cindy's world

When the stepkidlet returned after 9 weeks in Europe this summer, she was full of stories of cultural differences in child-rearing. Her relatives in Spain, according to her, don’t have any bedtime for their toddler, and allows the little girl to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning with the adults. The girl is hyper, fussy, and doesn’t nap well or at all. When mealtimes come, the girl is placed in her high chair, and then one adult immediately clasps the girl’s forehead and chin, forcing her mouth open, and the other adult shovels food in the girl’s mouth. The girl isn’t even given a chance to decide whether she will resist the food. It’s all force-fed immediately. This toddler is also fed soda in her bottle and eats junk food all the time. In telling us these Spanish habits she’s observed, the stepkidlet mentioned that Allie’s nanny Jayne had said that she doesn’t know how she would care for other babies if she decides to nanny professionally after Allie, because if the parents don’t have a healthy napping/eating/playing routine established for the kid, she isn’t sure she could handle it. Jayne calls Allie the exemplar baby, and considers herself spoiled by the regular, predictable breaks she gets when Allie takes her hour+ naps twice a day. (I’m pretty sure I’ve warned her that Allie will naturally drop the morning nap sometime in her first year.) The stepkidlet said thoughtfully that when she has kids of her own, she wants to raise them the way I’m raising Allie, which unfortunately means that her kids can’t be around her own mother, who raises children in the Spanish-culture way. I’d thought she was being facetious.

Today, the stepkidlet joined Mr. W, Allie, and me at the Lake. During Allie’s lunchtime there, the stepkidlet helped hold Allie and hand her the sippy cup while I fed a chicken and carrot puree, a purple yam puree, and red Bartlett pear puree for dessert. The stepkidlet was full of questions about the steps it took to make each vegetable item, and then she said she definitely wanted to follow my parenting style for her own future kids. I laughed and told her I’d be here, she doesn’t have to memorize everything now. She said again that she wants to learn this because she won’t be able to bring her kids around to her mom if she wants them to be raised healthily. We chatted about nutrition and early established healthy eating habits.

It didn’t hit me until earlier, while I was reading a parenting book about infant nutrition and having dinner on my own (Mr. W was playing Diablo III), that the stepkidlet paid me a HUGE compliment. They say that emulation is the sincerest form of flattery, but when that emulation is of one’s parenting style, I don’t think it gets bigger than that. Everything I put into raising Allie is the largest amount of effort I’d put into anything, with what feels like the most significant consequences. I’ve had many people roll their eyes at me and tell me I’m making things too hard on myself, I should stop breastfeeding and pumping and let her go on formula; I should make her adapt to my social routine and just let her crash in the car or in strollers for a few minutes here and there if she’s tired enough to do it; I should feed her commercial jarred babyfood to free up time for myself to do my own things. Yeah, a lot of what I’m doing is less than perfectly convenient, but I’ve known since pregnancy that if 100 hours of pain and effort yields even a smear of advantage in health, development, disease-prevention, etc. for Allie, those 100 hours are happily worthwhile spent for me, disproportionate to the advantage gained or not. I’ve had 35 years of doing whatever I wanted to pamper myself, I can give the next few to Allie to make sure she starts off on the right foot. I know this doesn’t guarantee that she won’t eat fast food here and there on her own, or loooove full-fat cupcakes, but I hope that she’ll also be healthy enough to eat fresh fruits and veggies and whole-grain superfoods and learn to surf with me from a young age. 🙂 And hike with her dad, and bike-ride with both her parents, without crying too much about the TV show she’s missing at home.

So yeah, when the stepkidlet observes my parenting, Allie’s behavior and habits, and observes the way other relatives raise their kids (her own mother included), and then on her own asks me to teach her what I’m doing so that she could pass that on to her own future kids, I think it’s worth a blog post. 😀

Stepkidlet: “I spy…an Allie Cat!”
Allie: “I wanna see an Allie Cat!”

