cindy's world

Many people kept telling me to get a second opinion before subject Allie to IV anesthesia and giving her a root canal on her broken front tooth, and crowns on both broken front teeth. Finally, it took Rebecca saying that she doesn’t like the dentist Allie saw and that the dentist is more interested in making money than doing something that’s in Allie’s better interest, and insisting that I NEED to get a second opinion because Allie doesn’t need work done at this point, for me to finally call the dental insurance to ask how they address second opinions and then to find another dentist. The dental insurance will cover 2 checkups a year, so Allie has another one left. I did more research online and went back to the other office I was considering when I was picking Allie’s first dentist, and noticed an Asian male dentist that piqued my interest for whatever random reason. He’s about my age, did his undergrad at Cal (UC Berkeley), went to UCLA dental school, did his residency at Harvard, volunteers in going and treating children in third-world countries (kind of like Doctors Without Borders, but dental). He reminds me of my peers. I really didn’t look into the backgrounds of any of the other 3 male doctors there. One reason I’d eliminated them first go-round is because Allie does better with females, but maybe an Asian male would be okay as it’d remind her of me and my parents. She does seem to acclimate to Asians faster. I called that office, they were very nice and I finagled a same-day afternoon appointment out of them and they were nice enough to squeeze us in.

Allie LOVED that office visit. She got to explore the office and play before she was called in. Here she is in their photobooth.

She sat in the x-ray chair on her own for the single x-ray of her upper teeth, kept the lead vest on and didn’t cry (like she did in the other office). She also sat in the patient chair by herself, again didn’t cry. The hygienists, nurses, assistants were all playing with her and she talked back with them, and Mr. W and I were surprised how comfortable she was with all of them, so quickly. When Dr. Wu came and met us, he TOTALLY reminded me of a friend I would’ve had from UCLA, he was like my childhood friend Dentist Andy, like our friend Eddie, easy-going, informative, casual. And he didn’t treat Allie like a baby. He talked to her, showed her a hand-held mirror, let her hold it, explained what he was going to do by demonstrating on her hands, and she opened her mouth and showed him how she brushes her teeth, and she let him put his little mirror in and fingers and everything! She seemed captivated by what he was telling her. I was happy she was so cooperative and had so much fun.

So this is the 2nd opinion: He said (and showed us on x-ray) that Allie’s teeth, gums, roots, nerves, are all totally healthy. She’s not in pain, she’s asymptomatic, the teeth are in there nice and tight, no damage aside from the fractures. He says these are deep fractures, and is more severe on the upper left tooth where the tooth broke in a sort of “sheeting” in the back, which did thin out the tooth from behind so a little pink is visible behind that too, but that her nerve is NOT exposed. That’s why she doesn’t have discomfort. He said he has a “difference of treatment opinion” with the 1st dentist — he says this can be a watch-and-see. He says kids this young have tremendous ability to heal, and that he would’t be surprised if her nerve (presently big, which he says is a great thing and means it’s healthy) and internal structure of the tooth actually healed itself. He says potentially, with good care and no further trauma to the teeth, these two teeth will just stay like this and hold until they fall out on their own when Allie’s 6-7 years old. In the very least, he’d like to keep things good and healthy until she’s 3 or so, so that work can be done without having to put her under the risks of IV anesthesia. He says work “has” to be done if the nerve were exposed, giving her extreme pain; if we see discoloration inside the tooth which means decay or bacteria has infected the hallow internal cavity of the tooth; if we see inflammation/infection of her gums; if we see a bubble on her gums which indicates abscess. Absent those and any signs of discomfort, Allie’s teeth are strong and fine and should be left alone. He said if we want, when she’s a little older and can tolerate it better, he can just rebuild the teeth and fill in the gap. He doesn’t want to grind it down and do a crown like the other dentist, he said, because there’s so much healthy tooth still left, it makes no sense to get rid of it. If the sharp points bother her and we start seeing puncture wounds on her lower lips, he said we can bring her in and he’ll round off the points a little which would take 10 seconds, and otherwise, we can totally leave it alone and just clean it well and keep a good eye on it, don’t let her eat things that require a front bite-and-pull, such as pizza. He wanted us to schedule another check-up and x-ray at 6 months so he could compare her teeth then to the baseline he’s now got on file, and if the area around the roots (he pointed on the x-ray) gets bigger showing the tooth is loosening from gums drawing back or getting sick, or if signs of decay/problems occur, to bring her back and they can always do whatever the most conservative, mildest intervention is good for that situation. Meanwhile, he says something so aggressive as a root canal or extraction are not called for.

