Eddie and Michelle had a kids’ birthday party to attend in local city Irvine this past Saturday, so they contacted me and asked if they could swing by afterwards so that our daughters can finally meet. The last time I saw their daughter Scarlett was through Michelle’s belly at her baby shower. Allie was 3.5 months old at the time. Now Allie is 9.5 months and little Scarlett is 4.5 months. They didn’t interact much, but I can see them running around together in another year or so. 🙂
It was a triple-digit weekend and Allie was wearing a cool pinafore-style top with matching ruffled diaper-cover shorts, white with red needlepoint embroidery, very Bohemian looking (a gift from Rebecca). But as soon as I brought the babies face-to-face, I realized that I’d forgotten who Scarlett’s parents are. In the past, when the four of us hung out, I’d be in UCLA gear and Eddie would be in USC gear. So of course Allie had to be changed into something more appropriate.
Scarlett: Fight on!
Allie: *discreetly* Gag!
This is actually the only UCLA item Allie owns, and only because Christi (flip flop girl) had the foresight to buy this for her the time we visited them up north. The shirt is for girls 12 months, so I’d put it away into the “future wear” drawer. On Saturday when I finally took all the tags off and pulled it on my 9-month-old, it was a PERFECT fit. She would’ve outgrown it without my knowing had Eddie and Michelle not come over! And I would not have been happy about the missed opportunity for Bruinwear.
Scarlett, on the other hand, had spit up on her pretty ‘SC dress and had to be changed out of it, and her parents were prepared with another USC onesie, which she wore after the dress. 😛
On Sunday, my parents came over and took a ton of video footage of Allie, since she’s toddling around on her own and is now up to 5-6 steps walking without assistance. She did most of her continous walking on Saturday and may have gone more steps than 5-6, but she had already gotten to where she’d wanted to go so she’d stopped (we need a bigger house). It’s usually one end or another of the L-shaped couch, where we place her toys for incentive. Unfortunately, my parents didn’t get any footage of a long walk. I think Allie was just distracted because of all the people around her, and of all the dancing she had to do, of course, since we put some music on.
Here’s Allie rocking and doing the head-bang to rock:
And here’s Allie doing body rolls and hippy movements to R&B/hip-hop.
That last toothy smile? She was just hamming it up for the camera for my mom (who was video-ing). She does a lot of stuff to deliberately “play” with grownups. What a clown. Rebecca did say very early on that Allie would have a wonderful personality, a great sense of humor which she would develop very young, and would deliberately do things for a reaction, to make people laugh.
Jayne brought up yesterday after we got back home from work that she would like to take two weeks in October off to fly back east to visit her aging father, who appears to be at the early stages of either elderly depression or dementia. She’s concerned about him, and she normally flies back to visit once a year, and had been planning to skip this year to care for Allie, but had recently heard from her mother that her father wasn’t doing too well. She was in tears.
We told her of course she should take the time. She had already planned a Plan B for us in her absence. There was a lady from her church, a pastor’s mother, who cares for her own grandchildren (the pastor’s kids) regularly and loves babies and children. Jayne had approached Missy before Jayne realized she was able to nanny for us, to ask if Missy would be interested in this position. Missy couldn’t do it permanently, but did want to help us out a few days a week, which we couldn’t do as we worked daily. Anyhow, Jayne said she’d already talked to Missy and Missy was happy to come for the two weeks Jayne would be gone, and to be Jayne’s back-up for any other unforeseen situations such as ailment. Jayne proposed having Missy start visiting to aquaint her with Allie and Allie’s routine, and then having Missy here with more and frequency until she’s here daily the week of Jayne’s departure. We told her this is fine, and of course she needs to go east to visit her father because Allie will always be here and Allie will be fine, but she may regret it if she doesn’t go see her father and something happens.
And Jayne burst into tears again and said she’s so scared that Allie’s going to forget her in 2 weeks, and that she never thought she would love someone else’s child so much. Aww.
(Sorry, men…this may be TMI for you as it’s all about breast milk. You’re welcome to read, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.)
