cindy's world

Allie’s cold is significantly better. I didn’t even have to clear her nose the last 2 mornings, and although she still has an occasional phlegmy-sounding cough a few times a day and may need to have her nose cleared after the occasional sneeze, for the most part she’s back to normal.

Except for the napping. By 15 months, more than half of toddlers have eliminated one of their 2 remaining naps, and the one that’s supposed to go is the morning nap. Allie has always fallen asleep faster and often longer for her morning nap. A few random times within the last couple of months or so, she’d skipped an afternoon nap here and there, turning the crib time into a quiet playtime. For the past 2 days in a row, she’d played the entire afternoon naptime in her crib, and although she fell asleep earlier at night, she’d been no different behavior-wise. She may be eliminating it early. In just about everything I read, the babies are supposed to eliminate their morning nap at this point and keep their afternoon nap for the next few years, but Dr. Weissbluth’s “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child” gave us a Plan B if she eliminates the 1st nap instead. I’d instructed Jayne to keep doing the regular 2-nap routine for the rest of the week and if Allie consistently turns the 2nd nap into quiet playtime, then Mr. W and I will eliminate the 2nd nap and start moving her morning nap back until it becomes an early afternoon nap. When she goes to preschool and they give age-appropriate naps, it will be in the afternoon, anyway. Mr. W’s dream of having more awake time to DO stuff with Allie may be coming true sooner than expected.

Having a whole morning and most of an evening free with a happy Allie is going to be a lot of fun. We can go to parties (there’s one coming up we were thinking we wouldn’t be able to attend as it’s an hour away), have more leisurely meals out, visit my parents and friends at their homes, or simply discover new things about Allie, which we do constantly. This past weekend, the stepdaughter said, “Go in your house,” and Allie got up and walked into her little pink tent castle that the stepkidlets had gotten her for her birthday, and looked out at us from the sheer window. “Most obedient kid in the world,” I joked. I tell her it’s bath time, naptime, bedtime, dinner time, whatever time it is, and she will drop whatever she’s doing, bounce up, and happily go and wait by the appropriate babygate doorway to go where she needs to go. We’d open the gate, and she’d run to the kitchen, climb up the stairs, wherever it is she’s going. If it’s naptime, she picks up her furry blanket that she naps with first before she goes to wait by the gate. Yesterday, Allie picked up a dropped sock from behind the stepdaughter, who was doing laundry, recognized it as a sock and tried to press it onto her own foot. Later, they were playing in the stepdaughter’s room and I heard a, “Show mom!” Allie came walking carefully out to find me in the kitchen with a floral headband and a matching scarf on. After she stood there for a second so I could exclaim how cute she was, she turned and walked back into the stepkidlet’s bedroom. Later, the stepkidlet said “show mom” was an immediate command she followed without further instruction. Jayne has said that she’d told Allie they were going for a walk, and while she was packing some things Allie showed up holding her shoes. So much fun.

I discovered that Flip Flop Girl gets a regular delivery of organic fruits and veggies straight from an organic produce farm, so I asked her about it, she loves it, and we signed up (www.FarmFreshToYou.com). We have a Ralphs grocery store and a Sprouts healthy grocery store within walking distance of our home, but after the 5th straight batch of black, rotten avocados we’d purchased from Sprouts, we wanted a different option. And sure across the street is pretty convenient, but we sometimes have trouble even getting there since we’re always rushing everywhere to fit errands in within Allie’s awake times and in-between mealtimes, and sometimes we just discover that we’re out of something and we’re too tired to run back out again. So it doesn’t get more convenient than opening the front door once a week and, Oh look! A box of fresh organic fruits and vegetables!

We just got our first box last week. 2 lemons, 3 apples, 3 Mandarin oranges, 4 kiwis, 3 bunches of broccoli, a pound of kale leaves, many bunches of spinach, 2 bunches of carrots, and a mystery plant with a white bulb and furry leaves that Mr. W and I couldn’t identify. $25 including delivery. The stuff that we have eaten already were delicious. The mystery item turned out to be fennel, and although we eat fennel seed fairly commonly, we’d never entertained a thought about the plant it comes on. Turns out that a ton of my friends are familiar with fennel plant, and I got a bunch of recipe ideas for shaved fennel salad, roasted fennel bulb, etc.

