cindy's world

Okay, this is going to be one of those “my misery = your entertainment” posts.

The courthouse doesn’t provide a private area where I can go pump (for breastmilk) during my working hours, so I use my jury deliberation room attached and adjacent to my courtroom when we’re not in trial and we don’t have jurors. I hang a “SORRY, OCCUPIED” sign on the door, close the jury room door and switch on the double electric pump at the far end sitting at a small table toward the back.

This morning, my judge was using the jury room for a mandatory settlement conference on a case, and when he does that during a pump time, he invites me to use his private chambers to pump, telling me to lock his door, so I did. When I came back to the courtroom, my courtroom assistant told me that the building’s maintenance guy just walked right through the courtroom earlier toward the jury room, unresponsive to her calling out, “Excuse me! Excuse me! Can I help you, sir? Excuse me!” and opened the door into the jury room and went right in. You would think someone who works for a courthouse would know better than to just barge into closed rooms, especially during working hours. Lots of confidential stuff goes on around here (as with the settlement conference), and it would be a pretty big problem if there had been a jury in there deliberating. The courtroom assistant said he must’ve been turned away by the judge, because he came back out looked a little bewildered, and she explained to him that there’s a conference taking place in the room. He said he first saw that we weren’t having a trial, and she told him there are other things that happen in a courtroom aside from trials, such as what he’d walked in on. In telling me this story, she added, “What if you were in there pumping and I wasn’t here and he just walked in?” I said well, I would think that he’d have learned from this morning and would now know better than to just barge into a closed room. She offered that, for my lunchtime pumping, if I would wait for her to come back from lunch she’d sit outside the jury room and guard it. I laughed, but can’t wait because I would need to pump in the middle of lunch, not after it.

So after lunch, I put the sign on the door, closed it, settled into my chair, turned on the pumps, and attached myself to it. A minute later, sure enough, the door opened suddenly behind me, no warning, no knock. I turned my head and called out as the maintenance guy’s bearded head appeared, “I’m in here, I need some privacy, please!”
He pointed toward the bathroom, still coming in. “I just need to –”
“No, I need some privacy.”
He pointed again, taking another step in. “I’m just gonna –”
“No, no,” I shook my head emphatically at him. “Please close the door.”
He started in and said, “So I’ll just go ahead?”
“No. No. No. I’m pumping.” As he started in again, I said, “No. No. I’m pumping!”
“So I can’t –” He started saying.
I cut him off again, not believing I’m sitting here still arguing with him. “No. I’m pumping. I need privacy, please. Close the door now, thank you.” He started to say something again, and I said very firmly, “Please. Close the door, please.” OMG. He finally left.

After that disruption, I sat in disbelief, and got more and more upset as I saw that my body was not having a let-down. I’d heard that if interrupted or startled, a mother’s body will not release milk. I did not want to find out that it’s true, but apparently, it is true. All that time wasted sitting there trying to get milk to come out, more time wasted washing and drying pump parts, all for less than 2 ounces of milk. Allie could slurp that up and not even notice she’d swallowed anything (a bottle feeding for her is 7, 7.5 ounces). THAT pissed me off more than anything. I didn’t even waste a milk storage bag on it, just poured it into small storage vial and stuck it in the fridge.

I called the coordinator person who had called for the maintenance guy and told her that I know the guy was just doing his job, and he’s a very effective repair-person and a good guy, but if he’s working in a courthouse, he NEEDS to know certain common sense things about being here during working hours. I explained what happened this morning and when I got to the part about what happened earlier when I was in there, she gave a loud gasp. I said that given that he thinks he’s exempt to closed doors and signs and doesn’t even knock or anything before going into places, what if I’d been in the bathroom PEEING when he went in to fix the faucet drip? I’d have to convince him to leave from the other side of the stall?! I realized I was practically yelling on the phone and realized soon after that I have no control over my volume or tone, so I just told her in the same yelling emphatic voice I’d been using through this entire conversation, “Can you to talk to him, please? I can’t talk to him, I’m too worked up right now. And please be nice, I know he was just doing his job, but he doesn’t get it.” She laughed and said she understood, she’ll talk to him, and nicely.

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.

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)

Last Friday, I aged another year but I insist that I remain in my “mid-thirties.” I figure 38 would be “late thirties,” so I’ve still got a few years. It seems like just a couple of years ago that I was making this argument about being in my “mid-twenties.”