Pumping is going so well — now that I know how to induce subsequence let-downs and thus have stopped stressing about it — that the family freezer is now overrun with gallon Ziploc bags containing bags of frozen breast milk. I guess I was never less than 3 Ziploc bags, or about 2 weeks, ahead of Allie’s usage, but Allie had a jump in consumption a couple of months ago that coincided with a milk decrease on my end, which ate away at my stockpile cushion so swiftly that I got really stressed, which just added to the whole problem. Now, the freezer has 7 Ziploc bags full of the filled Lasinoh storage bags, and I’m halfway into filling the 8th Ziploc, and I’m about 5 weeks ahead (meaning the milk she’s drinking today was pumped out 5 weeks ago). This past week, since we started meat (just chicken, which we are still “hiding” in kale and/or carrot), Allie’s milk consumption dropped predictably. Instead of two 8-oz bottles a day after each nap, she’s down to two 7-oz bottles. She’s still nursing after she wakes up in the morning and before she goes down for the night, but I don’t know how much she’s taking in at those times.
I’d called the lactation nurse last month to ask if I should be reducing my pumping to match with Allie’s reduced nursing sessions (she nurses/drinks milk 4 times a day), and the nurse told me to hold off for another month to prevent a sudden decrease in milk production that may drop off too early, since I would ideally like to reach the one-year mark in giving Allie breast milk. For now, the nurse said, just reduce the pumping times to 15 minutes a session, instead of 20. Mr. W complains about the loss of freezer space, saying his freezer is overteeming with breast milk, so I think I’m good on my stockpile and can drop off a pump session now, even tho I don’t think it’s been quite a month, yet. After a month, the lactation nurse advised, I can spread the pump sessions to every 4 hours instead of every 3, and thereby eliminate a pump session in the day.
I probably can’t drop the 4:30am pumping session (darn), since that one yields the most milk (I did drop the time spent pumping so now I get 6 oz instead of 7-8), but dropping one of the 3 that I do at work would probably be helpful and give me half an hour back of worktime. All I have to do is match my pumping with the times that Allie actually would nurse when we’re together. That means delaying my morning pumping from 9:30a to 10:30a, eliminating the 1pm pumping, and bringing the 3:30p down to 2:30p. I get my lunches back, could MAYBE hit the gym again (the lactation nurse warned that if I start strenuous exercise too suddenly, that it could also adversely affect my milk supply), and it gives me more time to “refuel” before Allie’s bedtime feeding.
I think I’ll start this today. Hopefully it doesn’t wane my milk supply too dramatically, but I guess I can always add the eliminated pump session back in.
I realized recently I don’t know anyone who had to wean themselves off the pumps. My friends’ babies either weaned themselves early from the breast, causing my friends to dry up on the pumps and switch to formula; or my friends quit breastfeeding for whatever reason before the year-mark (when baby could take dairy) and didn’t pump as they intentionally switched their babies to formula; or my friends are able to be around their babies enough to breastfeed regularly and let the babies’ own supply/demand control weaning naturally. I’m kind of amazed that it looks like I’m going to be able to give Allie breast milk all the way through her first year, which is what the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends, and then put her straight on cow’s milk when she’s ready for dairy at 1 year without having to bridge any gap with baby formula. I was just hoping to get through my personal minimum of 3 months for her health benefits initially, and when that passed, I set my goal for 6 months with some trepidation, and then when that went well, was crossing my fingers and aiming for a year, without daring to hope too much. I still have 2.5 months to go, but it’s looking good. *still crossing fingers*
A day before Allie’s 3-month birthday, she found her thumb and ever since then has rejected the pacifier. She doesn’t suck her thumb much, only when she used to suck on the pacifier, which is to self-soothe as she falls asleep.
Today, I thought it would be interesting to reintroduce the pacifier to see what she would do with it. Obviously, if she showed too much interest, I’d take it away again so I don’t have to wean her of something later that she’s already weaned herself of. So while daddy was changing her diaper and she needed a distraction, I popped her old pacifier in her mouth. She looked surprised and smiled playfully, and then started chewing on the nipple. She then pulled it out, looked at it, giggled, turned it around and around and observed it from different angles, then put it back in her mouth for more tentative chews. She laughed, pulled it back out, turned it to its side, then tentatively gave the rim a few chews. She thought that was funny, also, and pulled it out again. She test-chewed various corners of the pacifier before deciding that the slightly thicker and harder rim between the nipple and the handle was the best for her teething needs.