It was really great when I realized we were low in our variety of one-pot meals for Allie, and I had all the ingredients on hand to cook immediately last night without a grocery store run. I made an all-organic brown rice porridge with chopped carrots, fennel (bulb & stalk), celery, kale and browned beef for Allie, and set a small bowl aside for Mr. W to taste at his request. Allie gobbled up a generous portion of it for dinner, for dessert she had fresh homemade applesauce with multi-grain cereal stirred in, and my little sick girl got hopefully all the right nutrition to fight this cold of hers. I had enough of the porridge to freeze 12 additional generous portions for her future meals.

After Allie went to bed last night, I asked Mr. W what he thought of Allie’s latest one-pot meal. “Delicious,” he said. “I wish WE could eat like that.” I think that’s his way of saying I’m a great mom but a derelict wife. Mr. W will be getting a one-pot meal with organic spinach tonight. =P

Now that Allie has had a wet cough for the 3rd day, and now has a runny nose, she LOVES the nasal suction tool. She used to cry and squirm and bat my hand away when I would try to suction out a booger, but I think she now realizes she NEEDs suction and that it makes her itchy wet nose feel dryer and less itchy, she now asks for it by pointing and saying, “Mmm?”, she lays back voluntarily and watches the bulb or aspirator expectantly, and if we’re too slow for her, she’ll grab it and put it in her nose herself. She stays very still when we’re suctioning and smiles when we’re done. Sometimes when we’re done, she insists on Round 2, pointing and asking us to do it again, being upset when we tell her we’re done. This is true for the nasal aspirator bulbs, the 2-piece bulb with a straw that Mr. W jimmied (my favorite one), and the BabyComfyNose. So now we can switch off so that when one is drying after being used and washed, we can use another one. And I don’t think I’ve ever pulled so much slime out of Allie’s nose before, even the last and only time she’d been sick almost exactly a year ago. (But she was smaller then, so she produced less boogers per square inch.)

Aside from the occasional wet coughs (that would sometimes wake her up when she’s napping or starting fall asleep at night) and even less occasional sneezes, Allie’s still the same old happy-go-lucky goofball. She now knows how to open a closed door, and is tall enough to reach the L-shaped handle by simply going on her tiptoes, too. She opens doors, and she closes them when she knows it’s time for you to go. Every morning, Jayne holds her by the open garage door so we could wave goodbye to Allie as we leave for work. “Bye,” Allie would tell us matter-of-factly as she walks to the door, often before we’re even ready to leave. “Bye,” she’d say as we picked up our stuff and exited, and “Bye,” she’d say as she struggles to close the door on me while I’m still putting on my shoes in the garage. Jayne has to keep the door open with her foot and the last thing I see of Allie each morning before leaving for work is her struggling to push the door closed in Jayne’s arms.
Same thing when we come home from work. She’d walk to the gate in the living room and tell Jayne “bye,” even before Jayne has gathered all her things. Jayne would laugh and translate, “Okay, you can leave now, mommy and daddy are home.”
“At least she doesn’t cry when people leave,” Mr. W comforted himself saying yesterday.

The other day at work, I bent over at the hips to pick something up off the floor, and saw my hair sweep the floor. This was especially gross because I was in the shared restroom. Time for a haircut. I figured Friday was a good day, as I had taken the day off to get my annual physical checkup, and was still having Jayne come over to care for Allie so that I could have a “me” day.

Turns out I’m not used to thinking in terms of “me” anymore because I had a hard time the whole day feeling comfortable. I felt like I was plopped in a body and said, “Here, take care of this body for today” and I didn’t quite know how to do it and was fumbling around. After leaving Allie with Jayne, I drove off to the vet’s to get Dodo some prescription cat food, and realized on the drive that I forgot to medicate him this morning, so I had to go back home. Good thing I’d left early and my doctor’s appointment wasn’t until much later. And then in leaving, I was about to go to the wrong Kaiser clinic location when it suddenly occurred to me that my ob/gyn was in a different facility.
The checkup was uneventful. Doctor said I looked great, saw/felt nothing abnormal in the exam, my weight was 118 lbs and blood pressure was 118/56, pulse was a little high (for me) at 73, but my OB was happy. It’s nice to know where I stand with the numbers once a year, since I don’t weigh myself at home anymore. Of course, it’s not exactly a cholesterol screening, either. I noted as I was getting dressed that Allie’s birth announcement card was tacked up on the bulletin board of that particular exam room. I snapped a photo of that on my phone and texted it to Mr. W.
Then after that, the day was mine. I had a massage appointment at 2:30p and that was it. I already got the cat food, so that was the important errand. Next on priorities is the haircut, and buying some healthy-grain pasta for Allie so that I could make her another one-pot meal, and I needed some facial cleansing cloths I’ve seen at Costco. I’ve also purchased a variety pack of small semolina pastas at Costco, so I figured I’d go there. But first I was hungry and it was brunch time.