Dr. Wu spent a lot of time chatting with us and making sure we understood everything, answering questions, projecting into the future for possible scenarios and how those would be treated. The other dentist was kind of vague. Probably cuz she knew she was upselling and was fudging the truth, making things seem more emergent and dire than they really were, pushing for surgery. (I called that office to cancel Allie’s oral surgery scheduled for 8/14, explaining that because it’s been a week and Allie’s been asymptomatic, I wanted to hold off doing something drastic like the root canal & crowns. The receptionist said that’s fine and it’s up to me, but re Allie having no pain or discomfort, “This doesn’t happen overnight. And just so you know, when it happens, it’s usually at night.” Okay, thanks. I still want to wait.) Dr. Wu said all their dentists are available and on-call 24/7 for emergencies in case Allie suddenly develops any dental-related problems in the future. Oh, and I always wondered how the heck she fractured her two front teeth at an angle in the center, did she crash into a point? Jayne said she just tripped and fell down and didn’t hit anything. Dr. Wu asked with a knowing smile, immediately after examining Allie, if she’s a thumb-sucker. I said she is. He said the way it’s broken suggests that her teeth had a slight outward turn, usually from frequent bottle/pacifier use and/or thumb-sucking, so the center of her upper teeth made the impact first. Oooooh.

All 3 of us walked out happy. Allie was given a lot of stickers and a pretty princess toothbrush that she really liked and kept talking about “Doctor, doctor, nice doctor, mouth, teeth, fish (she got to play with a stuffed fish with what looked like dentures glued in), sticker, ball (they let her play with all the toy “rewards” they give kids).” Mr. W said, “I like this dentist office SO MUCH BETTER than the other one.” And I was just happy I got a prescription for “wait and see.”

We celebrated after the appointment with Allie’s first sushi dining experience. She didn’t have any fish, but did have some dissected California rolls and a bunch of steamed gyozas. Here she is outside the sushi restaurant.

She’s been to this lakeside sushi restaurant before, but had her own food. Here’s a flashback for photo comparison; the sushi chef remembered our last visit a year ago and asked about my parents.

I followed Dr. Wu’s instructions last night and this morning and brushed and flossed Allie’s upper front teeth for the first time since the injury (I’ve been avoiding just those 2 teeth), and he was right…she kept her mouth open and had NO reaction whatsoever.

I’m so relieved.

Allie has a love/hate relationship with “Elmo’s Song.” She loved it initially, but then demanded to hear it so often that it became overplayed and then she hated it. She’d protest and demand that we turn it off immediately when it comes up on the playlist by saying, “Aaaah! No, no! No! Noooo!” If she’s within reach of the playing device, she’d push the “home” button herself so it’d stop. But that didn’t stop her from singing it on her own, when she’s going about her day, or when she’s alone in her crib. (She’s actually like this with one other song, “Sing After Me,” performed by Ernie and Elmo. Except even more so.) But sometimes, when the delivery method is fresh (streamed to the car’s radio via Bluetooth, for example), she’s excited to listen to the song(s).

The premise of “Elmo’s Song” is about rewriting and sharing ownership of this song: Elmo tells Big Bird and Snuffy that he’s written a song, which he then plays for them. The lyrics are repetitions of “La la la, Elmo’s song.” During the performance, Big Bird says wistfully, “I wish *I* had a song!” Elmo offers to “share” his song with Big Bird. “How?” Big Bird asks. Elmo responds, “Just sing ‘Big Bird’ instead of ‘Elmo!’ They do that replacing “Elmo” with “Big Bird,” then do it again replacing “Elmo” with “Snuffy.” When the song ends, the Sesame Street characters go off in search of other characters so that they could sing the song again using other names.
Last week when listening to this in the car, when the song ended…
Mr. W: That’s it, that was “Elmo’s Song.”
Allie: Elmo Song?
Mr. W: That’s right, Elmo’s Song.
Allie: Mama Song.
Mr. W: *laughing* Mama’s Song?
Allie: Dada Song. Allie Song.
Me: She got the joke!