So now we have a new bath-safe chew toy. She isn’t interested in sucking it, so I think she may be around the corner from self-weaning off the bottle, as well. Soon she’ll be eating what the big people eat.
When the stepkidlet returned after 9 weeks in Europe this summer, she was full of stories of cultural differences in child-rearing. Her relatives in Spain, according to her, don’t have any bedtime for their toddler, and allows the little girl to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning with the adults. The girl is hyper, fussy, and doesn’t nap well or at all. When mealtimes come, the girl is placed in her high chair, and then one adult immediately clasps the girl’s forehead and chin, forcing her mouth open, and the other adult shovels food in the girl’s mouth. The girl isn’t even given a chance to decide whether she will resist the food. It’s all force-fed immediately. This toddler is also fed soda in her bottle and eats junk food all the time. In telling us these Spanish habits she’s observed, the stepkidlet mentioned that Allie’s nanny Jayne had said that she doesn’t know how she would care for other babies if she decides to nanny professionally after Allie, because if the parents don’t have a healthy napping/eating/playing routine established for the kid, she isn’t sure she could handle it. Jayne calls Allie the exemplar baby, and considers herself spoiled by the regular, predictable breaks she gets when Allie takes her hour+ naps twice a day. (I’m pretty sure I’ve warned her that Allie will naturally drop the morning nap sometime in her first year.) The stepkidlet said thoughtfully that when she has kids of her own, she wants to raise them the way I’m raising Allie, which unfortunately means that her kids can’t be around her own mother, who raises children in the Spanish-culture way. I’d thought she was being facetious.
Today, the stepkidlet joined Mr. W, Allie, and me at the Lake. During Allie’s lunchtime there, the stepkidlet helped hold Allie and hand her the sippy cup while I fed a chicken and carrot puree, a purple yam puree, and red Bartlett pear puree for dessert. The stepkidlet was full of questions about the steps it took to make each vegetable item, and then she said she definitely wanted to follow my parenting style for her own future kids. I laughed and told her I’d be here, she doesn’t have to memorize everything now. She said again that she wants to learn this because she won’t be able to bring her kids around to her mom if she wants them to be raised healthily. We chatted about nutrition and early established healthy eating habits.
It didn’t hit me until earlier, while I was reading a parenting book about infant nutrition and having dinner on my own (Mr. W was playing Diablo III), that the stepkidlet paid me a HUGE compliment. They say that emulation is the sincerest form of flattery, but when that emulation is of one’s parenting style, I don’t think it gets bigger than that. Everything I put into raising Allie is the largest amount of effort I’d put into anything, with what feels like the most significant consequences. I’ve had many people roll their eyes at me and tell me I’m making things too hard on myself, I should stop breastfeeding and pumping and let her go on formula; I should make her adapt to my social routine and just let her crash in the car or in strollers for a few minutes here and there if she’s tired enough to do it; I should feed her commercial jarred babyfood to free up time for myself to do my own things. Yeah, a lot of what I’m doing is less than perfectly convenient, but I’ve known since pregnancy that if 100 hours of pain and effort yields even a smear of advantage in health, development, disease-prevention, etc. for Allie, those 100 hours are happily worthwhile spent for me, disproportionate to the advantage gained or not. I’ve had 35 years of doing whatever I wanted to pamper myself, I can give the next few to Allie to make sure she starts off on the right foot. I know this doesn’t guarantee that she won’t eat fast food here and there on her own, or loooove full-fat cupcakes, but I hope that she’ll also be healthy enough to eat fresh fruits and veggies and whole-grain superfoods and learn to surf with me from a young age. 🙂 And hike with her dad, and bike-ride with both her parents, without crying too much about the TV show she’s missing at home.