I had a couple of drinks after what I described below. 🙂

It seems that whenever I see Edgar’s family members, I get a little evaluation of my current physique. There was his birthday, when his cousin made a couple of comments about how fat I wasn’t and how my engagement didn’t count. And then there was Ruby’s bridal shower last month, when Edgar’s mom went on and on about how I am so much smaller now than I used to be. So at their wedding, when I saw Edgar’s cousin (the same one) across the room and waved when we made eye contact, I’d predicted what happened next, despite the fact that we’re social network friends and she sees photos all the time of me online.

Her eyes opened wide in recognition and she opened her mouth in a shocked smile, then came over, her legs barely able to make the strides in the very, very short and very, very fitted, very low-cut white dress she wore. (I had learned since our last meeting that she had some help with the physical enhancements, and I suppose if you paid good money for it, you should show it off.) “Cindy! Oh, my God! You’re so skinny! How’d you get so skinny? I mean, compared to how you were BEFORE. What’s your secret? What have you been doing?”
I chuckled politely, then said, “I haven’t really been doing anything, just breastfeeding and taking care of Allie.”
“Really? Just breastfeeding and baby duty, huh?” She looked at me skeptically, like I was sitting on a Fountain of Trimness and won’t share the treasure map. She complimented Allie, then the conversation ended shortly thereafter with her saying, “Well, you look great! Compared to before,” as she gave my forearm a squeeze and returned to her date.

Eddie’s wife Michelle, whom I’ve known and been good friends with for the past 4 years, who was also at this wedding, and also knows of the prior 2 incidents referred to above, said to me after the cousin left, “Dude. How big WERE you?!” HAHAHAHA!! But in truth, there hasn’t been much of a change in the past years. I think the peak of my obesity, as I refer to it, was a mere 20 lbs or so more than I weigh now, and that was in 2000 or so, when I started running and GAINED weight despite the 3 miles every other day because my crappy-ass physician at the time told me to increase the mileage, frequency, and drop my daily caloric intake from 1000 to 800 calories a day. Talk about hitting starvation mode as my body flew into fat conservation and retention and turned off the metabolism. But Edgar’s family makes it sound like I used to need an assistant to pull up on my fat rolls so that another assistant could sponge wash between the folds as I laid in a collapsed oversized bed demanding Twinkies and gravy fries, pale from not being able to leave the room to go into sunlight as the doorways weren’t wide enough for me to exit the room I’d eaten my way into.

Guess what! The stepdaughter is going to be on internet radio TONIGHT! Well, not her live, but one of her songs. This stepkidlet had a barrage of songwriting when she taught herself guitar at age 17-18 and all her teenage emotions poured out and took beautiful form in her music. Now, however, she has pretty much stopped creating music, and now just sings with her church(es). I really wanted to commemorate her creativity of a few years ago, and asked Garrett and Rebecca if they would air one of her songs on their radio show. I sent them “Ready to Fly,” one of the stepkidlet’s rare happy songs (she WAS a teenager when she was songwriting, after all — you should see my overdramatic teenage poetry; you’d be shocked I didn’t kill myself already).

Listen live if you can! 7:30p-8:30p Pacific Time, and the show is on every weekday. Here is the link to listen:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/garrettmillerradio

If you aren’t able to get to it tonight, Garrett and Rebecca archives all their shows for podcasts, and I’ll post the specific link when I get it afterwards. YAY!!

(For a original song performance video and photos of the stepkidlet at her 2009 city pageant, in which she took Best Talent, Miss Congeniality AND First Runner Up, click here.)

*** UPDATE AT 8:35P ***
That was great! The broadcast just finished. I didn’t know this, but the host Garrett had some trouble uploading the song to prep for the show because it wasn’t in an MP3 format. So he asked the stepdaughter to call in, and she was embarrassed to do it, but she was a great sport and called in. Also, I got my techie hubby to convert the .wma song to .mp3 and emailed that immediately, so Garrett and Rebecca were able to play the song as well as talk to Ana. Here is the link to the archived show…you can listen immediately!
http://tobtr.com/s/3703401
The radio online chat room (simultaneously running during the show) was abuzz during the song. People loved her, and loved the song! Yay! (BTW, I had let Garrett know that the stepdaughter and her boyfriend were both here, and when Garrett first mentioned the boyfriend’s name live on-air, I turned and watched the boyfriend’s eyes go wide, like he’d seen a ghost. It was so funny, I emailed Garrett and told him the reaction. Of course after that, Garrett made sure to keep re-mentioning the boyfriend’s name. HAHA!)

