cindy's world

This little girl is 15 months old today.

The peach fuzz is getting longer, but even dressed like this at Schabarum Park last weekend, some older lady asked my mom whether Allie’s a boy or girl. My mom was SO offended. I guess unless a baby has long hair, people will think she’s a boy.

Allie’s main source of recreation these days are walks or trips to the park. When I took her myself last weekend, I was surprised how many people knew her (“Is that Allie? Oh, I didn’t recognize you in that hat!”) and how well she played with other kids. She even knew what sand toys were as she picked up some other kid’s rake and started clawing lines into the sand, then put the spade in the kid’s bucket a few times, imitating the sand-scooping action (she doesn’t have the coordination for actual sand transfer down, yet). I was also pleased how well the kids at the park shared their toys and played together.

She loves kids, and when she sees anyone under the age of 13, she’d point and say, “Baby!” This offends the age-sensitive 6-year-olds, but I thought it was funny when another toddler at Costco pointed at Allie and did the same thing. Allie looked a little stunned. Allie will walk up to any kid and make serious eye contact, and try to touch the kid’s hand, cheek, or sometimes foot if the other kid’s sitting in a stroller. It’s very sweet how she doesn’t have any inkling of possible rejection, or any insecurity about walking into a bad situation. At the park, she’ll just go. She doesn’t turn to see if we’re following. And as much as she now loves to play with the sand, she still loves the swing. She’ll slide if she’s sitting on one of our laps.

Still only has 15 teeth, still missing the lower right molar. But that’s okay, she eats raw apple slices (skinned and cored) by crunching the pieces between her front teeth or her left side. Allie still isn’t what I’d call picky with food, but she’s starting to see the entertainment value of food now, much to our chagrin. When the edge of hunger is relieved, she’ll start pulling food out of her mouth to examine it, test its texture by squishing it between her fingers and smearing it on her tray. Sometimes she’d flick it and it’d go flying. If it lands anywhere on her tray, she will pick it up again and eat it, but it does slow down the whole meal process quite significantly. Stuff like oranges also gets very, very messy. With edamame, she likes to put it on the tray, push her index finger down on it until the bean comes out of the skin. Then she’ll eat the skin, then separate the two halves of the bean, then push them around on her tray like little cars. And then when the bean’s nice and cold and dirty, she’ll offer it to me. Sometimes I let her feed me some because she finds it so gratifying. Since she’s napping, I made her a big pot of pasta to freeze for future servings. It’s chopped organic veggies (broccoli stalks, carrots, kale, fennel) with a quinoa/corn pasta spiral in roasted tomato and red pepper bisque (low sodium, of course). I thought about how my dream for this kid is to have her one day say, “Ooh! Kale and fennel! Yummy!” instead of what I’d seen other kids do: “What is THAT? *sniffing suspiciously* It smells disgusting. *poking with a fork* Ew.” Okay, maybe the first scenario isn’t entirely realistic, but if the second one happens, I’d kick her ass.

Allie imitates sounds but doesn’t seem to have added many words to her spoken vocabulary lately. But she’ll hum, sing “la la la” and snap her fingers when she hears music or someone else singing.

Her focus, as it seems to have always been, is still on motor skills. Earlier this week, Mr. W left Allie in the living room (which has basically been turned into her fenced-off playroom) for a moment and when he returned, she was sitting on the couch. Tall babies. *sigh* This makes me very nervous about her crib situation.

Her one mid-day nap is going pretty well. Her latency period is shorter these days, probably because she’s more tired by the time she goes to bed. Now she’ll fall asleep in 10-15 minutes (sometimes less) instead of 45. Her noon naps are still approximately 2 hours, longer with me, sometimes shorter with Jayne.

We’re not potty training, exactly, but since my parents bought her a Disney princess potty for Christmas (my mom thinks I should’ve potty trained her before she turned a year), we pulled it out and put it in her bathroom when we noticed that if she ran around with her diaper off before her bath, she will always stand by the side of the bathtub and pee on the floor. She must then have some control/awareness of it, right? Allie was at first scared of the chair with the big hole in the middle she could fall in, but now we let her sit on it and make the magical flushing sound with the plastic gemstone handle, and altho she hasn’t peed in it, yet, and I don’t know how to tell her it’s for peeing, she now enjoys sitting on her “throne” during bathroom time. We placed it across from the adult toilet so that I’ll sit on the toilet to show her what it’s for (pretending), and she’ll turn her back to her little toilet, put her hands on my knees, slowly back up and keep checking to see the toilet by bending and looking between her legs, then lower herself onto the toilet by steadying herself with her hands on my knees. Then she’d sit there looking up at me with a big smile, as if to say, “This is fun! I’m sitting down, too!”