So yeah, when the stepkidlet observes my parenting, Allie’s behavior and habits, and observes the way other relatives raise their kids (her own mother included), and then on her own asks me to teach her what I’m doing so that she could pass that on to her own future kids, I think it’s worth a blog post. 😀
Stepkidlet: “I spy…an Allie Cat!”
Allie: “I wanna see an Allie Cat!”
I had a couple of drinks after what I described below. 🙂
It seems that whenever I see Edgar’s family members, I get a little evaluation of my current physique. There was his birthday, when his cousin made a couple of comments about how fat I wasn’t and how my engagement didn’t count. And then there was Ruby’s bridal shower last month, when Edgar’s mom went on and on about how I am so much smaller now than I used to be. So at their wedding, when I saw Edgar’s cousin (the same one) across the room and waved when we made eye contact, I’d predicted what happened next, despite the fact that we’re social network friends and she sees photos all the time of me online.
Her eyes opened wide in recognition and she opened her mouth in a shocked smile, then came over, her legs barely able to make the strides in the very, very short and very, very fitted, very low-cut white dress she wore. (I had learned since our last meeting that she had some help with the physical enhancements, and I suppose if you paid good money for it, you should show it off.) “Cindy! Oh, my God! You’re so skinny! How’d you get so skinny? I mean, compared to how you were BEFORE. What’s your secret? What have you been doing?”
I chuckled politely, then said, “I haven’t really been doing anything, just breastfeeding and taking care of Allie.”
“Really? Just breastfeeding and baby duty, huh?” She looked at me skeptically, like I was sitting on a Fountain of Trimness and won’t share the treasure map. She complimented Allie, then the conversation ended shortly thereafter with her saying, “Well, you look great! Compared to before,” as she gave my forearm a squeeze and returned to her date.
Eddie’s wife Michelle, whom I’ve known and been good friends with for the past 4 years, who was also at this wedding, and also knows of the prior 2 incidents referred to above, said to me after the cousin left, “Dude. How big WERE you?!” HAHAHAHA!! But in truth, there hasn’t been much of a change in the past years. I think the peak of my obesity, as I refer to it, was a mere 20 lbs or so more than I weigh now, and that was in 2000 or so, when I started running and GAINED weight despite the 3 miles every other day because my crappy-ass physician at the time told me to increase the mileage, frequency, and drop my daily caloric intake from 1000 to 800 calories a day. Talk about hitting starvation mode as my body flew into fat conservation and retention and turned off the metabolism. But Edgar’s family makes it sound like I used to need an assistant to pull up on my fat rolls so that another assistant could sponge wash between the folds as I laid in a collapsed oversized bed demanding Twinkies and gravy fries, pale from not being able to leave the room to go into sunlight as the doorways weren’t wide enough for me to exit the room I’d eaten my way into.
I was just thinking around the time of my cousin Mark’s visit, while making plans with my cousins for Cousin Day Thursday, that I was really happy with the family members I have, because for such a big family (my paternal grandma has 6 kids, so many many extended family members locally), my cousins were great people who have come to my aid, been socially reliable, are responsible and good decent human beings, and are people whom I’d be proud to be friends with by choice had we not been family. And then a little voice in the back of my head had wondered whether in giving credit like this, that I was just asking for Murphy’s Law to strike.
Strike, it did. Right now, I’m irritated and hurt by a cousin who’s holding a grudge against another cousin’s mom and is therefore being hateful to others of us who aren’t even involved, and another cousin who very clearly left us out of a pretty significant event but who unfortunately felt the need to lie to me about it and then include me late. I don’t know how to handle stuff like this. I feel like I need a social advisor. The first cousin, I’m just going to leave alone and let her work out her own drama, and I’m not going to address how she upset me in her string of collateral damage. I’ll just get over it on my own in my own time. The second cousin…I don’t know. Am I supposed to attend even tho I know that within the 60 or so people invited, I didn’t make the cut, and the only reason I know about it now was because I’d unknowingly asked her about it?
And when the recipricol event occurs in the near future on my side, am I supposed to include her?