One feature of working full time away from a quickly-developing baby is that we don’t always know when she’s on to the “next” stage of something. Like how one day, we had to bottlefeed her at home in our care (normally I nurse every meal when I’m not at work) and Mr. W realizes that Allie was holding her bottle on her own. Apparently this was nothing new to Jayne, but because Jayne’s with Allie daily for more hours than we are, she isn’t always aware that something that isn’t new to her is new to us.

Last week, we discovered that Allie is able to feed herself and this weekend, suddenly she’s able to use the sippy cup. The feeding herself came with a little practice. First, she was quickly putting little specks of random stuff she finds on the floor or furniture into her mouth before an adult could stop her. (Lint, mostly, sometimes scraps of paper or napkin she’d torn, and we’re usually able to stop her or at least catch her early enough to snap, “No!” and make her freeze.) Then, Mr. W tried feeding her some organic baby puffs. She would open her mouth and take it, and he’d hand it to her and she’d finger it, unsure of whether we’d actually allow her to put something into her mouth for once. When we guided her hand toward her mouth, she’d hesitantly look at us in confusion, then open her mouth just a tiny bit, and do a dainty test bite with her front teeth. Now she knows anything we put in front of her while she’s still in her high chair after a meal, shelled peas or puffs, are fair game. She feeds herself these fingerfoods with confidence.
The sippy cup was a little bit of a revelation. In our initial introduction of the sippy cup, Allie would bite at the extended mouthpiece, unsure of what to do with it. If you’d tried to describe the instruction for “suck” to an infant, you’ll know it’s pretty much a lost cause, so we’d put the sippy cup lid away, but did feed her water with the cup portion of the sippy cup with her solid meals so she’d be familiar with the cup and the water. When we were at a restaurant feeding her her purees, we’d do the same with a glass of water. We started with a straw, plugging up the top with our thumbs and bringing the bottom of the straw to her mouth, feeding her like a little birdie. She soon learned to suck the water out the bottom of the straw and not just leave it to gravity. Then, last week, we tried leaving the straw in the cup and letting her sip from the top. That didn’t work before, but after being “trained” to suck the straw from the bottom for a few weeks, the top was a small change and she did it. We thought, “This is great! Now we can skip the sippy cup altogether.” Then my cousin Jennifer told us that her daycare won’t let her 11-month-old graduate to the next class unless her kid could use a sippy cup. Darn it, back to the drawing board. So yesterday, we tried the sippy cup with the suction lid again. Allie suddenly took to it with no problem. I guess the trick was converting her from the top of the straw to the top of the sippy cup lid, because that’s a gradual change from what she already knows to do. So today, when my parents came to visit, they got to enjoy Allie’s new skills and they took this little 42-second video (among 23 other videos):

BTW, while I was downloading the video from my mom’s camera into our PC, I found this never-before-seen photo.

WHAT the…?! I’ve never seen my little baby look like that!
Allie: “Whatever doesn’t kill me…had BETTER START RUNNING!!”

I’m behind, so this is gonna be mostly pix, with just a few of my usual lengthy descriptive paragraphs.

Last Friday, I did my very first outing alone after Allie went to bed (despite the fact that I’m still doing 4:30a wake-ups daily without fail to pump). Rebecca was in town, doing her daily radio show with her co-host Garrett broadcasting from a local-ish Laguna Beach restaurant called The Cottage as a special event, so I drove out to see her and to meet Garrett for the first time. Here they are at The Cottage office during their live broadcast.

Yes, that is THE Rebecca, our favorite clairvoyant! If you’re interested in giving her internet radio show a listen, or feel like calling in for a free mini-reading, she’ll answer questions live on the air! The Garrett & Rebecca Show is on 7:30p-8:30p Pacific time Mondays through Fridays, and you can listen to their podcasts RIGHT NOW for any of their past shows:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/garrettmillerradio
Now you can see what I was talking about on here about Rebecca. 🙂

So ANYWAY, Rebecca and I basically just hung out and caught up over chocolate mousse cake dessert at the restaurant after their broadcast, and Garrett joined us briefly before skidaddling off to his busy life by the beach. The Cottage Restaurant is awesome, BTW. I’ve seen it driving by but never went in. It used to be an old house, and now serves amazing breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Rebecca and I stayed until after closing and they were so nice about it, still coming by to offer us refreshments and service.