Today, she tolerated playback of the song again, because for the first time, Mr. W loaded it on Allie’s iPod Touch and handed it to her. I’ll script it for you.
[Before the video started…Elmo: Just sing “Big –“]
[My video starts]
Elmo: …Bird instead of Elmo!
Allie: Elmo!
Big Bird: Great idea! Here I go! Heh heh!
Allie: Heh heh! La la.
Big Bird: This is the song, la la la la —
Allie: La la laaa.
Big Bird: –Big Bird’s song…
Snuffy: Hey, it works.
Big Bird: La la la la —
Allie: Whoa!
Big Bird: — La la la la, Big Bird’s song
Allie: Hmm, hmm-hmm
Big Bird, Elmo: La la la
Big Bird, Elmo and Allie: La la la laaaaaa, la; La la la, la la la laaaaa
Mr. W: She harmonizes. Haha!
Allie: *simultaneously with Big Bird* La la la la la, *in harmony* la la laaa
Big Bird: *simultaneously with Allie* I love to sing, La la la la, Big Bird’s Song
Big Bird: La la la la, La la la la, Big Bird’s Song
I love the music, I love the words, That’s Big Bird’s Song
Allie: Soooong
Big Bird: Your turn, Snuff ol’ pal!
Snuffy: All right —
Allie: All right!
Snuffy: Stand back!
Allie: Hmm-hmm, hmm-hmm *simultaneously with Snuffy* Hmm hmm hmm.
Snuffy: *simultaneously with Allie* This is the song,
La la la la, Snuffy’s Song
Big Bird: Sing it, Mr. S!
Snuffy: La la la la, la la la la, Snuffy’s Song
Big Bird, Snuffy, Elmo: La la la, la la la laaaa, la la la, la la la laaaa
Snuffy: I love to sing, la la la la, Snuffy’s song, La la la la, la la la la, Snuffy’s Song
Allie: *trying to shut the music up by putting it on her beanbag chair, then throwing a blanket over it, and when that doesn’t work, sitting on it*
Big Bird, Snuffy, Elmo: We wrote the music, we wrote the words, That’s Snuffy’s, That’s Big Bird’s–
Allie: I’m done.
Big Bird, Snuffy, Elmo: Thaaaaaat’s Eeeellll —
Allie: *turns off music* *turns to me with a mischievous fake grin, which drops off her face immediately (revealing its fake nature) upon turning back to the iPod*

Allie listens to various alphabet songs. One song works the letter’s sound into the music, so it would go something like, “A is for apple. Ah, ah, apple. B is for ball. Buh, buh, ball.”

A little earlier when we were changing Allie for bed, she was singing and humming as usual, and Mr. W played on something she sang and said, “Duh, duh, diaper?”
Allie smiled and said playfully, “Buh, buh, brush.” She held out the hairbrush she was playing with.
We laughed and I said at the coincidence, “That’s right! Buh, buh, brush!”
Then Allie said, “Puh, puh, people.”
I started to freak a little. Was this two coincidences? “That’s right, puh, puh, people!” Is my kid getting the hang of phonics at 19 months?
And then Allie said, “Muh, muh, hi doggie.”
“What?”
“Muh, muh, hi doggie. Muh, muh, hi doggie.” She grinned her goofy broken-teethed grin.

Maybe she takes after her dad, who was entertaining her in the backseat saying nursery rhymes while I was driving us home from my parents’ house this evening.
“There was an old lady, who lived in a shoe, she had too many children, so she went to the cupboard…”
“What? That’s a whole different nursery rhyme!”
“Oh. That’s right, that’s Old Mother Hubbard, lived in a cupboard… I don’t remember how these effing things go!”

So the irony is that Allie did everything right as far as her dental care is concerned. She stopped use of the pacifier before she was 3 months old (by a day) and stopped bottle use when she was 14 months old so that her teeth wouldn’t slowly be “trained” to turn out or go crooked (American Academy of Pediatrics recommends weaning by 18 months). She doesn’t drink commercial juice or eat sweets. She never went to bed with a bottle so she wouldn’t have food “pooling” in her mouth to cause cavities. She has been brushing twice daily since she was 9 months old, and flossing at bedtime since before she was 18 months old. The only dental vice she does, and this is only on rare occasions, is chew ice.