I was taken back to my childhood and teenager years, in which I’d constantly felt slighted by these relatives, because I’d always thought of them, given them what I could, supported them any way possible even if inconvenient or impractical for me to do so, but the same was not done for me. That was the story of my youth. Even in adulthood, I attended their events, photographed for them, and I can’t think of many events of mine they’d bothered showing up to, even tho they were always invited. My mom had told me that because I’m an only child, these things happen; they would always be in their private circle with their siblings with me on the outside. Well, Allie is MY only child, and I can see this occurring with her, too, where she will love her cousins and want to be around them as they are close in age, and want to do things with and for them, but they won’t think of her or include her when they do special things with and for each other. If Allie is like her mom, this will sting. She will be sensitive to it for a long time, maybe forever. Life is unfair. “I know, but why can’t it ever be unfair in my favor?” Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes) would say.
I think there’s a reason why my closer friends are die-hard friends of mine. They think that I’m an unusually good and considerate friend. I’ve heard this over and over again. I think there are a lot of people like “them” in the world, and less of people like “us.” Those of us who’ve been hurt, flaked on, treated selfishly and carelessly thrown aside by “them”s appreciate the “us”es when we find some. I hope Allie finds more “us”es to fill the special spots close to her heart.
“You can only control your own behavior to do things in the way others OUGHT to have done them,” my judge said this morning after his “How’s mini-minx?” unleashed a purging from me. He’s right. So despite how I FEEL about things, I will still DO what I should do, in a timely manner that is of the utmost consideration, just as I’d always done.
Guess what! The stepdaughter is going to be on internet radio TONIGHT! Well, not her live, but one of her songs. This stepkidlet had a barrage of songwriting when she taught herself guitar at age 17-18 and all her teenage emotions poured out and took beautiful form in her music. Now, however, she has pretty much stopped creating music, and now just sings with her church(es). I really wanted to commemorate her creativity of a few years ago, and asked Garrett and Rebecca if they would air one of her songs on their radio show. I sent them “Ready to Fly,” one of the stepkidlet’s rare happy songs (she WAS a teenager when she was songwriting, after all — you should see my overdramatic teenage poetry; you’d be shocked I didn’t kill myself already).
If you aren’t able to get to it tonight, Garrett and Rebecca archives all their shows for podcasts, and I’ll post the specific link when I get it afterwards. YAY!!
(For a original song performance video and photos of the stepkidlet at her 2009 city pageant, in which she took Best Talent, Miss Congeniality AND First Runner Up, click here.)
*** UPDATE AT 8:35P ***
That was great! The broadcast just finished. I didn’t know this, but the host Garrett had some trouble uploading the song to prep for the show because it wasn’t in an MP3 format. So he asked the stepdaughter to call in, and she was embarrassed to do it, but she was a great sport and called in. Also, I got my techie hubby to convert the .wma song to .mp3 and emailed that immediately, so Garrett and Rebecca were able to play the song as well as talk to Ana. Here is the link to the archived show…you can listen immediately! http://tobtr.com/s/3703401
The radio online chat room (simultaneously running during the show) was abuzz during the song. People loved her, and loved the song! Yay! (BTW, I had let Garrett know that the stepdaughter and her boyfriend were both here, and when Garrett first mentioned the boyfriend’s name live on-air, I turned and watched the boyfriend’s eyes go wide, like he’d seen a ghost. It was so funny, I emailed Garrett and told him the reaction. Of course after that, Garrett made sure to keep re-mentioning the boyfriend’s name. HAHA!)
One feature of working full time away from a quickly-developing baby is that we don’t always know when she’s on to the “next” stage of something. Like how one day, we had to bottlefeed her at home in our care (normally I nurse every meal when I’m not at work) and Mr. W realizes that Allie was holding her bottle on her own. Apparently this was nothing new to Jayne, but because Jayne’s with Allie daily for more hours than we are, she isn’t always aware that something that isn’t new to her is new to us.