Last Saturday, Edgar & Ruby got married! We had to miss the ceremony because it was far away at 5pm, and no way we could be there and get Allie back in time for bed by 6pm, so we skipped the ceremony, put Allie down like normal, then Jayne came over and they babysat (not much to do but be here and get her out of the house in case of flood or fire) while Mr. W and I went to the reception. They had two photobooths with tons of props, and we had fun with THAT. After all, it was the first time we’d gone out together after Allie’s gone to bed. He’d been out with his friends here and there before, but I hadn’t been out past 6:30p since…Allie’s birth.
Here’s Eddie, Michelle, and us not quite knowing what to do with the props — our ourselves — on our first photobooth session.

Mr. W and I celebrated in style, as you can see.

We soon found that the problem with photobooths at weddings is that people can just come in and crash your photoshoot session. And then the camera bears witness to all the fighting that ensues.

I’m just kidding; Eddie’s always welcome where we are. Wait, that’s too blanket of a statement…
We did attempt to get some normal shots in…but the camera was messed up at the time because someone had turned off the light in the booth (as was explained to us later by the boothmaker, Edgar’s younger brother) so the camera went on totally slow shutter speed, causing the blurring. Oh, well.

The day after that, which was last Sunday, my Canadian cousin Mark being in town for the first time in 16 years (by his calculation, but I thought it was longer) gave cause for a family reunion of the relatives on my dad’s side. This is all us cousins with our kids (those of us who made it to the reunion):

Doesn’t my cousin Diana’s little todder Elle on the top make you want to giggle, or at least wave back? That’s what happens when you tell a little kid, “Elle, look here at the camera! Hi! Elle!” She says “hi” back.
My cousin Jennifer with Allie:

Allie never looks so hairless as when she’s with babies close in age (Jennifer’s daughter Alexandra is 2 months older), and the lack of dark hair makes her look whiter than she looks when she’s alone.

Don’t the 2 grandmas look so happy to be holding their respective granddaughters? Aww.

Last Thursday, the cousins had agreed and planned months in advance to all take the day off, leave our respective tots with their regular daycare situations, and have a child-free day to spend showing cousin Mark around. Mark drove out from Diamond Bar where he had spent the week at my parents’ house and spent Wednesday night at cousin Jennifer’s in Irvine so that we had all day in Orange County. Cousin Diana ended up with a work emergency so she spent the day (that she did have off) putting out fires at work (figuratively); cousin Olivia decided she didn’t want to be in Orange County where we’d made a day packed with plans, so after her attempts to snag Mark away back to Diamond Bar for lunch had been met with avid refusals (my refusal caused me to drop the f-bomb in front of 3-year-old Elle…oops), she settled for after-dinner dessert plans with Mark after he returned to Diamond Bar Thursday night. So it was just Mark, Jennifer, and myself for Cousin Day Thursday and it was A BLAST.
We started in Downtown Disney…

…went to Slater’s 50/50 for lunch so that Mark could do some more of his burger reviews…

(we ordered and split the Slater’s 50/50 burger which has a patty made from half beef, half BACON; the vegetarian burger; and the “peanut butter and jellousy” burger which has for its condiments PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY…blech)
…intended to hit up our lake for kayaking but ran out of time so we just went straight to Yama Sushi on the lake for omakase, and enjoyed the view of the lake from their patio before sitting down at the sushi bar.

Mark claimed that we were “sizing up” the sailboat on the lake here.

The omakase was amazing and Jen missed half of it cuz she had to run out mid-dinner when she realized she’d missed 15 calls from her husband, who was stuck in traffic on his way to pick up their daughter from daycare and couldn’t get there in time. Life sure has changed. She and I made tentative plans to have her return for sushi and lake activities in the near future with her husband and baby, and Mark vowed to not wait another 16 years before visiting again.