Re bathroom time, I can’t get her to clamp her teeth and open her lips so that I could brush the front of her teeth. She’ll do the “aaah” thing and let me brush her tongue, but I can’t get the toothbrush to the front surfaces without her pushing away. Something to work on.

Meanwhile, the days march on with lots of laughter and discovery.

Once in awhile, when the stepkidlet actually has time to spend at home on her own without having to rush off to classes, internships, church, or social obligations with her boyfriend/friends, Allie would hear music coming from the stepkidlet’s bedroom, stop and do a little wiggle-wiggle dance while snapping her fingers, then run down the hall and knock on the stepkidlet’s door. When the stepkidlet opens the door and sees Allie by herself in the hallway, I’d hear a big dramatic gasp and a “HIIIIII, baby! Come IN!” I leave them to do their own entertaining in there and would do whatever I needed to in the kitchen, cleaning up Allie’s bowls after a meal or prepping her next meal or whatever. And I would hear a “Show mom! Show mom!” Then Allie would come walking carefully down the hall and appear in the kitchen with a pretty scarf around her neck, a trendy hat on her head, or fashionista sunglasses on her face. After she shows me, she’d run back to the stepkidlet’s room. This is a normal occurrence.

Yesterday, when I heard the “show mom,” I turned and looked down to see Allie walk in with a long-handled makeup brush in her fist held behind her head, like she was brushing her hair with it. The stepkidlet came in behind her and gave a cue. “What do we do with that? Show mom what we do with that.”
Allie suddenly pointed the makeup brush toward her chin, wiggled her hips back and forth rhythmically, and said while wiggling, “Yah yah YAH yah yaaaah!”
“What are you doing?” I asked. “What is that?”
“It’s a MICROPHONE!” the stepkidlet said gleefully as Allie turned and ran back down the hall toward the stepkidlet’s room. I think someone’s being groomed to be a performer.

“Hey mommy.”
“Yes, Allie?”
“Do you know what today is?”
“It’s Saturday.”
“More than that, it’s Lunar New Year’s Eve! It’s almost the Year of the Snake!”
“Oh, is that why you made me wear this today?”
“Yes, mommy, it sure is. Now let’s wish your blog readers a Happy New Year!”

“Gong xi fah tsai!”

Yesterday for Allie’s second Chinese New Year’s Eve (see her first here), we met up with my parents and grandma in Irvine for dim sum. Allie was at first a little pensive that her dim sum experience would be like last time.

But it wasn’t. We let her have some dim sum. Those molars came in handy. She didn’t seem bothered by the MSG, but I limited her food anyway, making sure she had a full breakfast before leaving so what she had was just a snack. She behaved pretty well at the restaurant, altho she kept freaking my grandma out because she’d lean back in her chair to look up at the ceiling decorations, and my grandma thought she would flip herself out of her high chair. Allie ate everything we placed in front of her — sticky rice, shrimp, egg tart, those long flat noodle things that they wrap shrimp in, steamed veggies and meatballs. After lunch, her grandpa told her shocking secrets about what was really in those mystery meatballs.

Then we all came back to our house. My grandma and parents had Allie distribute the red envelopes. “Give this to Dada.” “Give this to Mama.” “Give this to Po-Po.”

So Allie did; she brought envelopes to Tai-Po. She brought envelopes to Gong-Gong.

Here she is bringing me one.

It wasn’t until we checked our envelopes after everyone had left that we realized my grandma had lost her mind. She’s on a fixed income (collecting social security and a meager teacher’s retirement salary) and gave me, Mr. W and Allie an envelope each. I was already shocked at the amount in mine and Mr. W’s, and then the amount in Allie’s was more than triple ours. We put the cash aside in an envelope labeled “Money to Return to Grandma (Slowly).” Because if we try to just push it back at her, she’d be offended. So we’ll have to wait for special occasions for which she CAN’T return a red envelope, such as her bday, to give her this crazy amount of money back. We may have to split it up between several occasions, though, or it’d look suspicious. Christmas, Mother’s Day, etc. But she’d still know it’s the same money being pushed around. Such is the Chinese way. =P

