cindy's world

Remember how we called Allie a dancer in utero because of how active her feet were? Here are her pulling off some ballerina moves this week.


And here’s what your view would be if you were at my house playing Jaws (as in the shark) with Allie for a minute. *Jaws theme music plays*

Did you notice how she knew exactly where I’d be coming from? Weird, huh?

Allie tries to be very fair. She’s not for gender bias at all. In fact, when we’re out, half the adults who mill over to admire her think she’s a boy. “Awww, what a cute little guy!” too many people said on Sunday while we were at the Irvine Spectrum, which prompted Mr. W to immediately spend $40+ on head wraps with interchangeable bows and flowers. Allie wore one immediately, as you can see in the photo of her asleep in the car an hour later.

(We’d missed her naptime by minutes, so she went to sleep in the car on the drive home. I waited out the nap with her in the car parked on our driveway, knowing it’d be a short one. Her late afternoon naps have become half an hour long, just enough to get a little refresher before she goes down for the night at around 7p.)

When Allie’s in a good mood, she babbles and coos and blows bubbles. Her new favorite sounds, aside from the “pptttthhh” of bubble blowing, are a high-pitched “Aah!” and “Haaa-ummmmm” and “Hhhiiiii.” We’ve been trying our best to familiarize her with words we expect her to use first. “Mamamamama? Papapapapa? Allieallieallieallieallie?” She would just smile silently in return. When we came home from work yesterday, Jayne (with her younger teenage daughter, playing with Allie in the backyard) said excitedly, “She said her first word today!”
“Really? What is it?” Mr. W asked. The moment it took for Jayne to respond was suspense-filled. Would it be mama?

Would it be papa?

Jayne said, “It was ‘hi.’ ”
“She’s been saying ‘hi’ all weekend, I don’t think it’s actually a word,” Mr. W laughed.
Jayne looked disappointed. “Oh, really? But we even said it back, and she repeated it! She said it like 5 times in a row!”
Hmm. Maybe Allie DID mean to say “hi.” How politically correct to not “choose” a parent as her first word.

I guess I’ll respect that Allie’s first word is a greeting to the world. Hello, world. Yes, I’m happy with that. As long as her second word is “mama.”

Tuesday morning after breakfast and Allie’s first nap, we got ready to check out of the Plaza Suites in Santa Clara. I didn’t mention that a roller coaster theme park called Great America was across the freeway from our hotel. It would’ve been a fun place to explore, if Allie were only tall enough to ride the rides. Oh well, maybe next year. 🙂 Another great thing about the hotel location is that it turned out we were 10-15 minutes from just about all our friends, no matter what direction we were going. That was convenient. Anyway, Allie was a good girl and sat patiently in the Boppy with her hands clasped as we got ready to leave.

Here she is watching her daddy disassemble her pack-n-play.

And then we were off! Allie took a nice long nap in the car as we drove to Pismo Beach, listening to Baby Rock. What’s Baby Rock? Turn on your speakers. Mr. W even rocks out to some of these lullabies.

We checked into Pismo Lighthouse Suites, which is one of the cutest hotels we’d ever been in. Everything is lighthouse themed, and our 2-bedroom “family suite” was practically a condo. Allie had her own bedroom and attached bathroom. The property was also right on the beach. Mr. W read some reviews of local eateries, and decided to try some supposedly famous clam chowder that people drive from all over to eat, at a casual local joint called Splash Cafe near Pismo Pier. To continue with adventuring for Allie, Mr. W decided we ought to walk it.

Allie was very cooperative on the way there, but it turned out to be farther than expected. We were pushing her awake-time again.

Finally we got to the restaurant, and thankfully, despite what the reviews warned, did not have to wait in a long line around the block. We like Tuesday afternoon outings. We even snatched a nice street-facing window counter seat.

The chowder was good and extraordinarily creamy and rich. But it wasn’t very clammy. It did fill us up, though. Poor Allie didn’t get any, altho she took a swipe with her hand and dipped her fingers into Mr. W’s breadbowl. Mr. W got her hand just in time to wipe it off before she started solids without our permission. After that she was put in a corner to watch passerbys and munch on Sophie.

