cindy's world

Allie skipped a nap for the past 2 days in a row. She had been doing pretty well before that, taking her 2 naps for usually over an hour each. Yesterday, she skipped her morning nap and took her afternoon nap an hour early and stayed down for 90 minutes or so. Today, she skipped her afternoon nap altho her morning nap lasted almost 90 minutes. Jayne is totally frazzled because when Allie doesn’t get her sleep, she is crabby. According to Jayne, she’s also been unusually dependent, protesting and wailing if left alone for a bit, or even put down sometimes. Both days, Allie crashed while playing at various times out of sheer exhaustion, and both nights, she had to be put to bed early and knocked out easily. Tonight while I nursed her to sleep, she was the limpest I’d ever seen her. It was like she was drugged. I sat her up to switch sides and she just stayed asleep, sagging against me while I had her in sitting position. I did get her to wake up, whimpering, to eat a little on the second side, but that lasted 3 minutes before she was out cold again. Poor baby.

I love that she’s super-happy to see me when I come in the room and would stop what she’s doing as recognition crosses her face, and she’d break out in a big smile. I open and close my fist in a wave to her from across the room or from the upstairs landing while she’s downstairs, and she locks eyes with me, smiles, reaches her hand toward me, and open and closes her little hand in her greeting back to me.

Jayne was reading The Wonder Weeks when I walked in this evening after getting home from work. She said that Allie seems to be in the middle of a developmental leap so Jayne’s relieved “it’s not [her].” Sure enough, the book says Wonder Week 37, the World of Categories, begins its first phase at approximately 34 weeks (or between 32 and 37 weeks) and the second phase at about 37 seeks. As baby learns to see and associate details with things, baby learns that a cat is an animal like a cow, but it is not a cow. Pea puree is food like water, but it is green and comes from a bowl and tastes different. And then the baby’s working on new physical skills, too. Language, emotions, understanding the two from others. Brain waves show drastic changes at this time. The baby feels overwhelmed by all the new information bombarding its brain, which will cause some or all of the following fussy signs:
* crying more easily than usual
* seeming cranky, whiny, fidgety, grumpy, bad-tempered, discontented, unmanageable, restless, or impatient
* jealous and clingy
* sleeping less
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. All of the above. Also, I learned that they are now old enough to have nightmares. This explains the 2 nights when, about an hour after going to sleep, she suddenly woke up screaming and crying. This didn’t last more than minutes or less until she laid down and konked out again. I had wondered whether she was having night terrors, but she’s too young for those and nightmares make sense. This chapter in “Wonder Weeks” seem to be talking specifically about Allie, even down to the “When you set your baby down to be dressed, undressed, or changed, she may protest, scream wriggle, act impatient, and be unmanageable. Most babies do now.” This is why I start the changing/dressing routine at 6p and finish at 6:20 deaf and sweaty. The books says this fussy period lasts about 4 weeks. =P

But it’s cool. I tell myself, it’s okay if she misses a few naps as she goes through this phase. It’s okay if she’s sweeter than moon pie (which hubby introduced me to a couple years ago and I still gag now thinking about it) one minute, leaning back in my arms and cuddling against my shoulder, then suddenly bounces impatiently and tries to wriggle out while voicing a big loud complaint the next. She’s growing, she’ll get over this, and she’ll live. Unlike the toddler who is the reason for our preliminary hearing the past 2 days. Today, my judge held the defendant (baby’s mother’s boyfriend) to answer to one count of murder and another count of assault of a minor under age 8.