Mr. W kept asking me what I wanted for my birthday. There really wasn’t anything I could think of. If Allie weren’t in existence, or if Dodo weren’t doing pretty well, I may have a few birthday wishes. Not knowing what else to do, Mr. W ended up bringing home what seems like 2 dozen beautiful yellow and sunset roses from his Costco shopping trip, and taking a couple of hours off work so he could take me out to an early dinner while Jayne was still at home with Allie. We had a delicious adults-only meal at Seasons 52 at South Coast Plaza, and after that, walked into the attached swanky mall to Sephora, where after a looooong hunt (and being delayed half an hour by an annoying salesperson who insisted she was “like, like, a makeup artist, like, you know,” and wasted my time putting unwanted shades of eyeshadow on me that made me look like a zombie despite my saying I just want a simple matte gray to go), I found my gray eyeshadow. It was a Sephora store brand, cuz EVERY OTHER brand they carried was either metallic or glittery or shimmery. I got overexcited and selected 3, and Mr. W insisted on paying for them at the register. So yay for a very much appreciated birthday gift! And good gawd, when did some powder pigments start costing $13 each?!

I was SWAMPED trying to clean up a certain problematic floater’s mess with a 3-defendant attempted murder trial at work, but I don’t want to dwell on that. It’s a good thing that in this day of layoffs and difficulty in getting a job, that I’m gainfully employed. Unfortunately, certain others are also equally gainfully employed, even tho apparently I’M doing THEIR work. Okay, I’ll stop now. There were good things that happened at work on my bday, too. For instance:

My former court reporter Louise must’ve had early notice that she would be in our courthouse on my birthday, because she popped in prepared with three very sinful, very gourmet cakelets (yes, I just made that up) from The Great Dane Bakery for me. This place makes wedding cakes, so you can imagine how fancy her little cakes were. I was being floated all over the building, so I “didn’t get a chance” to share. In the afternoon, a few hours after consuming one such cakelet for lunch, my courtroom assistant noted after witnessing my 700 wpm phone conversation about a case, that I was on a sugar high. Later, the nausea and headache set in. Amazing how sensitive my system has become given my very careful eating ever since I started prepping for pregnancy (and now breastfeeding). That didn’t stop me from eating the other 2 cakelets. YUM.

Of course, given the above birthday indulgence yesterday, I had to go for a run this morning. Mr. W opted to not go, so he stayed home with Allie. Finding myself not accountable to anyone for my run, I got lazy and slowed to a walk shortly after starting up a hill. Suddenly, I looked up and saw this:

So I sighed, obeyed, and ran the rest of the way, not stopping again until I reached home. As my friend Danielle said, “Sign, signs, everywhere are signs.”

I must’ve earned my karma, because Allie was THE PERFECT BABY today. She took her first nap at 8:30a for an hour and a half; took her second nap at 12:30p for another hour and a half. Mr. W’s son came over during Allie’s 2nd nap and we all went out to sushi for Son’s birthday which was earlier in the week. Thanks to her great rest, Allie was so happy, she didn’t even get stranger-shy around Son like she did about a month ago. She was super well-behaved and patient while we ate at the sushi bar, too. After this early dinner, Mr. W and Son went to purchase Son’s bday gift, an iPad3. I swear, Mr. W should get commission for those things. (My mom called, and I told her what our plans were today. She said, “An iPad? And you only got eyeshadow for your birthday?!” I guess she’s a lurker on my social networking site.) I stayed home with Allie and got to enjoy her wonderful mood all day, giggling, playing, dancing, humming. It inspired me to take a 10-minute video of her doing basically nothing but hanging out, crawling and playing, enjoying herself and her blocks that I stack up and she likes to knock down, and a sturdy plastic bag that I inflated and ziplocked. (I know, I’m not supposed to let babies play with flimsy plastic bags or any plastic sheeting, but she was well-supervised.) She’s so like her brother Dodo. You can buy all the expensive stuff you want for them, but their favorite things will be plastic bags, cardboard boxes, and crinkly paper. Mr. W and Son got home from the Apple store in time to spend some time frolicking with Allie before her bedtime, which was also caught on my 10-minute video.

Allie went to bed for the night without a hitch, and Mr. W is spending quality time chatting with his son in the backyard. I finally have the computer to myself. Now, if only the screaming neighbor boys would stop making all the noise playing basketball on their driveway outside of Allie’s bedroom window, it would be a great evening. They kept Allie tossing and turning. I blame summer’s long days and Daylight Savings hours.

