cindy's world

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve wondered for a long time now whether the sausage pizza and breadsticks served at children’s mecca restaurant Chuck E. Cheese’s is really as good as I remembered from childhood, or whether the food was just delicious relative to my immature taste buds and enjoyment of myself in a play environment. For years, I’d been wanting to go back to check. I suspected that my adult tastebuds, more attuned to quality, natural foods and freshness rather than processed foods, would revolt. I was excited to finally put Chuck E. Cheese’s to the test on Sunday for lunch with Mr. W and Allie when Mr. W spontaneously offered to go there for lunch. Turns out, I would never find out.

The children’s restaurant chain has completely evolved. The menu has a variety of gourmet sandwiches on ciabatta bread, vegetable platters, buffalo wings, an all-you-can-eat salad bar, and was advertising a “new” quality pizza with lots of deluxe ingredients as opposed to the cheese, pepperoni and sausage options in the days of my childhood. Gone was the giant vat of colorful balls that kids used to leap into despite rumors we all heard of hidden rats, vomit, and syringes in its depths. So much for nostalgia. This Chuck E. Cheese’s was clean, advanced, had carousels and arcade machines, even a toddler section fenced off from the regular kids section. Upon entry, Allie was stamped with an invisible-to-the-naked-eye number and Mr. W and I were stamped with the same hidden number so personnel can be sure we leave with the same child we brought in. The prizes that can be redeemed for game tickets, however, were as cheesy and cheap as ever. We ordered a deluxe combination pizza with a salad bar and I can tell you, everything was delicious to my more sophisticated tastes. =P

Even though Allie is on solids, she was denied the pizza she kept trying to grab. She wasn’t happy about that.

Allie: “I don’t accept your explanation of why I can’t eat the food at a place that’s designed more for me than for you.”
Don’t feel too bad for her; she got a yummy zucchini and rice puree when we got home. She enjoyed THAT. Plus, she got to make new friends with giant painted rodents and drive and ride new things, like horses.
“Hey Chuck, maybe you should drive. I can’t seem to reach the steering wheel with my feet, even.”

“This pony is kinda small, even for me, daddy. I feel silly.”

“Okay, now THIS pony is too big! I’m not sure I like this.”

“I’ll drive you to school, daddy.”

“All abooooooard!”

“So this is a schoolhouse? Nooooo! Let me out of here!”

Breaking out of the school.

“Don’t worry, mouse, I’ll break us out of this joint. Just sit back, relax, and leave it to me.”

“I’ll just start the ignition…”

“…check the mirrors and look over my shoulder as I back out…”

“…and we are on our way!”

“Awwww, pulled over by Daddy! What are the chances?!”

Back to school. Hard labor in the schoolyard.

What does the “E” stand for in “Chuck E. Cheese,” anyway? What’s this rat’s full name, Charles Edward Cheese?

On Saturday, we were running low on our supply of baby wipes (not that we need a lot anymore cuz she’s been pooping clay-like balls since she’s been on peas that we can just pick up in one neat non-stick wad) so we took Allie on a Costco run. Mr. W is impulsive of a shopper, but now he’s impulsive for bigger-ticket-items for his baby girl. I couldn’t talk him out of buying her a 3-stage tricycle or a jogger stroller that converts to a bicycle trailer. So Allie got some cool new rides.

The tricycle by Little Tikes, I had to admit reluctantly, is fun and functional. There’s a flexible sun-shade that can be moved to block sunlight from any angle. The detachable steering wheel panel has buttons and signals with sound effects and lights. Each time Allie turns the wheel, the turn signal clicks and blinks just like in a car. She’s a little young for even the first stage (no pedaling required, there are stationary foot rests for her to rest her little feet on), as she can’t even reach the foot rests. The trike at this stage is controlled by a parent pushing/turning a steering stick behind the trike, and the steering is surprisingly easy and responsive from that apparatus.

There’s even a zippered storage pouch and a cupholder on the parent-control stick for the parents, plus ample storage for toys, etc. on a little bin attached to the back of the trike. I’m not sure the differences between stages 2 and 3, but I suppose at some point the parent-steering is removed and the kid can pedal him/herself around. Maybe the interactive effect with steering wheel comes off so only the handlebars are on the front. Here’s a video demo of our little walk.