I had mused before about the fact that I was unaffected and dispassionate in dealing with criminal cases with children victims when such cases seem to bring out the inner murderer of other adults, and assumed it was because I was not a “kid-person.” I’d wondered if I’d feel differently if I were a mom. Today, I figured I would get to find out.
This morning we were given an assignment to do a preliminary hearing in which the victim is a 17-month-old little girl. Allegations are that the 22-year-old mother’s boyfriend (who is not the father) slammed the little girl onto the floor or some other hard surface, causing fractures and enough damage to her skull and brain stem that it killed her. The mom and defendant seem to say that the kid fell off a chair on accident while in the defendant’s care and it was not child-abuse related. The defendant is charged with a count of murder and a count of assault of a minor.
Before knowing anything about the case, just flipping through the evidentiary photos almost brought me to tears, and the autopsy photos of her skull were…*gag*. Now we’re in the midst of an expert witness pediatrician’s testimony about the injuries, and we’ve heard a part of the mom’s testimony. None of it has moved me to tears and the mom was rather giggly and rather clinical in her testimony (she’s a nurse). So I’m doing pretty well, I haven’t lost it in a fit of hysteria, yet. This is going to go on for a couple of days.
Meanwhile, I think this is a good time for sharing something I saw the other day and loved, cuz it’s SO TRUE. I have friends who occasionally comment about how we Asians don’t age, and I usually respond something to the effect of, “Yeah, but when we turn 60, overnight we look like our grandmas.” Observe:

We met my HS friend Lily and her hubby Arnold’s baby on Saturday. Harrison is 11 weeks old, and a quiet little thing who hangs out inconspicuously in his carrier and sticks his tongue out as he looks out cozily. It’s hard for me to imagine Harrison being almost 3 months, since it seems like just a few weeks ago that Lily gave birth. Time flies when it’s not your own life, I guess.

Harrison also seemed newborn-y to me. His head still needed to be supported, and he was tiny. His parents said he’s been consistently in the 30-something percentile. Allie was born in the 99th percentile plus and has remained there, so the last time I saw her looking that floppy was before 6 weeks old, when she started holding up her own head sitting.

It’s true about the mommy amnesia thing. Mr. W and I were so impressed with how low-maintenance and quiet Harrison was the whole evening, even while we were out at our favorite neighborhood Greek restaurant eating. He cooed quietly here and there, and may have whimpered once before he was picked up, but that was it. I kept saying how when Allie was that age, we could not have gone that long without her crying and freaking me out. I knew Lily was okay with new-motherhood and didn’t have postpartum depression like I did when I received an email from her early on, and in it she’d written, “I always think Harrison is cute, even when he’s crying.” Wow. Back in the early days, when Allie cried, I was terrified and miserable, often near tears myself. When Allie wasn’t crying, I was having an anxiety attack thinking I heard her cry, or that she was about to wail. I was always on eggshells, something the therapists said was a hormonal imbalance thing due to PPD. It was nauseating. Even tho Mr. W had agreed with me that Harrison is WAY more mellow than Allie was at that age, turned out I didn’t give Allie enough credit. I went back to my blog at her 11-week point, and read. At 11 weeks (early February), she was going through the crazy-sick thing when she had to be on the nebulizer, was so congested she couldn’t breathe, but I still had her on a regular napping schedule according to her needs, she did well and was happy and I had been so impressed with her (the pediatrician was, as well) for being such a good, happy, smiling baby despite her miserable symptoms. She had been going to Gymboree for a few weeks and was very active, talkative, and kicky. She was also very interactive with people. She was picking up things and sticking them in her mouth, and was sucking on her fists and trying to get our fingers into her mouth to suck. Mr. W pointed out that maybe Harrison wasn’t doing those things because his parents had put newborn mittens on his hands. That’s true, I recalled. For all we knew he was signing the alphabet in there and we couldn’t see it.
Reading more posts on my blog, I was surprised that when Allie was Harrison’s age, I was already going through my nanny search in preparation for returning to work. In my head, that’s pretty late in the game and Allie had made a ton of progress and we were “out of the woods.” I guess when I imagined the early days of when I was convinced Allie had colic, that was the first 6-8 weeks or so. Man, those days seemed to have gone on for months. I would’ve been more traumatized than I am now if it weren’t for my mommy support system, the new-mom friends who let me text them at 2, 3, 4 in the morning, who’d always responded promptly and gave me unending encouragement and tips from their experience. I should’ve sent them Mother’s Day flowers. I wish I’d have thought of it. I hope I remember next year.