I tried to approach the plan logically. I know where my haircut place should be; I’d been going to the same salon since I discovered it after moving to the current residence in 2008. So the meal should be some place close to it. I decided to give Break of Dawn restaurant another try. College roommie Diana had suggested we all try it when she and her hubby visited some time ago, and Mr. W and I had found the food a little rich for our liking. Nevertheless, after looking the location up on my smartphone, I put in the info on my nav and off I went.

The small restaurant was at least half-full and I was seated immediately at a table by the window. The menu threw me a little; the descriptions didn’t tell me enough about what each item was, the form they were served in, so altho I was drawn immediately to some kabocha soup, I needed some help. A guy who may have been the owner came by and asked if I was ready to order, and I kind of was, I just needed some clarification. The 3-course meal included the kabocha squash soup and a choice of an entrée and I was interested in the chicken stew option, and it had a dessert, but I wasn’t STARVING, so I asked him about portion size. He said it’s enough to make me full but that stew and kabocha soup wasn’t good together because it’s 2 “watery” things. Okay, so I asked about something else, and he asked what it is I’m looking for. I said I wanted to try the soup, but ordering the soup entrée came with 2 items of fried things and I don’t want to eat anything fried, so I asked for his recommendation. He told me he doesn’t recommend things and that he doesn’t know what I want or am looking for so I should just study the menu longer and order later, and then he walked away. Good thing I wasn’t rushed for time. Geez. The busboy who had seated me and brought me the menu and water soon came by and asked if I was ready to order, as it was clear the other guy was by now ignoring me. I just ordered the chicken curry stew and left it at that. The food was fine. But it didn’t fill me up. I left anyway without ordering anything additional. Pretty uncomfortable experience. The Vietnamese owner guy never came back to my table.

Off to the important thing on my list: the haircut. I pumped in my car in a secluded area of a parking lot near the salon (that was fun), then drove to the salon. I was happy to see that the guy whom I’d gone to exclusively to cut my hair for the past 5 years was there, altho he was giving an order man a haircut so it looks like there would be a wait. I could wait a little bit given the time. Richard looked up and smiled at me and I happily said, “Hi!”
“Hi,” he took a few steps toward me. “Can I help you?”
It dawned on me that Richard did not recognize me. Has it been that long? I’d gotten one haircut after giving birth and sure it was almost a year ago, but he ALWAYS cut my hair and we would chat and he’d kid around with me and asked how my pregnancy was going and blah blah! Could it be he’d NEVER recognized me in all the years I’d been going there? That can’t be it; he’d told me before when I was 8 months pregnant that the time I’d been there previously, the owner of the salon asked him if I’d gained a little weight, and he had laughed and told her I was pregnant, and that when the owner asked how far along I was, she was shocked that I didn’t look MORE pregnant. Maybe he’d fallen and hit his head some time in the past year and now has amnesia, but somehow retained the knowledge of how to cut hair. Anyway, after ascertaining that he would be unable to fit me in until 2:30, the same time as my massage appointment, I said I’d come back another day and left.

I now had time to go to Costco before my massage appointment after all, but the Costco closer to the massage place, and one I was unfamiliar with, was only a couple of miles from my earlier doctor’s appointment. As I drove back the way I’d come, I thought about how this was so poorly planned as to make it un-executable. I should’ve just stayed in this area and I could’ve avoided the discomfort at Break of Dawn, and the trip-for-nothing at the salon. I even drove unsteadily, the reflexes operating when to go, how to smoothly merge into traffic, making snap judgments on whether I could pull out and turn left all now rusty due to lack of use.
Turns out the Costco I’d found was the puniest Costco ever. I circled the place twice and the only pasta they had was one brand of spaghetti. Plus their layout was different from other Costcos so I had a hard time doing the quick beelines to the stuff I needed to get. At least it helped me in accomplishing the impossible: getting out of Costco with only $26 in purchases. Mr. W, the big Costco fan, had never done THAT.