Here’s the conversion jogger/bike trailer. It’s big enough and has the seatbelt arrangements for two kids, which for a 6-month-old like Allie means we’ve gotta find something to stuff in there on her left and right so she doesn’t fall over on her side during a bump. She’s young for this thing, too; Mr. W did a turnaround run at our cul de sac and when I saw Allie coming back up the driveway, her eyes were wide, she had her arms outstretched with hands facing behind her like she was trying to hang into something (but there’s nothing to hold onto) at the back for support, and she had slid down and was slumping in her seat. This isn’t going to work, there’s just too much room and too little support in there. But the unit is cool; the back wheels are removeable and click on easily, and once off, the entire thing collapses pretty flat for storage. A big window/entrance in the front has a zippered screen to block flying rocks, perhaps, and a transparent vinyl window can be rolled down and zippered over the screen to waterproof the cabin when necessary. The front wheel and axle can removed and an included metal arm attachment popped on to attach the unit to the back of an adult bicycle. We didn’t try this part, yet, and I didn’t try the stroller myself, so I don’t have much feedback on that.

I tried to get Mr. W to save some money by not getting these things, yet, but he said that Costco’s inventory is sporadic so if we don’t get these now, they may not be available once Allie is big enough for them. She can just grow into them. Allie’s gonna be one spoiled girl when she gets her first car at age 13. Every kid should be so lucky as to have an impulse shopper for a loving daddy.

Allie had fun at her appointment for the vaccinations. Until the vaccinations came, that is. Mr. W and I took our afternoons off and had a late lunch at Catal at Downtown Disney on our way home, then got home early enough so that I could nurse Allie and then we were off to the appointment. There was little wait, as we only had to see the pediatric nurse and not wait for the doctor to be done with patients. In the room, Allie got to play with the disposable paper lining of the patient bed to her little heart’s content.

Okay, she did more than play. She demolished.

Nothing like action shots of Godzilla at work on Tokyo.

I guess if the lining weren’t meant to be demolished, it wouldn’t be made of crinkly paper in a pediatric room.

This is Allie’s third set of vaccinations. Her first set when she was 2 months, she chugged the sweet oral vaccination for rotovirus (or something like that), then cried a little when she got her 3 needles jabbed into the front of her upper thighs for the intramuscular vaccination cocktails. She was fine soon after, and that was the end of that. Her second set of vaccinations at 4 months, she seemed a little confused at the oral vaccine and some of it was spit out, but she took enough that the nurse wasn’t concerned. I played with her while the nurse administered the shots, and Allie went from smiling at me to a wide-eyed disbelief, then a betrayed wail as the shots kept coming. It was heart-breaking. She was fine by the time she left the room, fine for the subsequent nap, but the nap after that ended with an inconsolable pained wail that lasted over an hour. I could only figure that she was having a reaction to the vaccines and hoped that it wouldn’t happen again at her 6-month vaccinations.
This time, Allie cried the moment she tasted the oral vaccine. I didn’t know whether she was scared, or whether she knew, “Uh-oh, after this, the pain starts in my thighs!” I held her and tried to comfort her, and she didn’t want to swallow the vaccine. A lot of it was spit out and she coughed and choked on it while she wailed. The nurse said she got enough of it in her system, the spit-out amount wouldn’t be a problem. Then I had to put her back on the table as she got her 3 jabs. More wailing in between a high-pitched scream each time she was jabbed. Minutes later, she was fine, and we took her to the market to buy organic frozen peas for her next food experiment, and she sat in her new shopping car seat cover, looked around curiously, was fine. At nighttime, she nursed to sleep and stayed asleep just fine. I was very relieved.