Last week, we discovered that Allie is able to feed herself and this weekend, suddenly she’s able to use the sippy cup. The feeding herself came with a little practice. First, she was quickly putting little specks of random stuff she finds on the floor or furniture into her mouth before an adult could stop her. (Lint, mostly, sometimes scraps of paper or napkin she’d torn, and we’re usually able to stop her or at least catch her early enough to snap, “No!” and make her freeze.) Then, Mr. W tried feeding her some organic baby puffs. She would open her mouth and take it, and he’d hand it to her and she’d finger it, unsure of whether we’d actually allow her to put something into her mouth for once. When we guided her hand toward her mouth, she’d hesitantly look at us in confusion, then open her mouth just a tiny bit, and do a dainty test bite with her front teeth. Now she knows anything we put in front of her while she’s still in her high chair after a meal, shelled peas or puffs, are fair game. She feeds herself these fingerfoods with confidence.
The sippy cup was a little bit of a revelation. In our initial introduction of the sippy cup, Allie would bite at the extended mouthpiece, unsure of what to do with it. If you’d tried to describe the instruction for “suck” to an infant, you’ll know it’s pretty much a lost cause, so we’d put the sippy cup lid away, but did feed her water with the cup portion of the sippy cup with her solid meals so she’d be familiar with the cup and the water. When we were at a restaurant feeding her her purees, we’d do the same with a glass of water. We started with a straw, plugging up the top with our thumbs and bringing the bottom of the straw to her mouth, feeding her like a little birdie. She soon learned to suck the water out the bottom of the straw and not just leave it to gravity. Then, last week, we tried leaving the straw in the cup and letting her sip from the top. That didn’t work before, but after being “trained” to suck the straw from the bottom for a few weeks, the top was a small change and she did it. We thought, “This is great! Now we can skip the sippy cup altogether.” Then my cousin Jennifer told us that her daycare won’t let her 11-month-old graduate to the next class unless her kid could use a sippy cup. Darn it, back to the drawing board. So yesterday, we tried the sippy cup with the suction lid again. Allie suddenly took to it with no problem. I guess the trick was converting her from the top of the straw to the top of the sippy cup lid, because that’s a gradual change from what she already knows to do. So today, when my parents came to visit, they got to enjoy Allie’s new skills and they took this little 42-second video (among 23 other videos):
BTW, while I was downloading the video from my mom’s camera into our PC, I found this never-before-seen photo.
WHAT the…?! I’ve never seen my little baby look like that!
Allie: “Whatever doesn’t kill me…had BETTER START RUNNING!!”
I’m behind, so this is gonna be mostly pix, with just a few of my usual lengthy descriptive paragraphs.
Last Friday, I did my very first outing alone after Allie went to bed (despite the fact that I’m still doing 4:30a wake-ups daily without fail to pump). Rebecca was in town, doing her daily radio show with her co-host Garrett broadcasting from a local-ish Laguna Beach restaurant called The Cottage as a special event, so I drove out to see her and to meet Garrett for the first time. Here they are at The Cottage office during their live broadcast.
Yes, that is THE Rebecca, our favorite clairvoyant! If you’re interested in giving her internet radio show a listen, or feel like calling in for a free mini-reading, she’ll answer questions live on the air! The Garrett & Rebecca Show is on 7:30p-8:30p Pacific time Mondays through Fridays, and you can listen to their podcasts RIGHT NOW for any of their past shows: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/garrettmillerradio
Now you can see what I was talking about on here about Rebecca. 🙂
So ANYWAY, Rebecca and I basically just hung out and caught up over chocolate mousse cake dessert at the restaurant after their broadcast, and Garrett joined us briefly before skidaddling off to his busy life by the beach. The Cottage Restaurant is awesome, BTW. I’ve seen it driving by but never went in. It used to be an old house, and now serves amazing breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Rebecca and I stayed until after closing and they were so nice about it, still coming by to offer us refreshments and service.
Last Saturday, Edgar & Ruby got married! We had to miss the ceremony because it was far away at 5pm, and no way we could be there and get Allie back in time for bed by 6pm, so we skipped the ceremony, put Allie down like normal, then Jayne came over and they babysat (not much to do but be here and get her out of the house in case of flood or fire) while Mr. W and I went to the reception. They had two photobooths with tons of props, and we had fun with THAT. After all, it was the first time we’d gone out together after Allie’s gone to bed. He’d been out with his friends here and there before, but I hadn’t been out past 6:30p since…Allie’s birth.