It’s nice having just one nap a day so we have so much time to do stuff in. I think Allie still gets sleepy around her usual morning nap time, but we try to be out so she’s distracted and would stay stimulated. We go to Costco, play at the park, have brunch out. And then we give her an earlier lunch (around 11:30a) and then put her in her crib early (around noon). She now takes less than 10 minutes to fall asleep, where before her latency time was more like 30-45 minutes. I used to think there was a problem that she wasn’t immediately zonking out until I read that the average well-rested toddler plays in their crib for half an hour before putting him/herself to sleep.
With me, Allie would typically sleep 2.5-3 hours or more in total, but for some reason, with Jayne she’s getting 1.5 hours or so.
The only weird thing about this nap from my experience is that during her usual brief wake-ups between sleep cycles, when she’d roll and switch positions and go back to sleep every half hour or so, now she wakes up and WAILS. It doesn’t last long, and she’s usually back to sleep in a minute or two after she lays back down, but I don’t know why it’s such drama when she’s up in between her natural sleep cycles now. So it’s not uncommon for 2-3 stand-up-and-wail sessions for a couple of minutes each to happen during each nap from what I’ve experienced.
I haven’t seen this adversely affect her night sleep at all. She does drop to sleep at bedtime faster since she’s up for a longer period of time after her noon nap and has actually fallen asleep more than a few times nursing and was transferred into her crib asleep. She still may wake briefly to switch positions between sleep cycles, but it’s silent and she’s barely awake when she moves around and resettles. She’d usually be asleep close to 7p and wake up on her own a little after 6a. So it’s been really nice.
Some moms have told me, when Allie was months old, that “all” babies stop sleeping through the night at 9, 10 months and again at 14-18 months, but so far, so good. Those mommies that have told me this opted not sleep train their babies and they co-slept, so I’m not sure if that may have something to do with their experiences. I don’t know why co-sleeping babies would wake up during the night; I would’ve thought feeling mommy and daddy asleep next to them would lull them back to sleep. But we’ve never co-slept so I have no idea. I wouldn’t have been against co-sleeping, but I never considered it because Mr. W was adamantly against it from the beginning, and this is an issue you need both parents onboard for.

Allie was put in her crib earlier at noon, was asleep before 12:15, and 20 minutes in, she sat up and wailed a couple of times. Then she looked around, stunned, pulled her blanket up to herself and hugged it while it was all bunched up, then rolled to her side, and went back to sleep, all within 1 minute. It’s now been 54 total minutes of sleep time. If she wakes up by 2:30 or so, we should be able to visit with Rebecca at the coffee shop. 🙂

Allie and I took a couple of trips to playground parks this past weekend. Both days, it seemed to have been Daddy Day. I can only imagine that the dads were out with their kids because the moms were at home making Super Bowl food. *shrug*
I noticed while at the park with Allie that she’s past the “parallel play” point and is now fully interactive with other kids. She gets really excited when she sees kids and will go right up to them, try to hold their hand, wave and say “hi,” hand them her most precious asset (a leaf, rock or twig she’d found moments ago on the ground). She watched and followed and played along with a crowd of 5 kids crawling around a wooden playhouse boat over the weekend. She didn’t climb the counters and stuff like the older kids did, but she was inside the house and looking through the windows and touching the kids’ arms and exchanging leaves and twigs with them. A little girl who couldn’t have been more than 4 years old or so said to me, “What’s her name?”
“This is Allie.”
“Allie. You have a really cute baby.” I’m amazed because I have never been into babies, even as a kid, and it was most noticeable who the nurturing girlfriends were as teens because they’d coo and go right up to a kid and talk about how cute some kid was when I would hardly realize a kid were there. Now I’m thinking it’s a personality trait (to be nurturing and kid-oriented) from very, very young. That little girl would make a great big sister, how gentle she was with Allie. When Allie handed her a fallen leaf, she took it, held onto it for a few seconds, and when Allie reached again, she gave it back. She watched Allie carefully, moved slowly and attentively so she didn’t scare Allie or knock her over.