Feeding solids is going well. She slurped up rice cereal mixed with breast milk with an immediate enthusiasm, no tongue-thrust reflex. This lasted 4 days, and we increased the frequency to twice a day as she was taking it so well.
After that series, I steamed some organic zucchini and pureed it (skin-on for fiber). As this is watery, I didn’t add breast milk. Allie got her first taste of a food that had zero familiarity. She made a face at the first spoonful, second spoonful, she still opened her mouth eagerly, but cringed at the flavor, and her mouth turned downward as she looked confused. Third spoon, she wasn’t as eager to open up. It took a little coaxing, and she accepted it, but then drew back and cringed, having a hard time closing her mouth over the food. She didn’t finish the ounce or so, so I ate the rest. It tasted very green. Not yummy, unless you were an insect or worm that ate chlorophyll. Day 2, she cringed and looked very sad again at the first few spoonfuls, but then ate it up well, even doing the “Mmm! MMM!” demand in between mouthfuls trying to get you to feed her faster. Days 3 and 4 went very well.
Steamed pureed organic peas yesterday went better than zucchini on introduction. It was significantly thicker and Mr. W vetoed thinning it down by breastmilk because he’s eager for Allie to get on a real-food track. Allie seemed initially confused trying to swallow something that dense, but got right down to business and eagerly opened her mouth like a little bird for each spoonful after. Today would be day 2 of peas, and Jayne is handling its late morning feeding. I may decide to thin down her peas for her evening feeding with breast milk, depending how peas thaw (I puree and then freeze in ice cube trays). Zucchini thawed to become very watery. I’d added rice cereal to some thawed zucchini feedings to thicken the consistency.
So far, it’s been fun, quick and easy. The plan is to do all “safe” veggies first, trying to remember rules like not pouring steaming liquid from nitrate veggies like carrots back into the food to process, and then fruits later so that she won’t refuse veggies in favor of sweet stuff, and trying to remember fruit rules like no acidic citrus until at least a year.
Allie’s been a pooping machine the last few days, which is unusual for her, but the solid food has made her poopies less viscous. It does smell different, it’s darker in color, and has the consistency of peanut butter. She bled a little the other day after her 3rd poopie in 2 hours, so we’ve been using Desitin. The nurse said to dilute prune or pear juice with equal part water and bottle-feed it to her for constipation. Prune juice did not go well; she made a big face after tasting it and refused to suck it up any more. Her butt’s looking better, so I’m hoping that the laxative properties of breastmilk and the fiber in pea skin will help.
Another thing we asked the nurse about is Allie’s shivering. She’s taken to a shuddering or a shivering of her head and shoulders a few times a day with no apparent cause; there was no temperature change. Internet searches have said that unless the baby’s eyes roll to the back of the head or the shuddering lasts for more than a few seconds (indicating possible seizure or neurological issues), that it’s nothing to worry about. Some babies shudder when they’re excited about something they want, or when they pee. The nurse said the same thing; that it’s likely, based on how healthy Allie appears, that she’s just at an age when she’s aware of the sensation of urinating and is responding to that. Interesting.

This is how Allie looked in the babycam after she’d been down a couple of hours last night, and this is what freaks Mr. W out:

“She’s got her face pinned in by the bear’s head!” Actually, no she doesn’t, because here’s how she looks from the other angle of the bed, photo taken at the same time:

I’d tried to explain this to Mr. W before, but because the bear used to be situated higher on the bed so that she wouldn’t end up past it on the other side against the bumper (Mr. W’s idea) when she moves in her sleep, her head would be hidden by the railing and be invisible from the other camera. So the only view Mr. W would get was the first one. Now he’s decided the bear should be moved back down again because then at least her head is farther from the bumper when she moves off the bear.
But she ends up moving up and over the bear anyway throughout the night. See the following sequence, and how we found her this morning, sound asleep.

Goes to show, when the baby learns some mobility, she’s gonna sleep where she wants. It’s fine.

Yesterday, Allie belly-scooted halfway around the perimeter of the living room rug playing with blocks and such. She also pulled herself onto her knees from a sitting position by clutching at Mr. W’s belt and shirt (he was laying on his side in front of her). At this rate she’ll probably be crawling by next week.

My little baby-boo (or “little nugget,” as her older sister calls her) turned 6 months old yesterday!

She had her 3rd day of rice cereal when we got home from work yesterday. She eats off the spoon like a champ, as if she’d been doing it all her life. We doubled the portion yesterday (2 teaspoons of rice cereal mixed into 4 teaspoons of breast milk) and she seemed to want more after we were done. You know how they say time flies with babies? The reason is that, turns out, the mommy-amnesia thing is TRUE. I would say I have a better memory than almost everyone I know, and I even have a hard time remembering how we spent our days when I was on maternity leave. What was I doing during her awake segments? What about back in the days when the waking times were arbitrary? I recently looked through photos of Allie as a newborn and two-month-old, and the baby depicted doesn’t even look familiar to me. Who is that Asian-looking infant? (I’m losing genetic input now as she looks more and more white.) Although I have little independent recollection of the trauma of the early days, I do remember impressions, like that I felt overwhelmed and scared and insecure a lot because I didn’t know what was coming, what it all meant, and I struggled a lot to learn about infants as fast as I could (which opened me up to more paranoia and confusion). These days are now much, much easier.
Allie now rarely cries, but laughs and smiles easily. It’s clear what she enjoys, such as rolling over. She rolls in both directions, sometimes consecutively as a mode of transportation for her. This is how she ended up here for this photo:

I had her all set up nicely on her tummy on her blanket, and when I got up to go in front of her for the photo, she’d rolled away. So I had to sit with her for a few photos and have Mr. W take the shots.