It was sure nice having a social life again, even if for a few days and in bits and pieces. For future reference, I was able to do a full day because I left after nursing Allie as usual in the morning after she woke up, handing her off to Jayne shortly before her nap, then I drove to Jennifer’s, pumped there, then did Downtown Disney and Slater’s, then we went back to Jennifer’s, I pumped again, and we got into our respective cars and drove to the lake, then we all split up from there and I went immediately home to catch Allie right before bedtime and nursed her to bed like normal. Oh yeah — after that post about a month ago when I said she’d stopped falling asleep after a nursing, that only lasted 2 nights and she’s now back to nursing to sleep, which makes life easier on me.

Allie her had 9-month doctor visit yesterday. The nurse said she dropped in height percentile! She is no longer taller than 99% of girls her age; she’s taller than about 90%. Here are her stats:
* Height: 28.75 inches (that’s 2 feet and almost 5 inches! she’s almost HALF my height!), 88th percentile
* Weight: 18 lbs 4.2 oz, 41st percentile
* Head size: 44 cm (about 17 1/3 inches), 51st percentile
The nurse said that because Allie’s head did not shrink, the head size measurement at her last checkup at 6 months must’ve been wrong. “They probably just measured it too loosely,” she speculated.
No shots this time, yay! The only “medication” was brushing her 5 little teeth with fluoride. The fluoride was a thick brown fluid that was applied with something resembling a nail polish brush. It was bubble gum flavored, and Allie kept licking her sticky lips afterwards. The doctor warned me that at the 1-year appointment, there will be A LOT of shots. 🙁 Then after that, no shots until 18 months.

Allie was super-cooperative and handled the 45-minute waiting room wait, and subsequent exam room wait, like a good-natured pro. Other adults kept smiling at her and pointing her out. One grandpa, there with his 1st-grader granddaughter, paid a lot of attention to Allie and said things to his granddaughter like, “Look at the baby! Wanna go say hi to the baby? Hey, buddy! Hi! Look, he’s smiling! He’s got teeth!” Allie, BTW, was wearing a shirt with large pink, yellow and orange flowers and orange cuffed capris with a decal of a smiling GIRL monkey (cuz it had a matching orange flower behind its ear) on her butt.

The doctor was pretty impressed with her. He said she was healthy, at a great height and weight, and quite a bit ahead on motor development and cognitive skills. He said the minimum they’re looking for at 9 months is a baby who sits up well by him/herself, and maybe showing interest in starting to crawl. Allie had pulled herself up in the exam room and was cruising around the perimeter of the room from chair to chair. The doctor was happy that she was even responding to simple commands, such as “no” (the other day, she held onto a rock for 15 minutes that we wouldn’t let her eat, and she remembered not to put it in her mouth again), “give that to mommy,” “say aaah,” “wave bye-bye,” “shake shake shake!” (for toys that make sound when shaken), “clap clap clap!” and “dance dance dance!” She’ll also respond to simple questions by pointing or looking around or using some other body language, such as “Where’s daddy?,” “Where are your balloons?,” “Wanna eat? Wanna nom nom nom?,” “Wanna come out?,” “Where’s Dodo?” She’ll also control our attention by pointing at something she wants us to see and give her a word for, such as birds, dog, hammock, fan, light. Allie still loves the mimicking game, and it no longer matters who mimics whom, it all makes her laugh. And of course, the usual singing, peek-a-boo from around the corner or behind furniture, “Where’s Allie/mommy/daddy” from behind a cloth. She seems to love music and will stop whatever she’s doing, pull herself up, and bop up and down and sing along, wiggling her hips back and forth. The other day she was tired of the piano keyboard and was trying to climb up onto the piano. I put my arms around her and played “Mary Had a Little Lamb” (which her daddy sings to her changing the words to “Allie had a little lamb”) with a boogie beat and she instantly stopped climbing and started dancing. It’s a really fun age.

Oh, she just started eating baby puffs altho she spends more time turning them over and examining them than actually eating them, and she also just learned to sip through a straw. We’d always fed her water at restaurants by plugging up the top end of the straw and letting her suck out the bottom end, but now she can do it herself from the top of the straw. The first few days of her trying this, she’d choke and cough from the water going back too far, but now she knows to stop it with her tongue.

