 He has better photos, too, because his mom used a real camera, so her photos were notches above my blurry cameraphone ones. I’ve never seen Allie interact so much as with Sienna. Allie was immediately fascinated, and Sienna’s flapping around made Allie laugh, even when some of those flaps landed on Allie herself. (I have a video of that.) Kyden shyly emerged after his nap, and joined everyone downstairs. It was interesting to see Sienna eat “solids,” which was mushed up babyfood that Christi had prepared (she’s fancy; Sienna had blended chicken and zucchini for one dish and blended strawberries and another fruit that I can’t recall for another dish). It was also very cool to see Kyden feed himself delicious salmon and veggies that Christi made for those of us with full teeth. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. BUT, I do agree with Christi (and I’m glad she pushed me to make this trip), that traveling with Allie at this stage is easier because she’s more portable being only a breastmilk drinker. Christi gave his her kids’ food mill that takes all the fibrous strings and skin out of cooked veggies and fruits. I don’t know if I can be as good a cook as Christi, tho.
On Monday’s second awake-segment, we drove out to see Diana at her office. I was thinking that since we were going to a law firm, we ought to be able to write off the trip, right? Anyway, Morrison Foerster had very cool grounds. There was a park-like setting in the center quad, it was not the boring ol’ buildings we’re used to seeing. Different food trucks drive up and provide the employees lunch on different days, and we conveniently ate lunch with Diana from one such food truck, sitting in the pretty quad overlooking the water and fountains.
We actually had Allie’s third awake-segment free and Mr. W had been bored from being pent-up during Allie’s naps, so we took a walk to explore a nearby Residence Inn that we saw driving by. It was beautiful, with ducks and geese swimming in a long river and large pond going through the center of the property.
(It’s nauseating at this point of blogging because Allie’s now screaming with a vengeance, but I’m re-nap-training so I have to leave her alone until she remembers to self-soothe; the nap was too short.)
The following photo demonstrates one of those sacrifices mommies have to make on behalf of their children. I’m posting this because Allie looks adorable, despite how I look.
And then we walked back to the hotel for Allie’s third nap, where Mr. W had some fun with a cap for dress-up.
The fourth awake-segment was spent meeting up with Rebecca and her 6-year-old, Ben. Ben was so excited he couldn’t stop himself from hopping up and down while he sang to Allie. Unfortunately, dinner went long as we were at a sit-down restaurant, and Allie had two melt-downs, Mr. W taking her out of Maggiano’s Little Italy both times until she calmed down. It was past Ben’s bedtime as well, and he had a rare quiet moment with his head on the dinner table while he waited for his dessert to show up. Allie fell asleep on the drive back to the hotel and stayed asleep in the carseat after we brought the carseat carrier into the hotel. Mr. W suggested I take a shower and let her sleep, and feed her the bedtime feeding when she wakes up. She awoke in the carrier as soon as I finished my own bedtime routine, and we treated her bedtime routine like a middle-of-the-night feeding (which I am a little rusty at); dark, feed, no talking or playing, and putting her right to bed as soon as she was done eating. It was a success, even tho she went to sleep more than 2 hours past her usual bedtime.
I’ll continue with Allie’s Great Adventure, Central Cal later…Allie needs some attention right now.