On the other side of the spectrum, when Allie was at a different park on Sunday morning, she was standing by a zebra rocker and a 3-4 year old girl with curly dark hair pushed between Allie and the zebra, wanting to get on the zebra. I pulled Allie back a bit as Allie watched, fascinated by the rocking motion. After Allie stared for awhile, I walked on and said to Allie, “Come on, baby, let’s leave her alone to play.” Allie still watched the other girl. “Come on, Allie, let’s go on the slide.” I reached out my hand, which Allie took, feet still firmly planted and unmoving. The little girl actually said to Allie, in an almost-whisper as if she thought I wouldn’t hear, “Go away! Go on, go away! Leave! Go!” How rude. That probably would’ve been me at that age. Someday she’d have to tolerate her mom telling her to have kids despite not liking kids because “It’ll be different when it’s YOUR kid.”

Actually, it IS different when it’s your kid, cuz when it’s your kid, you think the smallest thing is hilarious. Like when Allie was doing something funny over the weekend and I said to her, “You goofball.” She ran off and then ran back holding her big rubber ball out to me, saying, “Ball.” And when Mr. W was ticking off his grocery list to make almond-anise biscotti from scratch, he said, “Butter, sliced almonds, white flour –” and Allie interrupted with a loud “*SNIFF SNIFF*” “Haha, that’s a different kind of ‘flower,’ baby.” “*SNIFF SNIFF*”

Speaking of tolerating what moms say, my mom told me this weekend to have Allie watch TV. According to my mom, Allie isn’t talking because she has no TV to learn speech from. As if we don’t talk to her! As if she’s not talking! As if TV is good for her developing brain! I didn’t bother to go into that and dealt with it how I always deal with unsolicited advice from my mom — by biting my tongue.

Mr. W is coming out of his sickness. Since the end of last week, he’s been quarantined in his bedroom and ate very little for the first few days. To keep the spread of viruses to a minimum, he hasn’t touched Allie, has no part in preparation of food, touches as few surfaces as possible, and what he does touch, I wipe down with a Lysol wet-wipe (doorknobs, counters, keyboard, mouse, etc). It’s been a little hard on me to have 100% baby duty, but it’s worth it if Allie could escape the norovirus. I’ve been taking my vitamins, extra Vitamin C, had an organic kale salad with the juice of an entire lemon the first evening, chicken soup, anything to keep the immune system up. I’ve even been sleeping downstairs on the couch. Allie’s been getting a Mandarin orange with her lunch and dinner, which she loves so that’s great.

It’s funny and sad to watch Allie play Marco Polo with Mr. W. When we come back from our walks or during her meal or just at random times, Allie would get a playful gleam in her eye, smile, and then call out, “Dah-dah?”
“Allie?” would come a response from the bedroom.
“Dah-dah?”
“Allie?” When Allie hears the reply, she would smile all excitedly and then go back to whatever she was doing. For Mr. W, it’s not fun and games as much as painful. “She’s calling me and I can’t go to her or touch her.” He was so sad. I honestly don’t think Allie’s noticed that Mr. W hasn’t been touching her. When she wants cuddling, she still comes to me, sits in my lap, or raises her arms to me to be picked up. Mr. W is the “play” parent. I’m the “comfort” parent. Since I’ve been both the past few days, she’s been fine with Mr. W as just the “mystery voice” parent. I mean, she’s knows it’s him, when she hears a noise she’d point toward it and identify it to me with, “Dah-dah!” But then she moves on.

The Sydney norovirus is contagious for 3 days after symptoms have alleviated, so Mr. W would effectively have an entire week of not having anything to do. I wish he’d take over medicating Dodo since I have to do everything else, but he hates doing that, and instead has been so bored in the bedroom he’s watched a ton of movies on his iPad, jailbroke his iPad3, even cut his hair when he was still febrile. Over the weekend he even washed all the sheets on his bed, but since he was still sick, I consider the sheets re-contaminated and still haven’t slept upstairs.

It was exactly a year ago today that Allie caught the RSV bug from Mr. W, who’d been sick with it from work. Hoping history doesn’t repeat itself.