“Scuse me, nurse…I believe I was next. Long wait, you say?”

“That’s cool, I’ll just sit here and do my calisthenics.”

“Gotta make sure we limber up for the can-can!”

“I’m gonna qualify for the baby olympics next year.”

Don’t let these photos fool you…after this she wandered all over the waiting room cruising with a hand on the chairs, banging on the tables while watching people, asking to be brought over to the plants so she could touch the leaves.

Because this is the age of technology, instead of telling you some of the things Allie is doing, I can now show them to you. That is, I can show them to you if you aren’t using an Apple iPad or iPhone or iTouch that won’t let you view flash. =P

The first video (4 mins) was taken this past Saturday. I was in the now-fenced off playing area with Allie, when I discovered that for whatever reason at the moment, saying “voo voo” to Allie cracked her up. So I grabbed my phone to document it. Cuz it’s cute. I also happened to capture her playing, cruising, making faces, razzing (with a mouthful of teething ring), on top of the giggling. It’s too bad I didn’t get her dancing. When music comes on, she often stops what she’s doing, pulls herself up to standing position and wiggles her butt, hips, and “jumps” up and down (by bending and straightening her knees) while nodding her head to the rhythm.

This second 3-minute video depicts her playing with her daddy yesterday, being chased into her room shortly before her bath. It’s The Great Pre-Bath Allie Chase! Bonus footage: Allie playing with water at the edge of the tub. And me in the mirror (accidental footage).

Allie is now our little mimic. If someone coughs, she’ll do a fake cough. If someone makes a face at her, she smiles big and then does the face back. Smack your lips at her and make bubble-popping sounds with lips like a fish and she’ll do it, too. Sometimes she so likes a particular face or sound that she’ll practice it on her own, such as the pop-pop-pop bubble-lips sound or the “ptthhhh” with the tongue, spittle flying everywhere. It sure beats the phase in which I had to make sure my pathways had wide berth whenever I was holding Allie, as I had somehow given birth to a baby who is half-human and half-velcro. (That comes in handy when I need something picked up from the ground, however. I just dangle Allie over the object for a couple of seconds and then bring her back up. She’ll reappear with the dropped object in her hand. I don’t even need to bend over.) The imitations are much cuter and always good for a laugh.
I took advantage of the mimicking the other day. Mr. W has tried to show her the piano but she’s always been more interested in touching the shiny silver knob on the controls. This time, Mr. W told her to watch me play piano. I hadn’t played since before she was born, but Allie watched my hands intently. Then she reached out toward the keyboard, so Mr. W sat her next to me. She watched me, watched my hands, and then imitated the open-close and the finger-wagging on the keyboard. Her hand motions started out more like she was scratching than pressing individual keys, but she got the hang of it and we managed to play a duet. 🙂

I posted this pic on the social network and my mom’s comment was that I should’ve placed a mirror in front of Allie so that we can see her face. I bit back the sarcastic responses I’d wanted to make. It’s not a posed shot! I’m not in a studio! AND I obviously didn’t take the picture! I’m surprised she didn’t tell me I should’ve put on a flattering dress and some makeup first. =P

My mom redeemed herself by emailing me this photo of her, tho. My parents are with friends on a trip to Yellowstone National Park right now, making some stops along the way at Mr. Rushmore and such.

Notice the death-grip she has on her iPad3. Now that’s a Mother’s Day present well-gifted. She looks like Mr. W with that thing permanently adhered to her hand. I guess Allie’s not the only mimic around.

It seems to me kind of a waste that I’ve invested all this time learning all these baby things, and I’m really enjoying making healthy baby food which Allie seems to enjoy (new today: organic baby kale + organic carrot puree, and will do a steamed pear + organic cherry puree for dessert), and these skills are going to be good for, oh, a few months. I feel like I need to find out who else is having a baby and offer to make food for their kid with a grocery expense account or something. Hey, the neighbor across the street just gave birth. Paisley Rose is the baby’s name. Maybe I’ll make the offer. I’ll first intimidate her with information about not using steaming liquid for some things that are high nitrate veggies, like kale and carrot, but to use the steaming liquid on other things that are safe like pear in order to add the nutrients back in, and give her info on what foods constipate and which ones are laxative and which ones are to be introduced later (like eggplant) and which ones to feed together to maximize nutrient absorption (like high-iron spinach with high-vitamin C carrot to help the body absorb the iron), and when her head’s swimming, I’ll offer to take all the guesswork out and prep it for her for $15/week. Then I’ll get to keep using my Baby Chef baby food maker, which I love.