But one bad fall, and she is worse off than the kids who are falling asleep at bedtime drinking Coke from their bottles at age 4.

While at Allie’s first dental office visit today, the pediatric dentist placed the mirror under Allie’s broken upper teeth, and I saw something pink behind Allie’s upper left front tooth. “What’s that, blood?” I asked Dr. Tina. It seemed unlikely that blood could stay on her tooth and not be washed away from saliva or Allie’s tongue.
“It’s a nerve,” Dr. Tina said. She had already showed us on the x-ray how little tooth enamel Allie had and how the nerve was right at the surface, especially on the left front tooth. Baby teeth just don’t have a lot of surface area and the nerves are big relatively speaking, so with a bad deep break like Allie has, the result is exposed nerve.
BTW, I did some internet research when I got home and basically, for adults and kids, once a tooth break has exposed a nerve, people describe excruciating pain, sensitivity to air, temperature, contact, and medical attention needs to be given in 1-2 weeks because the exposed nerve will not only die (a sign of which is the inside of the tooth turning black), but the “hole” exposed in the previously sterile inside of the tooth will decay and abscess and cause more problems.
Dr. Tina explained that we have 2 options for the next step. The one she recommends is extraction of BOTH front teeth. She said the “bad” one is the front left, where I saw the exposed nerve, but that parents will often pull out the other front tooth as well for symmetry. WTF. I must’ve looked VERY skeptical about this option because she didn’t address it much beyond that, and told us option #2 is to do a baby root canal, remove the exposed nerve, fill the tooth and cap both front teeth with a crown. She warned me that going this route may still lead to an extraction later if food/bacterial gets in the tooth anyway, and pulling the teeth makes things less complicated, with less potential for problems later.
I wanted Option 2. It would SUCK to pull these 2 teeth if they can be saved. I wanted her to take after me in many ways, but not in THAT way.
A near-future appointment will be made. A anesthesiologist will put Allie under (scary) so that the dentist can work on her teeth and give her the baby root canal and crowns, and I’m told the total procedure time would be about an hour. After that, Allie will still have to be careful how and what she eats, because the structural integrity of her front teeth will have been compromised, so she still can’t be biting into corn on the cob, an example Dr. Tina gave. 🙁 But it’s not like she could anyway with NO upper front teeth. I wonder how I ate until I was 8.

It’s so unfair that kids who pay no attention to their oral care will just get a tooth drilled for cavity here and there, and my baby with the perfect teeth has to get a ROOT CANAL. This is all my fault, really. I had overslept yesterday morning and was running late, so Mr. W brought Allie downstairs while I hurriedly finished getting ready upstairs, which is why I was not there when Allie tripped and face-planted on the travertine tiles downstairs. If I had been there, it’s unlikely Allie would have left me to go running to Mr. W in the kitchen, and maybe I would’ve been holding her anyhow as I like to do before we say goodbye for the morning. But I also know that if I had been given a choice of this, or of Allie having a chronic health issue, even something common such as food allergies, I would’ve chosen this. It’s over with faster, and hopefully her adult teeth won’t be affected.

She’s a trooper; aside from changing her mind about wanting water or fruit when it’s too cold (now that we know she’s temperature-sensitive), she has not shown one bit of discomfort. Her total cry when she fell was less than a minute. She even let me brush her teeth last night (altho she whimpered when the brush touched the bruising on the inside of her top lip last nite), this morning and tonight (I avoided her top teeth last nite, and brushed her top teeth today but avoided the broken teeth). I flossed her tonight, avoiding the center teeth. In pain tolerance, at least, I’m happy she takes after me.

Remember my kid with the early pearly whites and the cute smile?

The cute little teeth that we painstakingly brush twice a day and floss nightly to keep looking perfect? That we made sure to maintain as healthy and straight as possible by not having her on a pacifier and being bottle-free since well before age 1 (per her pediatrician recommendations), not giving her juice and especially no bottle to sleep?