Mr. W complained last night of stomachache, but he has an oddly sensitive digestive system, so I didn’t think it was anything unusual. By lunchtime when I called him, he sounded listless and thick-voiced.
“Were you napping?” I asked him.
“No, I’m sick. My body is achy, I feel weak, my stomach still hurts, and I have a headache.” Oh, crap. The current super-norovirus from Sydney, Australia has these symptoms, plus vomiting and/or diarrhea. It’s not the H3N1 flu that’s been ravaging the country, which our flu vaccine this year covers. I know that one of Mr. W’s coworkers had been out the first three days this week with norovirus symptoms and when it’d first started, he’d thought it was food poisoning (a common misidentification given the symptoms). He’s back to work now but still not feeling better. This Sydney norovirus remains contagious up to 3 days after the person has recovered, and is apparently so hardy that it withstands temperatures of 140 degrees Fahrenheit and transmits itself to different victims through even cooked food. It’s running rampant in our county jail system, and sick inmates have been quarantined, court hearings have had to be continued when inmates couldn’t be transported to court due to all the quarantines and sickness. When you share a toilet in the open with fifty other men any given time, you tend to spread illness especially when diarrhea is a symptom. Makes me glad that we’re doing a civil trial and not a criminal trial with an in-custody defendant.
Mr. W said he may just take the afternoon off so that he could nap at work (he can’t leave early cuz we carpooled and I’m in trial). I said, “Okay, I’ll call you every 10 minutes to check up on you.”
“Don’t you DARE,” he said, sounding serious.
“Or what?” I challenged.
He thought for a few seconds and then said, “Or I’m going to play with Allie when we get home.”
Big loud suck of air from me as I gasped in disbelief. “Don’t you DARE!”
At least he laughed. But now I’m all paranoid that Allie’s gonna get norovirus after she’d just recovered from her cold. 🙁 It’s going to be tough having 100% Allie duty without help or the ability to hand her off while I do her dishes or prep her food, but I think it’s worth quarantining Mr. W to the bedroom if it means Allie can stay healthy. Diarrhea is more common in adults, vomiting in children. Both put the sick person in danger of dehydration and in children, malnutrition.
“If I catch this from you,” I told Mr. W, “I’m going to eat a bunch of cupcakes.” Even with that enticement, I’m still hoping what Mr. W has is not the super norovirus from Sydney.

College roommie is weaning her daughter (2 weeks younger than Allie) off the bottle, and seems to be having a hard time. It seems like the first year and a half of a baby’s life is all about taking food and in what delivery method it’s supposed to be done. Getting the baby used to breastfeeding, getting the baby bottle-trained. Then getting the kid to take a sippy cup by age 1 so that the bottle can be eliminated by 15 months. And then I just read fairly recently that I’m supposed to wean off the sippy cup around 13 months. What the heck? Then why even introduce it for such a short period? And then there are doctor’s suggestions/standards about not letting the baby go to bed with a bottle, not giving juice in a bottle (both for cavity concerns), not letting the kid run around with a bottle or a sippy, not letting a bottle or pacifier be frequent companion for the baby over the age of 1 so the kid doesn’t get “bottle mouth” when teeth are growing. Having something constantly in the mouth slows down speech development. Blah blah blah.

We got lucky with Allie. She nursed well and aside from an early-age bottle strike that lasted a weekend, drank breast milk from the bottle well. She would even take the bottle from me when we were bottle-training by giving her a bottle a day in preparation for my return to work. She got a bottle after each nap, but soon seemed to not care one way or the other, and would run off after being released from the changing table post-nap to go play. She’d have to be snatched back to be given the bottle, which she then takes without any issues. So when she dropped naps, we simply dropped the corresponding bottle feeding along with that nap, and she didn’t care. Then when she was down to 2 naps a day and I was running out of stored breast milk after her first birthday, we dropped the bottle feeding that normally came after the afternoon nap and replaced it with a snack. She didn’t have a problem with that, and as we introduced cow’s milk after her first birthday, we always served a couple of ounces of it at a time with her meals in a measured container with a straw. She would drink milk from that just fine, she drank smoothies out of a straw just fine, and she drank water from a straw and a sippy just fine. Basically whatever form we offered anything in, she took. We started the straw early, around 6 months, by plugging up the top of it with our thumb and transferring water from a cup to her mouth through the bottom of the straw when we were at a restaurant. That way she got to drink from what she saw us drinking from, and got used to the idea of a straw. Then as she got older and could suck, we let her use the straw the right way on the few occasions we gave her water when we were out. The sippy cup was only learned after she mastered the straw, because the non-drip Playtex sippies we got required a harder suction. I think this had to do with why she always choked when she drank water from the sippy (we’ve only ever served water in her sippy cups). For ease, we have been giving her water in her sippy cup with the lid removed, and a straw. Less stuff to wash, anyway. She’s been fine and seems to be over her choking on water thing as of this week. When the frozen stockpile of breastmilk ran out a couple of weeks ago, we removed that bottle feeding, I removed that pumping session, and she and I are on par now with only a morning wake-up nursing and a bedtime put-down nursing. I’d already put away the bottles a week ago.