I got to the massage appointment early, so I had half an hour to visit a coffeehouse a few doors down, and things started going right after that. I ordered a blueberry muffin (cuz I was still hungry from brunch) and a spiced Chai tea latte, and while I waited for the tea, was able to rinse out my pump parts in the tidy restroom. I enjoyed my beverage and snack while reading a chapter on my Kindle (A Storm of Swords, the 3rd volume in George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” series, aka “Game of Thrones” series), then with 5 minutes to spare, walked to the massage place.

The massage was needed and very relaxing, and as usual after it was over all too quickly, I thought about how great it would be if they’d allow the option of renting the massage room after a massage so that patrons could take a nap.

Last thing before heading home: I went to the healthy/organics grocery store across the street from the house and bought Allie some organic whole grain baby waffles and other stuff. And then I got home, beating Mr. W by only half an hour or so as he returned from work.

I don’t think I’m gonna need a “me” day for awhile. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Even with little Allie’s phlegmy coughs that she’s had for the past 2 days (Jayne has a cold), she still makes me happier than having a whole day with endless possibilities to myself. Especially when she now added a part in the morning routine when she’d pull off during nursing and then struggle to sit up and pull herself up to my face, just to plant a kiss on my lips, followed by a gleeful smile with solid eye contact.

What makes me happy and hopeful that Allie truly is the “wonderful person” Rebecca had seen when I was pregnant and/or when Allie was a newborn, is when Allie shows spontaneous unprompted signs of a loving personality. Earlier, I was at the kitchen sink rinsing out her breakfast bowls and prepping some peaches and cherries to make into a pureed snack (or dip) for her, and I heard the playful “wap wap wap” of her feet when she’s running with deliberate small but loud steps. Then I felt her tiny arms around my left leg. Before I could turn around, I felt and heard her plant a kiss on my butt (which is where her lips reach against me). I looked down and she looked up. We smiled at each other. “Hi, baby!” I said. I would’ve hugged her or patted her head but my hands were wet. She released and I went back to what I was doing. I felt her arms around my leg again for a second hug. And then she wapped off to the breakfast nook to find Mr. W.

I was nervous about Stage 3/4 foods for Allie when she’s ready to move beyond the purees, because I wasn’t sure how to prepare finger foods and “real foods” fresh every day when I’m at work all day except for the 1.5 hours or so I get with her after work until her bedtime. But what I’ve been doing is making a one-pot meal en masse that usually has some sort of grain (typically brown rice and/or quinoa, or tiny semolina pasta) made into a porridge with fresh veggies (carrots, peas, edamame, green beans, corn, tomato puree) and a meat (beef, fish). Then I freeze them into 1.5 to 2 oz portions in silicon ice cube trays and she’s good for about a week. I try to give her a different one-pot dish for lunch from her dinner, and I add to each frozen dish some extra veggies as I get them (freshly cut, steamed, frozen), chopped bell peppers, broccoli, carrots, asparagus, zucchini. Sometimes she gets the extra veggies on the side as finger food. Jayne has never had a problem feeding her. She gets fresh seasonal fruit after each meal that Mr. W cuts up for her in the morning as I select and place her frozen foods in serving bowls to thaw out for the day’s feedings. All the day’s food prep is done before we get her from her crib each weekday morning. Snacks are kind of left up to Jayne’s pleasure, with some suggestions from me. Allie sometimes gets tiny baby waffles that are frozen like Eggos, heated in the toaster oven, which would be dipped in Greek yogurt, hummus, or eaten with a scrambled egg that Jayne would make. Sometimes it’s half a slice of sprouted whole wheat bread with Colby cheese bits. Sometimes it’s veggies and fruit. She drinks her cow’s milk from a straw and water from a sippy cup, still gets 3 servings of breast milk daily (nursing morning and bedtime, plus a bottle after the first nap or nursing when I’m home). Nutrition must be adequate; Allie’s pooping regularly, 2-3 times a day, and I think she shot up a couple more inches in the past month as her head is now well above the tops of our living room baby gates/blockades. The seats on our couches come up to her waist. She’s now attempting to climb, getting a knee up on the couch, but unsure of how to get her other leg up from there. She uses her underfoot toys as stepstools but hasn’t realized she could move a toy to where she wants to go and use that as a step, yet. *keeping fingers crossed that she doesn’t figure this out anytime soon*