Claudio emailed me mid-week last week something about how we “need to catch up.” I haven’t seen him since before pregnancy, so obviously he’s right, but I was also wondering what prompted this “need.” I knew that he’d moved from his bachelor pad in San Diego to live with his girlfriend in Anaheim, but I didn’t even realize that until fairly recently. Claudio said he was working from home all last week and could spare a longer lunchtime, whereas my lunches have been shortened by half an hour daily due to my need to get back and pump, so he agreed to drive up to the court for lunch on Friday. I agreed to postpone my pumping a bit.

Turned out, there was nothing dramatic going on. Nobody’s pregnant, had a scandalous fight, made any dealbreaker discoveries about anybody’s past. He just realized that he hadn’t seen me since he moved from San Diego and wanted to spend some time with a friend. I don’t think it’s all Claudio; I haven’t seen much of anyone since having a baby. There just doesn’t seem to be time to get out and do anything meaningful around her naps, and it’s too hard to have people over when the baby’s demands require so much attention. Besides, I can just see my friends’ faces if I have to whip out a boob to feed Allie. Some friends who have had babies, no biggie. But I don’t think my male friends would quite know what to do with themselves. (Not that I would do that; I’d retire to her nursery.)

Anyhow, I’m happy to have good friends who understand and don’t take my disappearance personally, and I’m happier to have friends who go out of their way when they know I can’t go out of mine (anymore). I can’t help but wonder how my future peer groups would change, though. I know that a lot of people with young kids say that their friend circles now only involve other couples with young kids, and that makes sense. But I’d like to think that my friends are lifetime friends. After all, we stuck by each other when I got married and they stayed single. I did form closer friendships with other new moms, tho, as we text/talk frequently and share tips and experiences.

In case you’re bored, you can take up to 3 minutes to watch the below video of Allie giggling. This was taken May 26. We’d just bought her this little sleep-and-play outfit and Mr. W thought the fake Levi’s tag on her fake butt pocket was so cute. (He’d thought it was a real tag at first, then realized it was painted on.)

“One of the charms of a child,” my judge said earlier, “is their ability to be completely absorbed in observing someone. I sometimes become conscious that a small child is observing me — maybe it’s the movement, or the gray hair, who knows — but they are so completely engrossed in the study, until another distraction, something else comes along that takes their attention, and they just move on, with no memory [of their previous object of study]…” He paused, a big whimsical smile on his face. Coming back to the present, he looked at me and said, “I envy you.”

This conversation started because he asked me whether Allie has been interacting much with other babies her age. I told him she hasn’t had much opportunity, but she loves watching older toddlers, especially little girls, play at the parks. Little girls love her, too. They often come up and want to watch her closely, or speak to her. One little girl over the weekend walked up to us and offered Allie her pink cowgirl hat. If you’ve got one minute, you can watch this on the below video, taken by my mom as my parents, maternal grandma, and we had a late lunch at The Cheesecake Factory to celebrate my mom and my joint birthdays.

Isn’t it funny how grownups talk to babies? My grandma looked totally silly. Mr. W thought it was creepy that the entire soundtrack of many of these video clips taken over the course of the meal consisted of this:
Allie: Aaaah.
Allie’s grandma: Aaaaah!
Allie’s great-grandma: Aaah aaah aaah aaahhhhh!
Allie: Aaaah.
Allie’s grandma: Aaaah! Aaaah!
Allie’s great-grandma: Aaah! Aaah! Aaaaaahhhhh!

But yes, Allie is becoming quite the people-watcher. As long as we bring her some of her purees and feed her before our meal comes, Allie is content to sit in her high chair and watch the world go by, even if it’s happening behind her.

It’s very telling who the “kids people” are when you have a kid. Some people (usually older grandma types) would stop in their tracks and come over to talk to Allie, ask me how hold she is, etc. And then there’d be others (usually younger, high-school age people who are more absorbed in their own worlds) who wouldn’t make eye contact with Allie, even if Allie is staring hard at them. I used to be one of those until I got pregnant (unless I was with a baby I knew). I find myself liking “baby people” more. What kind of evil person would ignore a baby this cute, right? =P I remember as a kid also being able to tell the difference based on how adults behaved toward me, and I had resolved to not be like the non-kid grownups, until I became one of those. And then I understood how annoying kids are. Haha. And then I canceled my Disneyland annual membership.