Allie was downstairs yesterday morning before we’d left for work; Mr. W was there with her and Jayne had already arrived. I was upstairs and heard Allie start crying. When I came down a few minutes later, she wasn’t crying anymore but was still slightly whimpering as I held her, and I asked her, “What happened?” She told me she went boom, and pointed to where it happened, at the travertine tiles in the hallway between the living room and the kitchen. Mr. W explained that he had gone into the kitchen and Allie went running after him, and tripped over the metal ledge at the doorway of the baby gate. (I’ve often looked at that thing when Allie would hold on to the side of the frame and step carefully over the metal bar at the bottom, and I’d wondered how many kids and people trip on that.) Apparently she’d gone flying onto the travertine tile floor. She seemed fine at that point and moved on to eat some nectarine and grapes. She did take one bite out of the nectarine and start looking at it funny, pointing to where she’d bitten it, and the refused to bite again, so we cut it up into pieces for her and she ate it fine that way. She appeared to be sucking on her lower lip so I thought there may have been injury there, but didn’t see anything upon inspection.

Well, as soon as I’d finished with my noontime yoga yesterday, I checked my phone and read this text message from Jayne.

I’m not sure if [Mr. W] listened to the message I left shortly after you left the house. Allie broke her 2 front teeth when she fell this morning, which is so bizarre because I saw her fall and I never would have thought it would result in her teeth getting chipped! You probably want to contact a pediatric dentist and have her checked. I was so sad when I noticed it. At first it seemed like she had only bitten the middle part of her upper lip. 🙁

I was SO angry. It completely ruined my afternoon. I texted back, “This is the first I heard of it. She’s not bleeding? Do the teeth seem loose?”
Jayne responded, “No to both. I did try to wiggle them and they seem ok. I just can’t figure out how they broke when all there was was a little irritation on her lip and no bruise to her face. I didn’t even think she hit any part of her face or head when she tripped. She’s had falls that have seemed worse. I was so nervous at the park that she might fall and break more of the 2 teeth. She can tell something is different but doesn’t seem to be uncomfortable. But I’m wondering if they should be checked. Thank goodness they’re baby teeth!”

I took the advice and checked on Yelp for good pediatric dentists near our home. Two offices popped up with 5-star reviews exclusively (meaning 100% of the people reviewing gave them 5 stars). The one slightly farther had more reviews, therefore more 5-stars; 5 dentists work there, but were all males and Allie does better with women right now. The one closer had less reviews altho they were also all 5-star reviews, had only 1 dentist, but she’s female and has a pair of twin toddler girls of her own. From the photos on Yelp, her office looks amazing, like visiting an aquarium museum. When I read that she graduated summa cum laude from UCLA School of Dentistry (Go Bruins!), it was a no-brainer. I called and spoke to a very nice receptionist who gave us a next-day appointment and took our dental insurance info over the phone so that she could call them and check for coverage before we get in there.

When I got home, I asked Allie to show me her teeth. This is what’s left.

She looks like a Turok-Han vampire from the “Buffy” series. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Thankfully, Allie’s behavior was no different and the sharp new points of her front teeth don’t deter her from sucking her thumb as she falls asleep. I did feel them while nursing her to sleep, but they didn’t hurt. Just felt sharp points pressing against my skin. She’s in the process of self-weaning so it wasn’t bad. For the past 4 nights she would stop nursing early on the first side and refuse the second side, telling me she’s “done-done,” and I like this tapering off because it helps my body adjust, too.

I keep thinking of things my dad said about my front teeth being knocked out in preschool. He’d said (in Mandarin) that my little teeth had recently all come in and were white and beautiful and I looked so cute when I smiled, and then they were knocked out, and he was and is still so mad.
In my situation, I was in preschool (my mom called it daycare), around 3 or 4 years old, and I was among a handful of kids who were on the playground “carousel” — a large metal disk platform with metal bars attached to the top of it at intervals so that the kids on the ground can spin the disk by pushing on the bars and the kids on the platform can hold on to the bars for support while the disk spun. We were taking turns being the spinner, and when it was my turn, I stepped off the disk with one hand, while the kid who was supposed to come on the platform for his turn suddenly decided to push the disk really hard and spin it again. I either fell against the metal bar or the bar hit me in the mouth, but I ended up losing both upper front teeth right there in the sand. I cried, of course, I remember how numb my lips felt afterwards, how swollen, and I remember the teacher on duty in the playground saying spitefully to me, “You deserve that. That’s what you get for running around.”
My mom’s memory picks up after that — she came to pick me up as usual after work, and when she called me, I turned around to greet her, and she saw my swollen mouth, half my face and clothing still crusted over with dried blood. She freaked out. The teacher turned and tossed over her shoulder, “Oh, she fell earlier.”
Both my parents were furious that they were never contacted by the daycare/preschool, and that I was never given any medical or any attention, not even to clean me up. They even went back to the playground over the weekend to try to find my teeth to see if a dentist could put them back in, but couldn’t find the teeth. I had a raging infection in my gums and lip for over a month, and didn’t have front teeth until my adult teeth grew in sometime between 2nd and 3rd grade.
I had front teeth for only a couple of years before I lost them for the next 5 or so years, so for me, it was just how things were; I didn’t feel like I was missing out on much, I wasn’t self-conscious, I just did my own thing. I never understood why my dad was still so upset, even to this day if it’s brought up.