Brain development is fascinating. Based on what I’ve learned in reading The Wonder Weeks, Allie is now at the development of “programs.” She understands a whole series of events and can put them together and control the outcome. Something as simple as, “Allie, where’s your sock? Get your sock and I’ll put it on for you” is pretty complicated when you think about the process. The above is what I said to her when I happened to see that she’d taken a sock off at some point in her play and had left it by some toys in the living room. So her response was to put her hands palm up like a shrug, as if to say she doesn’t know where her sock is, then walk around leaning forward so that her face is closer to the ground, as if to say, “I’m looking for it.” She walked around for a bit with her hands raised up, then spotted the sock. The hands went down, she ran to it, picked it up, brought it back to me, and then waited for me to pick her up and place her in my lap to put the sock on. In order to get to this point, she has to first understand what a sock is, that it is separate from her, understand distances, that she can bridge the distance, she has to stick out her hand toward it and move her fingers in a gripping fashion to pick it up, and then she has to remember to bring that sock to me and have me help her put it on. All of that were learned in bits and pieces in her development for the past year. Her being able to understand “programs” is handy in that we can now just say, “Ready for your nap?” “Ready to go night-night?” and she’d stop her playing, run around to the gate at the stairs, and pull on it, waiting for us to open it so she could step through and make her way upstairs to her room.

Her memory development is a cool thing to observe, too. Last night, for example, she was having her bath using an organic home-milled chamomile baby soap I’d purchased from a friend’s wife who handmakes all her organic products (Moxie Organix, if any of you are interested). Allie pointed to the soap bar and said, “Baya!”
Mr. W corrected her, “Soap. Not banana. Soap.”
“Bayaya,” she insisted.
Looking at the bar, the translucent cream color does bear an uncanny resemblance to banana flesh, albeit shaped differently.
“No, soap.”
“Baya.”
“Soap.”
“Baya.”
After she was taken out of her bath, dried off, diaper put on, she ran back into the bathroom where Mr. W still was, and pointed at the bar.
“Bayaya!”
“Soap.”
“Baya.”
“Soap.”
An application of lotion later, she was put in her fleece footsie jammies, said her goodnights to Mr. W, nursed, and as I started to move her off the Boppy to place her in her crib, she pointed at the bathroom door and said with all seriousness, “Baya.”
“You’re still on that?”
She went in her crib, played for the usual 20 minutes or so until she went to sleep. 11 hours go by. We go in her room to pick up a standing, smiling Allie from her crib. “Good MORning, sweetheart!”
*point* “Baya.” The way she smiles mischievously when she says “baya” tells us she’s deliberately telling us it’s a banana even thought she knows it’s not, so it’s a game to her.

“One” rhymes with “fun.” And she is lots of it.

I’m deeee-lighted to announce that Mr. W’s vacation-at-home with Allie has concluded and they both did EXTREMELY well! Unless Mr. W lied on his entries on the app, it looks like Allie took great naps on time and had all her meals and snacks on time. He took her out to an organic lunch at Mother’s Market on Monday and she ate Swiss chard and tempeh off his plate. Reportedly, the other restaurant patrons smiled at her for being “so cute.” Allie may newly be going through her adjustment to get down to one long nap, started this weekend, but she’s healthy. No diaper rashes or any issues. Yay!

New Year’s Day, my parents came over and we did a Chinese hot pot dinner. Allie joined us at the table and had turnips, tofu, whitefish, napa cabbage, taro root. And then my parents played with Allie so that I could explore a new Bejeweled game on the computer. That was nice.

Allie even joined in on the computer fun.

All photos here courtesy of my parents.

If I don’t get around to posting about Xmas, I’ll just say that Allie was opening gifts for a week leading up to Christmas Day. She got tons of toys and clothes from our friends, coworkers, and family. It was a nice, quiet holiday week (the stepkidlet has been in Germany for the past month visiting her boyfriend’s family, which I think beats last year’s Christmas trip of Haiti).

On a detached level, it’s interesting to see how quickly the paranoia comes back.