It was also at Cheesecake Factory this weekend when we made a big discovery. Mr. W allowed Allie to chew on his thumbnail and all of a sudden, he said, “Her upper teeth are out.”
I said, “No, the doctor [at the 6-month checkup] said they’ve come down but it’ll be awhile until they’re out.”
“I can FEEL it on my fingernail,” he said.
So I poked her little upper lip up, and looked, and THERE is the white ridge of a big left front tooth, out at least one millimeter already. Her right side looks to be just on the cusp of cutting the gum, too. Wow. She’s been gnawing on her teething toys rather ferociously and sleeping about an hour less a day than normal, could this be why? And just a couple weeks ago, I was wondering why I’ve once again become sore after she nurses, like I had been in earlier days. Jayne had also wondered why she’d been clingier and slightly crabbier a couple random days within the last couple of weeks.

“I’m growing up, mommy,” Allie seems to tell us. “I have my reasons.”

For the longest time, Allie just looked like “Allie” to me. I didn’t see Mr. W in her like his friends/coworkers kept saying, and sometimes she’d have an expression that looked like an expression that I’ve seen in photos of Baby Cindy, but I didn’t really see “me” in her, either. Well, I still don’t see Mr. W or me in her, but recently, I’d see her and in a shock, realize she looks like a total white baby. I’d have a moment of feeling odd, like, “Whose baby ARE you?” but then she’d smile at me or do something cute and funny and all would be forgotten.


Meanwhile, why has it become impossible to get eyeshadow that just simple gray? Just a flat, gray, normal eyeshadow. Not something silver and dramatic and shimmery. Not black glitter. I guess the trend now is all about sparkles, which SUCKS cuz what about us working women? By that, I mean those of us who work in a professional setting, not strutting our stuff up and down Hollywood Blvd. I spent forever browsing the makeup aisle at my local drugstore yesterday, studying all the various brands of eyeshadows, and the matte colors didn’t have gray, and the grays all were teeny-bopper glittery. I finally found a set that seems pretty flat and basic (actually, Mr. W found it), and bought it. But at home, after trying it on, I looked about ready to deny my age and hit da clubs. Or maybe sprout some fairy wings and fly around Disneyland granting wishes. I can’t go to work in a COURTROOM with that crap on my eyelids! I can just see my conservative judge in the morning greeting me, and then doing a double take while saying, “Whoa!” So the little palette is now sitting on a more appropriate wearer’s desk, in the stepkidlet’s room waiting for her to come home from Germany and Spain. More and more, I see a need for a time machine. (So I can go back to the 90s and stock up on plain gray eyeshadow.)

We tried to visit my parents at their home on Saturday late afternoon to celebrate Father’s Day a day early, but Allie took such an epic noon nap (she slept for 30 minutes, woke and fussed and cried for 20, then dropped down and slept another hour and 45 minutes until I went to wake her up cuz it was getting so late) that by the time we hit the road and had to deal with the massive freeway congestion due to an early car accident, we realized there wouldn’t be enough time to spend at my parents’ until we had to turn around and take the long drive back home. So I called my mom and postponed the visit for a day. Instead, the three of us had a dinner out at The Counter (gourmet burgers) and ran some errands at Home Depot so that Mr. W could re-landscape two little areas in our front yard. Allie does pretty well at the restaurants in the high chair now, provided we bring along her purees and feed her there first. After that she plays with her toys at the table and people-watches.

Sunday, Allie’s napping was even worse than what she did to us on Mother’s Day. It seems like she knows when the holidays are and makes sure to give us a hard time as her own little joke. I remember Thanksgiving and Christmas being major cry-days. Mother’s Day, she had a difficult noon nap and then phased out her 3rd nap. Yesterday on Father’s Day, Allie fell asleep in my arms while I soothed her to sleep for her morning nap, but the doze didn’t survive the put-down, and she refused to go back down. I picked her up, she settled into sleeping position immediately on me, dozed off again, and again, when I put her in her crib, she woke up and popped up on her hands and knees, refusing to go down. This time I walked out so she could soothe herself into sleep, as she’d done before. However, now that she could do all sorts of stuff to keep herself awake, such as roll around, sit up, play with the bumpers, crawl to a different section of the crib to look out, she was active and cried through her entire morning nap period. As soon as I got her at the end of the nap time, she was fine.
During Allie’s 45 minutes of screaming, rolling, crawling, sitting, and crying, it was very hard for me but I sat on my hands and stared at the monitors, doing what I have learned through much research to do (i.e., nothing). Mr. W came downstairs and said it was pointless how I was just “torturing her.” I told him it’s not torture, it’s sleep-training, but I think he was upset at me all day anyway. He enjoys the fruits of a well-rested baby, but he hates me for it and the process. I guess I have to be okay being alone in this if my priority is doing what I think is best for Allie’s development. I’d read other resources recently suggesting the exact same thing I’m already doing, and saying that now is an essential time to put her sleep needs and nap training into action.
Allie’s noon nap lasted over an hour and she was out solidly, didn’t even turn her head. At this point I had spoken to my mom and told her I would be putting Allie down around noon and she’d sleep hopefully an hour, and my parents offered to come to us so that we wouldn’t spend so much of Allie’s very limited awake time on the road. They were running on Asian time and didn’t get to our house until almost 3:15 and were surprised when I said Allie was about to take her 3rd nap. My mom said accusingly, “You told me she was going to be done with her nap!”
I said, “Yeah, at 1. It’s 3:15!”