A cameraphone isn’t ideal for taking baby photos, because it doesn’t have the shutter speed to deal with quick baby motions. We got a lot of unusable blurry photos, like these:

Me: Look, Allie, a disappearing hand! Neat trick, huh?
Allie: I can do it, too, mommy!

Allie has slept on her fuzzy bear, a gift from the sheriff’s department, in her crib for as long as she’d been sleeping in her crib. The bear’s gone during her naps because she naps on her tummy, but each night, after she nursed herself to sleep, I place her gently onto her bear in her crib on her back. She’s startled awake by the movement, flings her arms out, and the moment she feels the bear, her eyes start closing and she gets cozy with her left thumb in her mouth and her right hand grasping the bear’s head. When she wakes in the middle of the night, she “bear wrestles” and tugs on the bear’s arms, face, or foot, curls up with a bear arm, and falls asleep again.

I know the bear brings her a lot of comfort and security during her night sleep, but Mr. W has been freaking out that Allie is so capable of movement now that she may place herself in a position where she will suffocate herself with the bear over her face. I tend to feel the opposite. Seeing how mobile she is makes me feel that she is so strong that she won’t get trapped by the bear and suffocate. Due to how strongly Mr. W felt (he uses words like she WILL die, we WILL have to attend a baby funeral, we WILL have a SIDS situation on our hands), I gave weaning her of the bear a try last night. Yeah, happy birthday, baby. You’re gonna be forced to be a big girl.
So last nite, I nurse her to sleep as usual. She’s carried, asleep, over to her crib, and lowered in. She doesn’t bother to open her eyes, but flings out her right arm to feel for the bear’s head. It’s not there. She rolls to her side, feeling for the bear’s foot. That’s not there, either. She’s on a hard mattress, sans “bear rug.” She reaches over from the sideways position, sucking her left thumb, grasping the top of the crib bumper with her right hand as she does with the bear’s arm or foot, tries to pull it to her as she would with the bear’s foot. It doesn’t go anywhere. She tries to sleep with her hand on the top of the bumper, but her hand’s too high and each time she drifts off to sleep and her hand falls, she wakes up and tries to hold on again. After a few minutes, she pops open her eyes, looks around, swings her arms around her feeling just the fitted sheet. She rolls over, pops up, looks around wide-eyed. It finally registers that there is no bear. She tentatively feels the bumper, and then starts crying. We’re watching this on the iPad downstairs, and I’m breaking out in a cold sweat. Soon I am nauseated and getting tearful myself. My poor baby wants her security toy! She’s wailing, when usually one of the most predictable parts of the evening is the time after putting her down, knowing she’d just go to sleep on her own and stay there all night. Mr. W storms upstairs, saying something about not being able to stand me freaking out, and despite my protests, goes into her room, puts the bear in her crib, and puts Allie on it, then walks out. Bewildered, Allie cries a few more minutes, and I cry along with her downstairs, feeling helpless and overwhelmed and guilty like I did in the beginning of motherhood. Soon she is quiet. I dare leave the kitchen to go peek at the monitor in the living room. She is on her tummy on her bear, fast asleep, with her cheek nuzzled on the bear’s shoulder. She slept well on her bear all night until we woke her at 6:25a this morning.
Allie: 1
Mr. W: 0

We celebrated Mother’s Day with the elders (my parents and maternal grandma) on Saturday, and with just Mr. W and Allie on Sunday. Because Mr. W’s parents are traveling in Texas and couldn’t celebrate with us, we had them along in spirit on Saturday by dressing Allie in a little outfit that Mr. W’s mother made. (Yes, MADE.)

Here she is showing off her two teeth!

You know what holds her interest the most, and what she always lunges for? Tags.

I’ve heard from friends that they can’t imagine what I’m talking about when I mention her tantrums and crying fits, because the photos depict such a happy baby. Well then, here:

And here’s the first baby, looking tiny now. =/

Saturday afternoon, my parents brought my grandma over. My grandma hadn’t seen her great-granddaughter since Chinese New Year. Allie had just woken up from her third nap and came downstairs to a house of strangers, so she was a little somber-looking for awhile. My grandma kept commenting about how she wasn’t smiling at all. Allie did eventually warm up to her great-grandma, tho.