I get it now. I keep thinking about how Allie will have a hard time biting into apples now, or eating her new favorite thing: sandwiches (she loves turkey, cheese & avocado on whole grain). How is she going to cut the noodles she loves in a bite? She can now drink through straws without having to open her mouth. 🙁 She has a photoshoot coming up in September, how’s she going to look in those photos, and every other photo until her permanent teeth come in? How will she be received by other kids when she starts school? Her smile looks “goofy” now, as her dad described.
Allie, however, much like I was, doesn’t appear to be very affected. She occasionally puts her fingers in her mouth to feel her new points, the tongue comes out as she prods the new jagged edges of her upper teeth, but nothing else is much different. Of course, we haven’t been giving her popsicles or sandwiches in the last day. I expect her to be temperature-sensitive for awhile.

Lots of people and/or their toddlers have been having teeth/gum injury issues in the past week, so at least Allie’s trendy.

It’s like a dream come true when Allie points across the grocery store aisle and correctly identifies “ana” (banana), “brocky” (broccoli), “apple,” “owen” (orange), etc. Even when I don’t think she can see my hands at work, she points and says, “Mama peel? Loka.” Even when it’s been weeks since she’d last seen or had loquat. Hoping this keeps up.

It must be terribly frustrating to know so much, and be able to express so little, and to feel so adamant about what you want. Even though Allie’s vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds, her emotions are still way ahead of what she’s able to satisfy on her own. This morning I came downstairs to a bawling Allie. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Cereal,” she sobbed, barely coherent. “Cereal.”
Mr. W said, “She asked for cereal, I GAVE her cereal. She won’t eat it now. She ran away from it.”
“Cereal!” Allie cried.
“Here, cereal,” Mr. W offered. Allie turned away from it, cried again, doubled over in apparent distress. “I don’t understand what she wants,” he said, annoyed.
“She wants to feed herself,” I explained.
He offered her the bowl and spoon, she took it, put a spoonful of raisin and bran flakes in her mouth. I put her in her high chair, and she pointed at her new stuffed Winnie the Pooh bear that the stepkidlet had bought for her yesterday (departure gift; the stepkidlet has left for Europe for the summer). Mr. W picked up Pooh and placed him on the corner of the table closest to Allie but out of reach, saying, “Here, Winnie the Pooh is going to sit right here and watch Allie eat.” Allie dropped the cereal spoon, crying again in distress. So after I put on her bib, clicked in her tray, put the bowl on the tray, put the spoon back, I put Pooh Bear on the edge of the tray next to her and she immediately stopped crying and started eating again. Small demands, but she wants them SO, SO badly.

She definitely understands way more than she’s able to express, and until that catches up, I’ve read that this frustration is normal. Poor thing.

Over the weekend, Mr. W and Allie were looking at photos together. I heard him say, “See the waterfall?”
Allie’s reply: “Boom.”
I explained to Mr. W that her word for “fall,” as in “fall down,” is “boom.” If she tripped and we asked what happened, she’d point to the accident site and say, “Allie boom.” Or if we tell her, “Be careful, don’t climb [on the furniture],” “Sit down when you’re on the couch,” she’d reply with, “Boom.” That means, “I understand, I’m to be careful so that I don’t fall.” So of course, now Allie is saying, “Wa-wa boom.” We’ll have to remember that that’s her word for “waterfall.”