On the walk back, we stopped by a swingset on the sand and Allie got her first swing ride!


(Click play for 65 seconds of Allie giggling on the swing.)
And then Mr. W decided this would be a good time to let Allie sit on her first sand beach. She’d been to Seal Beach before when we visited Rebecca, but she was always in the carrier and we stayed at the town side and on the pier. Same thing with San Clemente Beach. She had also hung out on a blanket on the sand part of our Lake when she was 10 weeks old. Now for the first time, she got to interact with the beach.


As you can see, she dug around like a happy little crab. She had so much fun that we couldn’t get her back to the hotel fast enough after that; she hollered to nap, then finally gave up and started her nap on Mr. W before we made it back. She continued it in her pack-n-play back in the hotel room, and then after she woke up, we went to a nice fancy seafood restaurant a few doors down for dinner. There, Allie got to sit in her first high chair, since we decided to just hand-carry her there as it was so close to the hotel and therefore didn’t have her carrier. Turned out that altho she can sit upright on her own, the high chair was way too big and roomy. So we won’t try it again for awhile. Here is Mr. W instructing Allie on proper fine dining behavior. She did pretty well, no fits.

The next morning, we had kind of a disappointing continental breakfast at the hotel, since we had been spoiled by Plaza Suites’ hot breakfast buffets. Allie didn’t mind, tho, since she got her usual meal of fresh breastmilk anyway.

After her morning nap, we were off and got home a little before 2pm. Allie took a niiiice 2 hour 10 minute nap in the car on the drive back, so we didn’t even have to stop until we got home.

Although Allie’s naps were short on vacation (30-50 mins each on average), she did hit them all on time on her own and didn’t have a problem going down for the night, and slept through each night, so that was good. Poor Mr. W felt oppressed by the baby’s naps, tho, so this wasn’t quite a vacation the way he liked it. I felt bad, and asked him to think of it as scoping out places we can go for future vacations when Allie’s older. I’m really looking forward to the time when she’s old enough to really enjoy new sights and places. I think that comes at close to a year, right? Maybe a bit later? But by then food will be its own issue, when she’s eating solids but not adult-solids, yet. So I guess there’s always a challenge.
I couldn’t do any nap training while we were out because I didn’t want her crying to disturb other hotel guests, so when we got home, she fought me in her nighttime sleep and also in a few naps. That’s why we left half a week to readjust her, so that Jayne doesn’t have to do it. It seems like with so many babies, the issue isn’t that they don’t nap; it’s that they don’t STAY asleep. They wake up in 30-40 minutes after their first REM cycle and decide they’re done. As they get older, they fight more to stay up instead of go back to sleep when they find themselves awake. It’s interesting that the sleep book doesn’t really address this, only saying that after 4 months of age, any nap under 1 hour is not considered restorative, and gives advice on how to deal with the kid fighting going down for the night or for the nap. Here’s another challenge now: she rolls to her back, and doesn’t nap well on her back because nocturnal jerks wake her up. So if she’s up and fighting and starts rolling, if it’s at the beginning of the nap, she’ll jerk awake every minute or less until she gives up, and if it’s at the tail end of a REM cycle, the nap’s pretty much over. I’m looking forward to her outgrowing this.

We’re back from Allie’s first roadtrip. I think overall, it was a success. Sure, there were extra things to pack that we didn’t have to when Mr. W and I traveled on our own — there was Allie’s overnight bag, Allie’s pack-n-play, Allie’s diaper backpack, Allie’s changing area box o’ stuff, Allie’s Bumbo seat, and my breast pump and storage stuff. I still got up every morning before Allie did to pump and store, but I got to sleep in till almost 6am sometimes before I did that. Some things that surprised me — Allie is so obedient to her accustomed naptimes biorhythmically that she would fall asleep or demand to be put to bed. I don’t even know why I’d bothered wearing a watch. In the car, she’d just go to sleep at her naptimes. Her initial car naps were very light and short, because road bumps and the car moving around would wake her up, but she would keep falling back to sleep until about half an hour in. On the way home, as she got more used to the car, she had a nice 2 hour nap for her noon nap. Even when we couldn’t get her back in time for her nap, she’d be fussy, but if she were in the car, she’d fall asleep. I was unsuccessful several times trying to keep her up for even a few minutes as we rushed back to the hotel to put her in her crib.