Allie skipped her second (afternoon) nap twice in the last 3 days. She was in her crib on time, but instead of napping, it became a quiet playtime. She ran laps, played peek-a-boo by herself with her blanket, pulled off her sock and threw it over the crib railing to watch it drop, tried to drop her blanket over the crib rail as well, tugged at the bumper ties, figured out how to undo the velcro straps on the crib rail protectors, practiced half-somersaults (rolling out sideways instead of turning all the way over vertically). Both missed naps, she was in there for 1.5 hours goofing off, and I went and got her at 3p. The evening of the first missed nap, I started her bedtime routine an hour earlier than normal, she conked out nursing, woke up at the crib transfer and protested, but then went right back to sleep. The second time last night, I tried again to put her to bed an hour earlier, and she again fell asleep nursing (which she normally doesn’t do anymore) at about 6p, but after she awoke at the crib transfer, she stayed awake until almost 8p. 🙁

So I’m immediately googling how much sleep a 13-month-old baby needs. Looks like it’s still 13-15 hours, so with the missed nap yesterday and the early rise times (Allie has beaten me waking up every morning for the past few days, so I don’t know when she’s up, but it’s before 6am), I think she’s getting more like 12. It could be she’s at that awkward transition period where 2 naps are too much but 1 is not enough, but I wasn’t expecting this to happen until she’s closer to 15 months old. Plus, the morning nap is supposed to be the one to go next, not the afternoon nap.

If she keeps missing her afternoon nap, I think we’re just going to have to do away with it and slowly move her morning nap back to be more of a noon nap.

I’m hoping this isn’t a sign that she’s sick; a few days ago, we were at Pretend City and Allie was playing with her back turned to me at the toddler area, and suddenly I realized with horror that the green object in her hands isn’t a toy, it’s some random sippy cup left behind by an unaware parent. Before I could get to her, it was in her mouth and I heard the “suck suck” sound as I was leaping over the low wall and flying over foam toys and telling her, “Noooo!” Gross!!! The only other parent there, a dad with 2 toddlers, said it wasn’t his sippy. If Allie gets sick from the foreign stuff introduced straight into her mouth, oh well. She’s only been sick once so far, so maybe she’s due. She doesn’t have any symptoms of discomfort though; even with the missed naps she’s happy and playful and goofy as usual. Me, on the other hand, I’m a nervous wreck. =P

Allie turned 13 months old on Sunday. The above photo was taken day-of. That day, she met my childhood friend Sandy for the first time (since Sandy moved to Texas for work)! Sandy and her boyfriend were very impressed with what a “good baby” Allie is…and she really is. She rarely cries, rarely fusses, and expresses her needs by pointing and babbling. (She’s babbling a LOT.) She’s happy in crowds and happy on her own. We don’t even know when she’s up from her nap without checking the monitor, because she doesn’t cry then, either. I keep a close eye on the babycam and try to catch her immediately upon her waking and give her 15 minutes to hang out on her own and poop. She plays in her crib, hums, practices her babbling, rolls around on and with her fuzzy blanket, walks around and peers over the railing, pulls off a sock and drops it out of the crib to watch it fall. Sandy was especially impressed by how well she eats her chopped foods, and WHAT she happily eats. “What’s that?”
“Quinoa and brown rice with edamame, spinach, bell peppers, carrots, peas, and green beans.”
“What’s she eating now?”
“Chopped papaya.”
“What, did she run out of broccoli?”
“Yeah, yesterday.”
“I was just kidding. She eats broccoli?”
They were also impressed with her durum wheat semolina pasta in organic tomato soup with steamed tilapia and veggies (i.e., lunch). Oh, and her snack of sprouted whole grain wheat bread with artichoke hummus and Colby cheese. Allie now eats and enjoys avocado. Yay! So that’s everything she’s tried, as avocado was our sole “failed” food early on.

As for her physical stuff, she’s running, walking backwards, spinning in circles, and squat-walking (taking staggering steps forward while maintaining a plie’). She’s still forbidden to touch the Christmas tree and the boxes underneath, so she’s come up with new ways to make contact now. Aside from placing her toy on the boxes, she’ll now back up into the tree and boxes, never turning around. When she feels the tree or boxes, she’ll sit down on a box, still never turning around to look. “I’m not doing it on purpose if I don’t see where I am,” she seems to claim. Sometimes she backs up into it leaning forward, so that her butt sticks out and she’ll booty-bump the tree and ornaments repeatedly, still never looking back. “No, don’t touch it with your butt, either,” I’d say, and she’d straighten up and run off.

She also started kissing in the last month or so. She does it at will without being prompted, which makes the sign of affection that much cuter. She makes the kissy sound when she gives an air-kiss, but she’ll often run up to me to plant a silent open-mouthed kiss on my cheek, knee, or turn when I’m holding her and place a wet one on my cheek and then smile playfully at me. Most often, though, she kisses her favorite stuffed animals. Those are noisy smacks.