I think the only person who’s sad about these stages of growth passing by is Jayne. Allie used to be put to nap by falling asleep on us as we held her while standing and swaying back and forth for 10-15 mins, then being transferred to her crib, which was a source of anxiety as the transfer may or may not wake her up and she may or may not go right back to sleep once in her crib. I was relieved, and thought Jayne would be relieved, when Allie decided she no longer wanted to be held and rocked to sleep for naps and instead would reach for her crib and practically leap out of our arms pulling at and hanging onto the crib railing to go straight in. It was a time-saver and a back-saver…but Jayne said she missed it and was sad to lose that cuddling time with Allie. Then as the bottle feeding sessions dropped off, Jayne once again expressed regret to see them go, occasionally telling me that it seems like Allie WANTs the bottle (which we haven’t found to be an issue, more like if you offer it, then she wants to play with it, but if you don’t offer it, it’s out-of-sight, out-of-mind). I think what Jayne misses is the intimacy of holding Allie for an extended amount of time. Our active little girl sometimes asks to be held or cuddled, but not that often, and not with everyone, and usually only for a minute at a time. She’s usually more eager to be off on her own exploring or playing and running.

The one-nap thing is going fairly well. Some days, Allie will seem to really want to nap at 9a, 10a, though. For the most part, Jayne has stopped giving her the opportunity to nap in the morning and moved the afternoon nap down from late afternoon to closer to 1pm, which is when it’s supposed to be. Friday, Jayne let Allie take two naps because she said Allie was so tired, yawning, rubbing her eyes, being crabby in the morning, that she must’ve really needed it. So she got two naps, each over an hour, but the second one was late so it made her bedtime later. Today, even tho she showed drowsy signs at the old morning nap time, I didn’t take her to her room and instead let her keep playing. We gave her an early lunch then put her in her crib 10 minutes before noon. She was out by noon and slept until 2:30p. Then given the longer awake interval before bedtime, she fell asleep during nursing, went right back to sleep after I gently transferred her to her crib, and has been in bed asleep since 7pm. I can get used to this. However, as with almost everything that I write on here, I’ve probably just jinxed myself.

(Today, my parents and grandma brought Curry House takeout over to celebrate my dad’s and grandma’s bdays together. My mom asked whether Jayne speaks to Allie while caring for her all day. I said of course. Mom said she was thinking that maybe Allie’s not learning to talk because no one talks to her. Grrrr, Allie is FINE.)

My little baby-boo is 14 months old today. Whew.

My parents were over this weekend and remarked that she’s so quick with copying everything they do, such as gestures or making faces or working the computer mouse, EXCEPT for talking. They shrugged and said she’s just a very, very delayed talker. Dude! She’s on par with all the published expectations for her age group. I don’t think my parents remembered correctly when they claimed I was reciting Chinese poetry before I was 1. Allie uses single words only, but she’s got quite a few of them, and adding new ones every day. Mr. W recently taught her to call out “mama” when she needs me, so she does that now and I have to stop what I’m doing to respond so that I could encourage her to use her words. She still plays the “bayaya” game in her bedroom and attached bathroom. And she hums a lot, she hums along with music playing, she’ll sing “lalala” when she’s playing with her toys or hears the stepkidlet practicing singing and guitar. Sometimes when we’ve tuned music out, we’ll see Allie wiggling rhythmically in her high chair and we’ll realize there’s a perky song playing in another room.

Allie’s a little more fussy now than she used to be. She’ll whine if she’s put down before she wants to be, and turn and jump up and down with her arms around me until I pick her back up. She’ll frown and complain if you take something away from her before she’s done with it. She still resists and rolls to her stomach and tries to run away when we’re trying to change her diaper about 30% of the time. BUT, she’s still got the easy laughter, the sneaky playfulness, the curiosity. She loves to run to the windows or glass doors and look outside. She gives an excited gasp and looks at us and smiles or forms an “o” with her mouth when she hears Dodo yowl, or a siren roll by. When nursing, she sticks her free hand under my arm and tries to tickle me, giggling before I could even react. She still empties out her toy boxes and buckets and walks around with the container over her head. (This last item we took advantage of and have been putting hats on her when we go outside; she protests things on her head less now.)