I’m glad I kept up the blogging through the PPD. I’d either blocked info out, or things were just a blur to me as I lived in a sleep-deprived, anxiety-ridden haze. My posts were pretty detailed, which made me realize I’m less detailed now about what we do daily. That’s probably cuz I’m back at work and the baby’s “daily” is more in Jayne’s realm. So, a typical day:
I wake up between 4:30a and 5a to pump out the overnight engorgement with the hand pump. I get out between 7-8 ounces. Then I sneak downstairs with the pump, my purse, electric pump backpack, and I store the milk in 2 breastmilk bags, pop them in the freezer. I fill a syringe with 0.25ml Amlodipine (for high blood pressure) for Dodo, bring that and the now-empty pump upstairs, making sure along the way that the computer downstairs has all 4 cameras displayed for Jayne later, and that the front door is unlocked so Jayne can get in. I go upstairs, wash out the pump parts, draw up 1ml of liquid potassium for Dodo, and administer both meds to him orally while he struggles. I then get myself ready for work. Meanwhile, somewhere in there at 5:30a, Mr. W gets out of bed and gets himself ready for work and has breakfast. I join him for breakfast between 6a and 6:15a, then we go get Allie up. Often, she’s already up, and playing quietly in her crib. I’m happy if she wakes up after 6a, but she wakes up between 5:30a-6a a lot. We just leave her alone and she just hangs out in her crib quietly rolling, crawling, practicing standing, humming to herself, playing with her bear. When we get her, I open the curtains and say, “Good MORning, sweetheart!” She smiles at me, stretches, smiles at Mr. W as he talks to her and tickles her, then he picks her up and changes her as I take her bear out of her crib and preps her room for the day, moving the stepstool out of the way of her crib cuz Jayne doesn’t use it, getting her clothes for the day, etc. Then Mr. W hands her over as I’m in the feeding chair, and I nurse her. When that’s down, I close the curtains and blinds again, preparing the room for her naps, then go downstairs with her. Jayne may or may not be there by then; she’s been coming in later and later, and today didn’t get there till 7a. Mr. W and I chat with her a few minutes and we rush out and go to work.
In the day, Allie now takes 2 naps, the first staring between 8:30a-9a, and lasts about an hour or a little over, the second starting between 12p-1p and lasts between 1-2 hours. On odd days, like yesterday, Allie only slept half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the afternoon and was crabby from lack of sleep all day, so I gave her the optional late-afternoon nap at 3:30p and she slept for a little over an hour before I woke her so that she wouldn’t be messed up for her bedtime. Her mood was much improved after she got sufficient rest. She still goes right into soothing position upon entry into her room: head resting against my chest, sucking on her left thumb. Eyes close slowly as I sway side to side for a few minutes. When the sucking slows and stops, I lay her gently in her crib. She wakes up during the move, sees the approaching mattress, and drops her face into it and goes to sleep on her tummy. Also in the day, Allie now gets 2 feedings of solids — a puree of a veggie + brown rice cereal and a fruit late-morning, another veggie and fruit + rice cereal early afternoon. Right now there are pureed peach, pear, prune, cantaloupe, purple yam, peas, zucchini, and yellow squash in baggies in the freezer to choose from, all no more than a week old since I puree a batch of something every 3-4 days. She’s also got carrots and broccoli in her eating repertoire, and sweet potatoes waiting to be introduced. I should do spinach soon before her growing taste buds start thinking they can refuse different-tasting foods. White meat’s coming up later this month. Allie right now still gets 5 breastmilk feedings a day, the first and last by nursing. The middle 3 bottles are 7 oz, 7 oz, 5 oz.
When we get home after work, it’s about 5p and we have about an hour to play with Allie, give her a feeding of solids around 5:30p, bathe her every other evening, read her a story on our bed, and put her to bed. In her room with just me around 6:15p, her nightly routine is a diaper and a change into her PJs, I apply Aquaphor on her dry ankles and her neck folds, pick her up, nurse her to sleep in the La-Z-Boy, lower her into her crib, and close the door behind me as I walk out. I aim for this to be between 6:45-7p. There’s a whole strategy to nursing her to sleep, too, including making sure her last side is the right side so she’s facing the right way to be picked up and placed in the crib, letting her slow her sucking into a slumber before I move her upper arm out of the way, letting her go back into a slumber before I withdraw, then letting her stir and go back to sleep for close to a minute before I move my arm under her neck and cradle her for pick-up, letting her drift again before standing up and moving her into her crib. Otherwise I place her in her crib too roused and she’ll wake up and cry and thrash around in there for awhile before going to sleep. After she’s put down, I re-medicate the cat and Mr. W and I have have dinner, then do our own things. Lately it’s been him playing Diablo 3 and me reading. I try to be in bed around 8:30p, altho I may not sleep till much later. This morning Allie slept in until we had to wake her at 6:30a so that was good, altho I always feel bad waking her.