It’s also now apparent that she pays attention. I’d been rubbing an antiseptic lotion from a little bottle onto the dry patches on her ankles for months. Now she’d ask for the bottle (“bah!” while pointing), and then she’ll shake it up like I do, touch her fingers to the tip of the bottle cap (cuz I don’t hand it to her uncapped), touch those fingers to her knees and ankles and rub the areas, and then turn the bottle upside down and touch the tip to her ankles, like she’s pouring the lotion onto the right spots. Today during her bath, she took the washcloth and rubbed it on her feet, and then also scrubbed Mr. W’s knee with the washcloth, like she’d seen it done on her body parts. And then she dipped the washcloth in the water, took it out, and squeezed (some of) the water out.

Her words are still mostly the “B” stuff, though. “Bow-wow,” “ball,” “bir(d),” and the like. What she says most often, though, is “hi.” She added a fake laugh, a “heh heh heh,” into her spoken repertoire. It basically means, “I find that amusing.” She uses it when she sees a photo of a dog, gets a new toy that she’s examining, generally when she likes what she sees and wants to acknowledge that.

Naps are easy on us. She still has a very long latency period, usually 20-40 minutes before she falls asleep. But we basically leave her in her crib and exit her room and that’s it. She’ll take the time she needs to play on her own and soothe herself into her nap. Once down, she sleeps pretty well, being a lot less noise-sensitive than she’d been when she was younger, for at least an hour. At bedtime, she still nurses but not very long, usually less than 10 minutes a side. Then she’ll flip over onto her stomach on the Boppy and try to crawl to the armrest, babbling. At this point I pick her up, carry her to her crib, lay her down on her fuzzy bear while she giggles and smiles up at me, turn off her light, and leave. She plays for 30 minutes or so until she decides she’s now going to go to sleep, then she lays down, closes her eyes, and is asleep. She only sleeps about 10.5 hours overnight, though, waking up on her own around 6:30 every morning. I’m just happy she’s not waking at 5:15a anymore like she’d been doing for almost 2 months.

Mr. W finds it hilarious that she empties her toys out of her containers now and places the containers on her head, then giggles and tries to walk around blind.

My parents bought her a training potty for Christmas (my mom thinks I should’ve potty-trained her already), and this is what Allie did with the potty when she opened the gift:

Mostly, she’s a little clown and loves to make people laugh. This is her “mock shock” face, used when something drops or she walks into something and wants to express, “Ooh, did you see that?!”

She realized on Christmas Day, when we had my parents and grandma over, that when she stops, arches her back and sticks out her belly, we laugh. That made her stick out her belly more and more so that she’d grunt and strain trying to stay upright. We’d laugh harder. So then she started just exaggerating and faking the strain, grunting away, for our reactions. I think my mom has a video of it, but here are some stills.

Quite the little ham, isn’t she?

Oh, yes. In brushing her teeth tonight, I decided to do an additional count and inspection. Upper teeth, all 8 are out. The full bottom surface of her left upper molar is out, the incisor is out most of the way. Half of her right upper molar is out and the tip of her upper right incisor is out. Bottom teeth, nothing new is out, just the central 4. So that makes 12 teeth this month.

As if we need another sign of her quick growing up, I noticed that she often sleeps with her legs straight now. She doesn’t do the infant knees-tucked-up dissected-frog position anymore. I’d be okay if she slows down a TEENY bit now, but Mr. W can’t wait until she loses her morning nap and can have actual conversations with him.

The hubby took this holiday week off of work to stay home with Allie by himself. (I don’t have enough seniority at work to get high-demand days off.) I was nervous because on weekends and holidays when we’re both at home together, he usually isn’t aware of what time it is so he’s always surprised (and dismayed) when I say that we have to head home because Allie’s late for her nap or for lunch or whatever. I’d joked that I hoped Allie doesn’t miss all her meals and her naps this week, but Mr. W knew I was at least half-serious. Monday, Christmas Eve, was his first full day alone with her (he’d had half-days when Jayne would still come by at some point). The day went perfectly. He’d even had his friend over much of the day to do computer stuff, and even then, Allie had all her meals and naps on time. Today is the second day they’re home alone together.

I got this email from Mr. W at about 8:30am, with the subject line “Allie and I are fine,” and the content of the email:

We just went on a little bike ride. We love you. Come home early.

I thought, “That’s nice,” and then I got to the attachment:

I’m not sure how to respond.