Speaking of eating baby food…we finally got Allie her own baby toothbrush. The doctor’s recommendation all along was a wet washcloth to wipe down her mouth, tongue and gums twice a day, but it’s really hard to get a terry washcloth into her mouth without her sucking all the tap water out, plus it’s too hard to get it — along with my finger — far enough in her little mouth to access her gums. So we went on a walk last week to the store across the street…

and brushing immediately became my favorite part of the morning and bedtime routines. Here’s why:


She was a little distracted by the cameraphone in her face, but normally she says “Ahh!” when we say “Ahh.” She sees the toothbrush coming and smiles and opens her mouth. How cute is that?!

It’s amazing, the changes and overnight growth in our baby girl. Three nights out of the past five, she wasn’t nursed to sleep and then transferred, sleeping, into her crib. Instead, she suddenly became wide awake and squirmed and cooed, so I had to place her in her crib awake and undrowsy. It was freaky, albeit ultimately pretty uneventful. She’d give a couple of wails when she saw I was leaving after putting her in the crib, but by the time I got downstairs, she’d already be playing in her crib on her own, pulling herself up, rolling around, bear-wrestling, pulling on her crib bumpers, etc. She was usually asleep within half an hour or so, altho it’s a nervous half-hour for me watching her on the babycam. I take it as a sign of growth. She was MUCH more sleepy nursing as a young baby, and less and less so now. I guess she can’t nurse to sleep forever. The good thing is that she can now eventually go to sleep on her own in her crib without parental intervention (as opposed to just going BACK to sleep on her own, which she’d been doing since 6 weeks). She also doesn’t fuss while she’s working on it, so that’s pretty great. I looked up when the last time was that she had a middle-of-the-night awakening/nursing. It was in early April.

She’s also understanding words. I noticed in the past week or two that if I were to say “clap,” she’d clap. Sometimes I’d be talking to Jayne or Mr. W and simply use “clap” in a sentence, and suddenly she’d start clapping. This is also the case with “bye.” When we leave in the mornings and when we show anyone out, we say “Bye-bye!” and open and close our hands in a wave, trying to get Allie to do the same. She usually does by following our example, but now she will open-close in a wave when she hears the word “bye.” Once, she was playing in her newly-fenced off carpeted play area, and the talking toy she was no longer interested in timed out and said, “Bye-bye!” Allie stopped what she was doing, stuck out a hand, and open-closed it a few times in a wave. Then she went back to playing.

Today, Jayne reported that she was going over colors with Allie, pointing out “red,” “yellow” and “blue.” Jayne said that each time she said “blue,” Allie would turn and point up. Finally, walking into the living room and looking up, Jayne realized what Allie had been pointing at: four mylar balloons floating against the ceiling, gifts from Muoi and Bob last weekend. For the past few days, Mr. W had been allowing Allie to bat the balloons around as I said over and over, “Balloons! Balloons!” Apparently, she’d been listening.

She’s still good at respecting “No.” She’ll stop what she’s doing if we say “no” firmly. Once Mr. W said it TOO firmly and loudly when she was struggling and fighting a diaper change, and scared Allie. Instantly she froze, a look of agony on her face. My poor baby.

Oh, we’ve also started brushing her five teeth with a baby toothbrush and water as a part of her morning and bedtime routines. She’s very cooperative. She sees the toothbrush coming and opens her mouth in a big smile. I brush her front teeth, her lower gums, her upper gums. She seems to enjoy it with her mouth open, the toothbrush squeaking against the bare gums. Then I brush her tongue, and she smiles at that, too, as if it’s tickling her. She probably won’t be that cooperative for long since this is still a novelty, but we’ll take it while we can.

(If you wanna see short video clips of her waving and clapping, see this post.)