Allie’s a lot of fun right now. When I open and close my hand in a wave, she smiles in recognition of the game, and does the same back. I think because she sees my palm when I do this to her, she does it back by facing her own palm toward herself, also, so she can see how she’s doing what we’re doing. We say “bye-bye” or “hi” when we do this wave, and it’s done when I greet her in the morning or after a nap, and Mr. W does it to her when he waves bye-bye to her as she goes upstairs with me for a nap. Over the weekend, she was tired and fussing for a nap, and she started waving at us. We think she’s associating it with “Need to go nap! Go bye-bye to nap!” She also crawls around and explores everything on her own, following after Dodo sometimes. I WAS hoping to not need to babyproof, but that’s starting to look slim. She also likes to get to the edge of the couch or to the landing of the stairs to pull herself to stand. She’s starting to cruise, just a little. Maybe a step or two, or to change direction, as long as she has an adult’s arm or some furniture to keep a hand on for balance.

Playing peek-a-boo is a lot of fun. I would cover her head with a burp cloth, and say, “Where’s Allie? Where’d Allie go?” And then she’d yank the cloth off herself very suddenly, and I’d say, “THERE’s Allie!” and she’d laugh. Then I’d put the cloth on my head and say, “Where’s mommy?” She’d put her hand on the cloth, wait for me to pause in my speech, then yank the cloth down and I’d be face-to-face with a huge wide-mouthed, 4-toothed grin, and I’d say, “HERE’s mommy!” and she’d laugh. And then we’d repeat with Daddy. She’d occasionally initiate the game by placing the cloth awkwardly on her own head. I’d fix it to cover her better, then ask where Allie is.

She’s also easy to take out to a meal. As long as she has her high chair and we bring some purees to feed her first, she’s fine to sit and people-watch. We went to dim sum yesterday for lunch.

(Yes, I’ve stopped wearing makeup. No point when the kid runs her hands all over my face when I’m nursing. Unless I want her to eat foundation.)

Yesterday, after Allie awoke from a nap and played with the camera and pulled repeated on its wires, Mr. W had to move her on-crib camera to over-crib, mounted on the ceiling (amidst very colorful language in which even the crib’s mother was insulted). This is our new view of Allie’s crib, so we get a new perspective on her sleeping form:

She laid like that for a long time. How does she keep her leg up in the air like that? It’s like she fell asleep in mid-dance.

There are things that babies learn to do that make a parent beam with pride and joy, such as earlier, when I was taking Allie upstairs to her nap, and she spontaneously learned to wave bye-bye to daddy. Mr. W was smiling at her from down below as we ascended the stairs, and he opened and closed his hand repeatedly, saying, “Bye-bye!” She smiled and did the same thing back. She’d been randomly opening and closing her hand at will to learn to grasp things lately, so I didn’t think much of it the first time. But Mr. W would stop, do it back and say bye-bye, and she’d do it back again, smiling and laughing with her arm outstretched and palm facing him. This happened too perfectly and too many times exactly at Mr. W’s cues to be anything but deliberate. So yay, baby learned to wave bye-bye today.

And then there’s stuff like this after she woke up from her earlier nap, that makes a parent go, “EEEEEEEK!!!”
I looked at the cameras (we have 4) and saw that Allie had moved to the front of her crib, and was starting to pull on the rails. No biggie, nothing new.