It was a little tough trying to squeeze in all our friend visits in between Allie’s naptimes. When we arrived on Saturday afternoon, we checked in and went out to meet college roommie Diana, her husband Eric, and her new baby Alexis (2 weeks younger than Allie) at a Thai food restaurant for dinner. We didn’t take any photos as both babies were acting up in turn, it being close to their respective bedtimes. I think we all thought we’d all meet up again, but it didn’t happen because Allie and Alexis had conflicting naptimes all weekend. It was different and yet so similar to each other, seeing each other as parents of babies for the first time. Alexis felt like a compact little girl, since Allie is so tall and outweights Alexis by probably a couple of pounds. Diana offered to come by the hotel after the babies were asleep and hang out, but the suite turned out so small that we had to set up Allie’s pack-n-play in the living room area, so I didn’t want to walk in and out with her sleeping. She did go down without an issue in her pack-n-play every night and for every nap she took in it.

Sunday, for Allie’s second awake-period (the first was always spent eating the free breakfasts at the hotel), we drove out and visited Jimmy and Sabrina and their little girl Abby, now almost 2 years old. Abby was about 2 months old the last time I saw and held her. This time, she was a happy rambunctious little girl on the go-go-go! She ran circles around us with her toy shopping cart, stopping only long enough on occasion to give Allie a high-five.

Sunday’s third awake-period, we took a stroller walk to a nearby sandwich cafe and met up with Dardy. He hobbled in on crutches, and we were both very touched that he’d go through all the inconvenience to come out and see us. He took a couple of photos of Mr. W with Allie, and me with Allie. I’ll have to retrieve those from email and post them some other time when Allie’s not screaming and stressing me out (yes, she was napping when I started this post, but the next door neighbor’s gardeners came right when she went down so she woke up early and is now screaming. I wonder if gardeners even register that they wake up babies; I’m SURE she’s audible from outside.).
** Okay, evening edit: here are those photos from Dardy.

For Sunday’s fourth awake-period before bedtime, we went to visit Christi (flip flop girl) and Mike, and their kidlets Kyden (about 2 years old) and Sienna (9 months). Kyden wrote his own account of the day on his blog. 🙂 He has better photos, too, because his mom used a real camera, so her photos were notches above my blurry cameraphone ones. I’ve never seen Allie interact so much as with Sienna. Allie was immediately fascinated, and Sienna’s flapping around made Allie laugh, even when some of those flaps landed on Allie herself. (I have a video of that.) Kyden shyly emerged after his nap, and joined everyone downstairs. It was interesting to see Sienna eat “solids,” which was mushed up babyfood that Christi had prepared (she’s fancy; Sienna had blended chicken and zucchini for one dish and blended strawberries and another fruit that I can’t recall for another dish). It was also very cool to see Kyden feed himself delicious salmon and veggies that Christi made for those of us with full teeth. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. BUT, I do agree with Christi (and I’m glad she pushed me to make this trip), that traveling with Allie at this stage is easier because she’s more portable being only a breastmilk drinker. Christi gave his her kids’ food mill that takes all the fibrous strings and skin out of cooked veggies and fruits. I don’t know if I can be as good a cook as Christi, tho.

On Monday’s second awake-segment, we drove out to see Diana at her office. I was thinking that since we were going to a law firm, we ought to be able to write off the trip, right? Anyway, Morrison Foerster had very cool grounds. There was a park-like setting in the center quad, it was not the boring ol’ buildings we’re used to seeing. Different food trucks drive up and provide the employees lunch on different days, and we conveniently ate lunch with Diana from one such food truck, sitting in the pretty quad overlooking the water and fountains.