So Allie spent about 15 minutes playing with an excited pair of grandparents before I took her upstairs to try for her “as needed” 3rd nap, the nap she’d been phasing out almost half the time. She yawned, rubbed her eyes, and fell asleep on me, but as with the morning, she woke up and resisted at put-down. I picked her up, she immediately went to sleep on me again, and protested upon put-down. I tried the put-down three separate times but finally gave up. She did get a few minutes of dozing on me, I guess. I was a sweaty mess and just took her back downstairs. Mr. W looked a little smug when he saw my nap efforts failed. He reminded me he’d told me that she wouldn’t take it, but I had to try because she’d missed one nap already. We all went to a Chicago pizzeria for an early dinner. Allie’s moods were fine the whole day except for when she was crying during nap protests.
Mr. W suggested going to a nearby park with my parents on our way home as it was still early, 5:30p. So we played there awhile, with my mom being papparazzi.

Allie with Daddy and Grandpa on Father’s Day. My dad said that they went to Sprouts just before they got to our house, and a young male grocery checker looked up at my dad and said good-naturedly, “Oh, happy Father’s Day!” My dad thought it’d be fun to give the poor kid a hard time and said, “How do you know I’m a father?” Awkward. Dad laughed telling the story, saying the kid just assumed that because Dad is gray-haired that he must have kids.

Allie tries to stand when she’s sitting, even without something to pull herself up with. She’ll just bounce up and down on her butt hoping that miraculously, she’d bounce high enough to end up on her feet. When we offer her a hand, she eagerly takes it and pulls herself up to stand and walk.

She had a lot of fun being bounced around on daddy’s shoulders, having access to pluck things she couldn’t any other way, such as leaves and daddy’s hair.

In the car on the way to the park, my dad asked, “So when she sleeps after this, she stays asleep all night?”
“Yeah, until 6:15 in the morning when we have to wake her up before we go to work,” Mr. W said.
“Wow,” my dad said.
On the way back from the park, my mom said to Allie, “Sleep like a good girl, okay? Hope you can sleep aaaaall night!” I had no doubt at the time that she’d sleep all night through. It’s the one thing I can count on these days, given how her naps have been. But I started feeling nervous, now that it was brought up. I didn’t know how to handle if she started waking up in the middle of the night. Back in the day, I would just go in and feed her because that’s likely the reason she was up crying, the rare times she was. Now, I know she can sleep the whole way through (with natural awakenings, of course, after which she puts herself back to sleep without making noise). But I’d heard a few people say that babies stop sleeping through around this age and would wake and cry. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do when that happens. Do I do the sleep training thing and just not respond so she’s given an opportunity to learn to self-soothe through those periods again? I know she’s vulnerable at this age, due to her growing memory and her ability to make mental connections, to developing a night-waking habit once she realizes she’s able to get someone to respond to her calling. But I can’t just not respond if she’s actually wailing for long periods of time. How much time do I let her cry? 🙁
Back at home for the night after my parents had left, Allie went to bed easily, nursing to sleep quickly. But suddenly, a few hours later at 9:30p, I heard her wail. She let out a few more wails, then got quiet again. By the time I was able to force myself through my immobilizing terror and go grab my cell phone so that I could see what was going on thru the baby cams, Allie had moved to the foot of her bed and was sitting up. Mr. W was oblivious, playing his game on the computer with his ear buds plugged in. I showed him the baby cam on my phone, and he cursed. I stood in the living room, frozen, staring at the monitor, reciting over and over in my head, “Lie down and go to sleep. you can do it. Just lay down. Put your thumb in your mouth. Lay down and close your eyes.” At some point I became aware of my hard breathing. And then my sweating. Allie crawled around, pushing down on the crib bumper to look over it. I know that Jayne sometimes ducks down in Allie’s room after putting her down and Allie’s caught her there before and laughed, suddenly finding herself in a game of peek-a-boo, so maybe Allie’s checking to see if someone’s there for her hidden behind the bumper. It probably wasn’t more than minutes before Allie settled on a position she liked, sucked her thumb, and went back to sleep. But it felt like hours. Overnight, I was awoken by what I thought was Allie’s wail, something that hasn’t happened in awhile. My head saying, “Please be an auditory hallucination, please be an auditory hallucination,” I checked my cell phone for the baby monitors. Allie was asleep, and I was relieved and exhausted. I’m not sure if I’m truly getting auditory hallucinations in my sleep, but it’s shocking how much random noises sound like a muffled baby wail — screeching car brakes, cats, drunk people far away, garbage trucks.