When we got home from work yesterday, Jayne asked me, “So was that stir-fried vermicelli with pumpkin today?”, referring to the new food item we’d packed for Allie’s lunch.
It was Chinese stir-fried glass-noodles (or rice noodles), but to make things more understandable, that’s what I’d called it on Allie’s food log.
“Yeah,” I told her. “My parents made it yesterday. She eats anything my parents make.” (We’d visited my parents on Sunday afternoon and my mom had made it for lunch, and we’d packed some for home.)
Allie, overhearing, said, “Gong-gong. Po-po.”
It took me a second to realize Allie knew we were talking about her grandpa (gong-gong) and grandma (po-po), even tho we’d never referred to them as anything but “my parents.” She also knew the dish as “noodles,” not as “vermicelli,” so I have no idea how Allie understood what we were talking about. I was impressed.

I made a quinoa “fried rice” with chopped carrots, peas, corn and turkey last night. Allie wanted to look in the pot (“up up puh puh puh” with her arms raised at me, and pointing at the pot on the stove) and I thought she’d see the finished product and say, “Rice,” since to me, it’s now a product called “fried rice.” But instead, peering in she said, “Corn! Peas!” Funny, seeing things as sharp, separate components in the limited experience of a child. I guess this is why kids pick out bits and pieces of a food (like pizza) they’ll eat or not eat instead of just taking in the whole.

This isn’t the first time she’d said this, but this is the first time I realized this is Allie’s first full sentence.
“I’m done.”
🙂

Where in the world did the time go? My mom wrote a social networking site comment on a photo of Allie today about how she’s 19 months old today, and I had to double-check the calendar. Didn’t I JUST post about her 18-month birthday? Jeesh. Today, I packed up all her 18-month clothes and onesies (too short on torso length) and left her with only 24-month or 2T clothes in her dresser.

Loves:
* Kids. She still calls them “baby.” She’ll go up to any kid at the playground and wave and affectionately touch their hand. I’ve noticed that maybe 10% of the kids welcome this contact. The other 90% glare at her and move away, or start hovering over their toys yelling “No!” at her before she even reaches them.
* Parks and playgrounds. New this month: She’ll have a fit and cry, sometimes throwing herself on the ground, when it’s time to leave.

* Music. Listening to it, singing it (she recognizes songs that I’m mindlessly humming and will sing out the next line or identify a character that sings it, and she’s surprisingly accurate on her tones and pitch), dancing to it, playing it on piano or guitar. Last weekend, she got to play with an Allie’s sized stringed instrument.

* New words and characters. This morning she surprised me by being able to identify and say “Big Bird,” “Ernie,” “Monster” (Cookie Monster), “Tigger,” and last week, “Eeyore.” She’s even memorized the order of some of the alphabet and numbers in English and Mandarin. I think it’s just phonetic to her, she doesn’t know “five” is a number or how many that really is, for instance.
* Trucks. I don’t get it. But she’ll excitedly point out pickup trucks (“Duck!”, as distinguished from actual quacking ducks, which she calls “duckies”) and dumpster trucks (“Beeeg duck!”).
* Doing things herself. If I don’t give her the spoon quickly enough, or I offer unwanted help as she climbs up steps or playground ladders, she’ll insist in a big rush, “Me me me! Me me me!”