And then, she stood up! Oh crud, I’m gonna switch to the other camera that’s on the edge of her crib.

EEEEEEEEK!!!

Now her chubby little fingers are RIGHT ON THE CAMERA! And she’s shaking it!

Um, I guess this means it’s time to move the on-crib camera.

(as with all my photos, hover mouse pointer over each photo to get a photo caption)

I was nursing Allie to sleep as part of her bedtime routine earlier when, while checking my emails on the phone, I came across an intriguing email from my blog benefactor and now taciturn friend, Mike (“wilco”). He hasn’t really blogged since he’s been married and now has two young kids to keep him busy, but he stated in this email that he’s annoyed enough about “this fedora thing” that he was going to rant about it in a post. So I clicked on the link, and read his post.

Let me get this straight. Someone who works for *making quote marks in the air with two fingers of each hand* the fedora store dot com has written Mike multiple emails requesting that he remove the link to their internet site that I had used in a post of mine from December, 2008? Mike is pretty offended by the request, and now annoyed by the tenacity of the emailer, *making quote marks* Sarah, so he came out of blogging retirement in *making quote marks* Sarah’s honor to do what bloggers do best — self-expression on a topic he now finds himself vehement over. As I read Mike’s post, paragraph after paragraph mentioning his research into the emailer, the parent company she works for, her requests, I had to keep from laughing at the fact that he made every mention of the company (and its subsidiaries)…you got it, a link. What’s the deal with wanting us to take the original link down? Turns out Mike had sent me an earlier email forwarding *making quote marks* Sarah’s requests. She says, in pertinent part:

We’ve been hit with a Google penalty for the links going to some of our sites. Basically that means that Google thinks some of our links are unnatural. We’re working with a consultant to try to correct this problem, and one of the things they would like us to do is to remove some of our links.

This actually makes no sense to me because there was nothing unnatural about my link in the original post. It wasn’t like I wrote, “Foxy mice jump over rice paddies FEDORA you will Latin showroom wise.” I’ve seen that in some “fake” content. Also, it wasn’t like I wrote anything negative about the store. It was just a post saying Mr. W and I went shopping, and I didn’t find a hat I could pull off, but he got this Fedora he loved for a great price. You’d think the store would appreciate my link. Mr. W thought maybe they’re writing a few polite email requests (and her emails WERE quite polite, not demanding, but simply requesting…repeatedly) so that if their requests aren’t heeded, they’ve set up their foundation for their next step, which is a lawsuit.
“On what ground?” I asked him. “There was no slander. I didn’t steal content or photos without giving them credit so there’s no copyright infringement. I simply linked their website to my mention of the Fedora you bought.” He shrugged. What would their damages be? I gave them too much referral traffic and they couldn’t keep up with demand, so they lost customers?

Truthfully, I’m not attached to that link, nor even the principle of it. It’s just that the situation is odd to me. A part of my nonchalance about the whole thing could be because Mike SO went to bat in my defense — or rather, the defense of my freedom of speech and the integrity of private party online content — that there’s no compulsion in me to fight. He’d already done it for me. And given that he’d petulantly created NINETEEN links to the requesting company, its personnel, its subsidiary companies, in his rant that they’ve taken offense to the ONE link I created 2.5 years ago, I’d have no problem removing MY one little link, which I doubt would even draw much traffic these days. (Until now, maybe, now that we’ve revived that post.)

Citing censorship, Mike doesn’t feel I should (have to) change my previous content, but given that he’s gotten them back on his own blog, I may decide to take my old link down, because (1) she asked nicely, and (2) Mike already more than made up for any effect the parent company, *making quote marks* One Click Ventures dot com, had hoped to achieve by the removal of my singular original link. I’ll think about it. Meanwhile, a part of me will take a little time to absorb the astounded discovery that apparently, I have caught the attention of a whole company who has taken special interest in something I wrote over 2 years ago, and also, that I hold in my hand the key to resolve Mike’s annoyances (cuz if I remove the link, maybe *making quote marks* Sarah will stop bothering him).