Here’s Eddie, Michelle, and us not quite knowing what to do with the props — our ourselves — on our first photobooth session.
Mr. W and I celebrated in style, as you can see.
We soon found that the problem with photobooths at weddings is that people can just come in and crash your photoshoot session. And then the camera bears witness to all the fighting that ensues.
I’m just kidding; Eddie’s always welcome where we are. Wait, that’s too blanket of a statement…
We did attempt to get some normal shots in…but the camera was messed up at the time because someone had turned off the light in the booth (as was explained to us later by the boothmaker, Edgar’s younger brother) so the camera went on totally slow shutter speed, causing the blurring. Oh, well.
The day after that, which was last Sunday, my Canadian cousin Mark being in town for the first time in 16 years (by his calculation, but I thought it was longer) gave cause for a family reunion of the relatives on my dad’s side. This is all us cousins with our kids (those of us who made it to the reunion):
Doesn’t my cousin Diana’s little todder Elle on the top make you want to giggle, or at least wave back? That’s what happens when you tell a little kid, “Elle, look here at the camera! Hi! Elle!” She says “hi” back.
My cousin Jennifer with Allie:
Allie never looks so hairless as when she’s with babies close in age (Jennifer’s daughter Alexandra is 2 months older), and the lack of dark hair makes her look whiter than she looks when she’s alone.
Don’t the 2 grandmas look so happy to be holding their respective granddaughters? Aww.
Last Thursday, the cousins had agreed and planned months in advance to all take the day off, leave our respective tots with their regular daycare situations, and have a child-free day to spend showing cousin Mark around. Mark drove out from Diamond Bar where he had spent the week at my parents’ house and spent Wednesday night at cousin Jennifer’s in Irvine so that we had all day in Orange County. Cousin Diana ended up with a work emergency so she spent the day (that she did have off) putting out fires at work (figuratively); cousin Olivia decided she didn’t want to be in Orange County where we’d made a day packed with plans, so after her attempts to snag Mark away back to Diamond Bar for lunch had been met with avid refusals (my refusal caused me to drop the f-bomb in front of 3-year-old Elle…oops), she settled for after-dinner dessert plans with Mark after he returned to Diamond Bar Thursday night. So it was just Mark, Jennifer, and myself for Cousin Day Thursday and it was A BLAST.
We started in Downtown Disney…
…went to Slater’s 50/50 for lunch so that Mark could do some more of his burger reviews…
(we ordered and split the Slater’s 50/50 burger which has a patty made from half beef, half BACON; the vegetarian burger; and the “peanut butter and jellousy” burger which has for its condiments PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY…blech)
…intended to hit up our lake for kayaking but ran out of time so we just went straight to Yama Sushi on the lake for omakase, and enjoyed the view of the lake from their patio before sitting down at the sushi bar.
Mark claimed that we were “sizing up” the sailboat on the lake here.
The omakase was amazing and Jen missed half of it cuz she had to run out mid-dinner when she realized she’d missed 15 calls from her husband, who was stuck in traffic on his way to pick up their daughter from daycare and couldn’t get there in time. Life sure has changed. She and I made tentative plans to have her return for sushi and lake activities in the near future with her husband and baby, and Mark vowed to not wait another 16 years before visiting again.
It was sure nice having a social life again, even if for a few days and in bits and pieces. For future reference, I was able to do a full day because I left after nursing Allie as usual in the morning after she woke up, handing her off to Jayne shortly before her nap, then I drove to Jennifer’s, pumped there, then did Downtown Disney and Slater’s, then we went back to Jennifer’s, I pumped again, and we got into our respective cars and drove to the lake, then we all split up from there and I went immediately home to catch Allie right before bedtime and nursed her to bed like normal. Oh yeah — after that post about a month ago when I said she’d stopped falling asleep after a nursing, that only lasted 2 nights and she’s now back to nursing to sleep, which makes life easier on me.