Here are 4 generations of us womenfolk.

Great-grandma tends to be a little picky with food, so we went to SoupPlantation with hopes that a buffet bar would have a little something for everyone. (She still was unhappy about the choice, as we found out after we got there, but ate a lot while she was there so I think she was pleasantly surprised.)

Sunday morning, since we still get up early (me at 4:45am to pump/clean pump parts/medicate the cat before Allie wakes up at 6:15-ish), we got to Mimi’s Cafe for breakfast right after it opened.

We had a nice breakfast while Allie looked on, perfectly well-behaved.

Allie: “Mom, what would you like for Mother’s Day?”
Me: “To be relaxed and happy.”
Allie: “So that means you want me to take all my naps, huh?”
Me: “Substantial naps. Three of them. So you’d be in a good mood.”
Allie: “How about one and a half naps? I’ll take the morning one for over an hour, I’ll fuss and cry and refuse to take the noon nap but fall asleep in a weird flopped over position, wake up at least once a minute until I’m up for good at just 50 minutes, and skip my third nap altogether.”
Me: “That’s your compromise? Forget it.”
Allie: “Who said anything about compromise? I’m telling you my Mother’s Day plans.”

And that’s what she did, although she did present me with a physical gift: a hand and foot mold kit. While Allie had breakfast, Mr. W kneaded the clay, and smeared it into the two frames, flattening it evenly with an included small rolling pin. Then together, we washed Allie’s left hand and right foot. Then he held her over the frames as we placed her hand, then foot, into each frame, pushing down on the fingers and toes and palms with our hands, hoping she doesn’t decide to grab and smear everything. Allie cooperated. Then as Mr. W took her outside to entertain her, I dotted on the writing with the included stylus. Here’s the result, with our reflections in the photo frame section.

Mr. W Allie actually bought TWO kits, so that if one didn’t turn out right, we have a backup. But since it came out well, we figured we can do a second hand and foot in a few years, to compare. 🙂
In the afternoon, we did a Target run to buy another diaper pail for our cloth diapers. We’ve started using Grovia cloth diapers on the weekends (we’ll probably transition her over completely soon, to help with the environment and to help her with potty training so she feels “wet”), and it’s working out pretty well. Allie doesn’t stay as dry as she does in the disposables, but she doesn’t seem to notice. The poopie did runneth over, tho. I guess the cotton soakers we snap into the diaper shells don’t absorb as quickly or as well as disposables. We ended up buying an Arm & Hammer Diaper Pail by Munchkin but after we brought it home, realized immediately we both totally prefer the diaper pail we originally had, the Baby Trend Deluxe Diaper Champ. The Diaper Champ seems to have bigger capacity, has never smelled, and we can use any trash bags we want with it (so we use odor-control kitchen bags cuz you can get them anywhere cheaply). The Arm & Hammer is basically a Diaper Genie so it requires their special bags as it has to twist the bag in between uses, and you have to shove the diaper into the slot with your hand. I guess it’s still a single-handed operation so it’s not THAT bad. I just like the original one better. Refill bags are gonna be expensive, tho. At Babies R Us, it’s a box of 10 bags for $6. =P I’m not saying it doesn’t WORK, that remains to be seen.
After Target, we went straight to the Lake, where Susan Egan was performing Broadway songs with the South County Symphony. Allie was great until her naptime hit at about 3:30p. She started fussing, and we immediately packed up and left. Even tho we weren’t far from home, she ended up missing her last nap completely, crying in the crib altho she fell asleep on me twice during soothing. We finally just let her off the hook for the nap since it was so late it was feeding time anyway. We gave her a nice warm bath, advanced her bedtime by 45 minutes and she was out like a light during her bedtime nursing.

Allie was happy to see Jayne this morning, smiling big and and reaching for her from Mr. W’s arms. “Now that Allie actually lunges for people, it’s gonna start getting personal,” I told him and he laughed. Of course he laughs. What does he have to worry about? This is how Allie looks at him.

Me: “Uh, Allie? I think you misread your bib.”
Allie: “No, I didn’t. You put the wrong one on me. Where’s the ‘Daddy’s Girl’ bib?”
Me: “It’s in the hamper because you wore it all day yesterday.”
Allie: “Put it back on me.”
Me: “But it’s MOTHER’S DAY today!”
Allie: “Oh, right. I’ll go to bed at 6pm.”
Me: “I’ll take it.”