I’m hoping this is just a very, very short developmental thing. =P

On Friday when we got home from work, Jayne was sitting outside the front door with Allie on her lap, and greeted us with, “Uh, I think you guys should lower her crib mattress all the way.” She told us about how Allie had awoken from a nap when Jayne was watching on the iPad’s monitor in the kitchen, and Jayne didn’t go up to get her right away, but a few seconds later, she looked back at the monitor and saw Allie standing at the foot of her crib looking toward the window. A flip flop halfway across the kitchen was proof of how fast Jayne went running upstairs to grab Allie before Allie decided to try vaulting next. Also on Friday, Allie started saying…THAT’S RIGHT, “mama.” Not “dada,” not “papa,” but “mama.” Mr. W says it’s her first word, but I wasn’t sure, since we didn’t hear her say “hi” again (which we had thought was her first word), so who knows, maybe she wouldn’t say “mama” again, either. I was wrong on that. “Mama” has become her new favorite sound. I don’t think it means “mother” to her, because based on the times she says it, it seemed at first to refer to food. Then through the weekend, it was just something she’d say at any time she wanted to say something. I took advantage. See this video of the first time she tried carrots on Saturday morning:

Mr. W complains that he’s unable to view my blog videos through his iPad. Anyone else have that problem? What about through a computer?

Allie now easily sits herself up on her own, and she also started crawling a little. She doesn’t crawl much, because her preference is just to get herself to the object on the ground she wants to reach better, or to get to some leverage so she could pull herself up. She still prefers standing and walking to laying and crawling. When she has contact with someone while she’s sitting or laying, she’ll use that contact to pull herself up and walk. All these new skills unfortunately cut into her sleep, as she’ll just sit up and play or mosey on to a different corner of her crib to chew on the bumper ties instead of going back to sleep when she wakes during naptime. She’s been getting an average of 13-ish hours of sleep per 24-hour period as opposed the old 14-15 hours. (I’d expected this, though.) Changing her diapers and clothes have become a 20-minute task sometimes because she keeps rolling onto her tummy so she could do the downward-dog pose, getting on her feet, but unsure of how to get her hands to leave the floor so that she could stand. She also managed to figure out how to walk in her Pooh activity walker this weekend. They’re small hesitant steps and are more circumstantial than deliberate, but she’s going through the motions.

Food is going really well. I have been adding a new food to her daily intake every 4 days, and she hasn’t had any negative reactions beyond harder clay-like poops, which I think we’ve resolved by working prunes into her diet. So this weekend, in a solid meal, she had an ice cube square of pureed peas (thawed, of course) thinned a little with prune juice, and an ice cube square of pureed pears thickened with some iron-fortified organic baby rice cereal. Since she also gets regular feedings of breast milk, that’s milk, vegetable, fruit, and grain. Once I have enough fruits and veggies introduced, I’m going to try white meats, i.e. chicken and turkey. Allie doesn’t seem to care much for sweet stuff; she doesn’t take juice well from a bottle when we tried to help her constipation by offering diluted prune and pear juices, and last night, Mr. W put a piece of watermelon in a mesh teether thing, which also didn’t go well. She chewed on it and sucked, and as soon as juice flowed into her mouth, she made the most awful face and shuddered, pulling it out. She tried chewing again, the face was made again, and she refused the object after that. I’m just happy she will eat prunes and pear at this point, even tho I have to “hide” it in other foods, such as rice cereal and peas.