Strange thing — she keeps choking when she drinks water. It doesn’t matter if we give it to her in a cup, in a sippy, in a straw. If it’s water, she’ll hack and cough as it goes down the wrong way. Milk, no problem. Her food is pretty much all chopped food and small bites now. We now feel safer handing her a large food item (such as a chunk of banana or a baby cookie stick) and letting her eat it in manageable bites, or she’ll dip it into yogurt or applesauce and eat it in small bites. Even weeks ago, she’d just stuff the entire thing into her mouth. She LOVES kumquats. Blech. And she loves the spiciness of ginger. Mr. W will juice ginger root and pour a bunch of that into her fruit smoothie and Allie will chug it.

2 or 3 molars are now out, and the teeth I had been most curious about are peeking out: her canines. I had learned decades ago that the oval pointed canines are a strictly Asian trait. Forensic people can tell an Asian skull immediately by looking at the canines. Mr. W calls my canines “sharp little cat teeth” since I used to bite him with them in play. My mom calls my dad’s pointed canines “tiger teeth.” Since Allie’s of mixed heritage, would her canines be flat like Mr. W’s, or pointed like mine? I was delighted the other day to see that her canines are like BABY VAMPIRE TEETH. They are SO cute.

In the past week, Allie has been mostly skipping her morning naps or dramatically shortening them (21 minutes over the weekend). Given that, I think Jayne has started deliberately keeping her busy and out in the mornings to do away with the morning nap altogether, and to encourage a long afternoon nap. We’ll now be getting more time to DO stuff. Yay!

Allie’s over her cold and is once again, healthy and strong.

And did I say active? Yes, quite active.

Yesterday when we got home from work, we found that Allie has picked up a new trick. When she drops something (toy on the floor, food from her hand onto the tray), she says “Uh-oh” (pronounced “ah-uh”). She doesn’t say it when she drops or throws something deliberately, only when it’s an oopsie. She probably picked that up from Jayne. It was cute, until I had visions of what she’d showcase as tricks picked up from daycare or preschool, when it’s not a highly religious Christian adult that she interacts with all day.

I didn’t do my noontime pumping today, the only pump session I’ve done for awhile. I knew it would be this week that I stopped pumping, but I didn’t know when; it all hinged on when Allie finishes the frozen stockpile at home. Today, she had only 4.5 ounces left in the freezer, which I’m sure she’s already had for her singular bottle feeding after her morning nap. We’d stopped giving her the bottle after her afternoon nap months ago and replaced that feeding with a snack. She doesn’t care; when we get her from her nap and finish changing her diaper, she rolls over, bounces up, and runs off. It’s not like she points to the La-Z-Boy recliner we nurse on and says “mum mum,” which she still does mornings upon waking up and nights at bedtime. So since she’s out of stored milk and my measly 2oz pump yields won’t be enough to fill her bottle for a normal feeding, she’s being simultaneously weaned off the bottle completely and I’m weaning myself off the pump completely to coordinate with her.

I’d looked forward to weaning off the pump for months, but now that it was down to the days this week, it was a little unsettling. Was it the right thing to do, since she’s sick and could use the antibodies? Is the timing okay? Should I replace the morning bottle with a snack as well, or would that be too much food? How will my body respond? Will I be uncomfortable all day? Am I gonna be fat now that I’m not expelling those extra few hundred calories in milk?

I comfort myself by thinking that Allie’s still nursing mornings and nights, so she’s still getting my antibodies, and plus, she’s getting over her cold anyhow. So I’m still burning 2/3 of the calories I had been, despite now losing my excuse to not exercise regularly at lunchtime. And given that I’ve only been able to eke out about 2, 2.5 ounces for a couple of weeks, my body is likely ready to be down to just the 2 nursings a day. Plus, it’ll make Mr. W happy to not be slave to my pumping schedule when we go out by ourselves. I’ve pumped now in the car multiple times, once while it was still driving; I’ve pumped in a clean bathroom stall of a car dealership while sitting on the floor (thankfully it was totally private and no one had been in the restroom that day and no one used it the entire time I was in there); pumped at my cousin’s house; in hotel rooms; parked outside supermarkets, restaurants and parks; my jury room; my jury room restroom; other people’s jury room restrooms; my judge’s chambers; a doctor’s spare exam room. It’s nice to not have to think about it or have to figure out a place to rinse all the pump parts ASAP afterwards for fear milk would dry up or decay in the inaccessible little ports and crevices.