Dislikes:
* Eating the same veggie too many times in a row. She’ll either refuse it or push it out of her mouth with her tongue. Very frustrating. New thing this month: flinging unwanted food onto the floor. This drives Mr. W crazy.
* Being told what to do. She’ll resist it just to resist it and practically have a tantrum over it. Changing a diaper when she didn’t first announce “poo” has once again become a struggle. Same with leaving a place, even if that place is home. Leaving a playground is the worst. “More park! More park!” she’ll protest shortly before whine-crying and then resisting going into the car and carseat.
* Mealtimes. Or so it seems. At least half the time she’s fine, but we’re not used to her being picky so it’s nerve wracking coming up with something she’ll eat. We’re letting her go hungry if she’s very resistant, other than dig around trying to find something, anything, that she actually wants to eat, because we don’t want to train her into thinking she has her own short order cook. This is what the meal is, and if she doesn’t want to finish the main course, she can fill up on the vegetables. IF she won’t, she still has fruit for dessert. She’ll always eat SOMEthing, but sometimes just not much of it without some effort on our parts to distract her so she doesn’t spit it out, or to come up with a game. Last night’s game which worked very well was “Look at Allie.” Her baby doll which she totes around was placed at the dinner table facing her, also wearing a bib. We’d pretend to feed something to the doll, praise baby for eating well, and then offer it to Allie. And then we’ll narrate what Allie’s eating to the baby, as if bragging about it. “Look, baby, Allie’s eating a carrot! Look, baby, Allie’s eating a noodle! Look, baby, Allie’s eating an eggplant!” Allie would lift up her food in the air toward the doll and say, “Look baby!” before stuffing it in her mouth. She cleaned her bowls and plates, and at the end, she lifted her empty bowl to show baby, saying proudly, “Look baby! Nothing! Nothing!” Goes to show, peer pressure starts at a very young age. =P I also took a tip from college roommie Diana and started putting missing nutrients (spinach, kale, other raw veggies and fruits) into a smoothie for Allie if we feel she didn’t have enough nutrients throughout the day.
* Not having mommy. I’ve started driving to reduce the road rage stress for Mr. W, and when we’re coming back from my parents’ house or Disneyland shortly before her nap and she’s tired, she will throw a fit that I’m not there to offer her comfort. Specifically, she wants to suck her thumb and run her fingers through my hair. Dada’s short hair and arm hairs are poor and unacceptable substitutes. Today, she cried “Mama” almost the entire way home from Disneyland. I also feel like we have to re-sleep-train her because a little separation anxiety kicks in at nap/bedtime when I put her in her crib. She only protest-cries for a minute or less, tho, because we’ve always been consistent in not going in there to acknowledge her protest cries.

This morning we went to Disneyland for the last Sunday morning before our annual passes are blocked out for the summer. While I was changing her first thing this morning, I said, “Guess where we’re going today!” She guessed, “Mimi?” and got it right. She’s now able to express her will and get more meaning out of her trips to Disneyland, so it’s pretty different from the first times we would take her when we first got annual passes. Now we can ask her if she wants to go on the train (which she always waves to), or ride the flying Dumbos, and she’ll nod and say “Yah.” She loves the rides and usually will start to protest with “More! More!” when it’s time to get off. She also recognizes more characters now and with her familiarity, she’s less shy, so we make sure to visit Toon Town so she can greet Minnie, Mickey (both “Mimi” to her), Donald, Goofy, Pluto, and we try to stop by the Pooh ride so she can see Pooh, Tigger, and Eeyore.

I should make more of an effort to wear makeup. Oh, well.

Just for fun, here’s her doing somersaults at the park a couple of weeks ago.

And here’s Allie and Dada playing follow-the-leader. Guess who the leader is.


Videos from my parents.

Allie’s having a lot of fun mimicking adults in actions and words. She will go into the closet and grab the small floor duster and dusting pan and start sweeping because she saw her daddy do it once. She will sing what we sing, say what we say. Often she’ll remember a word we don’t remember teaching her, but that she must’ve picked up somewhere. So it’s been pretty fun, despite the fact that with her being more vocal, that also means more volume, like in restaurants. That gets uncomfortable sometimes. But mostly it’s fun.

I got this text earlier from Jayne:
Jayne: Ok, so Allie’s latest addition to her vocabulary is Hawaii and she says it so clearly and almost perfectly! I was talking about Missy going to Hawaii.
Jayne: Oh and by the way, she wants to go there. 🙂
I can totally see that happening. Jayne says, “Missy is going to Hawaii!” Allie says, “Ha-wai-ee?” Jayne says, “Yeah, very good, Hawaii! Does Allie want to go to Hawaii?” Allie nods, “Yah?”
Chances are, if Allie hears “go” in front of anything, she wants it. It means she gets to go bye-bye and go play!
I texted back:
Me: Oh no! Tell Allie to pick a place without a time change.
Jayne: Too late.

While Allie’s current fun is with imitating us, Mr. W found a new recreational activity to do with Allie yesterday. Hairstyling! Allie finally got her hair did for the first time yesterday evening. Here is his handiwork.

I’ve never seen Mick Jagger in concert (or in videos, actually) nor Monsters Inc., and due to peer pressure I’ve tried to watch Shrek, like, 3 times already and it’s put me to sleep each time. But hubby’s seen all of them!