We actually had Allie’s third awake-segment free and Mr. W had been bored from being pent-up during Allie’s naps, so we took a walk to explore a nearby Residence Inn that we saw driving by. It was beautiful, with ducks and geese swimming in a long river and large pond going through the center of the property.

(It’s nauseating at this point of blogging because Allie’s now screaming with a vengeance, but I’m re-nap-training so I have to leave her alone until she remembers to self-soothe; the nap was too short.)
The following photo demonstrates one of those sacrifices mommies have to make on behalf of their children. I’m posting this because Allie looks adorable, despite how I look.

And then we walked back to the hotel for Allie’s third nap, where Mr. W had some fun with a cap for dress-up.

The fourth awake-segment was spent meeting up with Rebecca and her 6-year-old, Ben. Ben was so excited he couldn’t stop himself from hopping up and down while he sang to Allie. Unfortunately, dinner went long as we were at a sit-down restaurant, and Allie had two melt-downs, Mr. W taking her out of Maggiano’s Little Italy both times until she calmed down. It was past Ben’s bedtime as well, and he had a rare quiet moment with his head on the dinner table while he waited for his dessert to show up. Allie fell asleep on the drive back to the hotel and stayed asleep in the carseat after we brought the carseat carrier into the hotel. Mr. W suggested I take a shower and let her sleep, and feed her the bedtime feeding when she wakes up. She awoke in the carrier as soon as I finished my own bedtime routine, and we treated her bedtime routine like a middle-of-the-night feeding (which I am a little rusty at); dark, feed, no talking or playing, and putting her right to bed as soon as she was done eating. It was a success, even tho she went to sleep more than 2 hours past her usual bedtime.

I’ll continue with Allie’s Great Adventure, Central Cal later…Allie needs some attention right now.

Since Allie started sitting by herself this week, we thought we’d introduce her to different places she could sit. So today, she got her introduction to grass.

She plucked at it with her fingers, hung on hard to the tough little blades, but didn’t try to bring any into her mouth, which surprised me. Pulling sideways one time, she rolled herself cheek-first into the lawn. No reaction. I guess she’s pretty comfy out there.
Later, we sat her outside to wait for my parents, who’d called to say they were coming over. We waited and waited.

Good thing Allie enjoyed herself, since my parents were running on “Asian time.”

So Mr. W decided to introduce Allie to sand in our zen garden.

I think grass is a clear winner. Unless you count this:

Allie’s napping now, but I don’t know what’s going on with her naps this weekend. Every nap except yesterday’s morning one, she wakes up and cries at the 35-40-minute point. I leave her in there until she’s been in her crib an hour so she’s not “rewarded” for forcing herself awake early to come play. Yesterday, that meant on both her noon and afternoon naps, she slept half an hour, cried half an hour, and was picked up. Today, each time she cried she was able to (within 15 mins or less) roll her left arm free and curl up sideways sucking her thumb and fall asleep, but still. Aggravating. I’m hoping it’s a developmental thing as she’s learning to roll, so it’s an exciting new thing that’s keeping her up, and that she’ll be used to it soon and just go back to sleep.

Thanks to her nutritional needs now being met, Allie had two poopie diapers today. This is a camera screenshot of her second nap today. (Her morning nap was 1.5 hours, yay! This nap you see below was only 40-some minutes, boo.) I’m scared to look to see if she’s napping her 3rd nap right now.

Okay, I just looked. She’s NAPPING AGAIN! YAAAAAAYYYYYY!!! Now I’m off to pump again.

I’m sure anyone reading this blog has fond childhood memories of frolicking to and fro inside a parent’s moving car, goofing off with a sibling or friend our age from the backseat or station wagon “trunk” to the front seat to the floor of the car and over the backs of the seats again. My judge even has memories of his teenage self taking off fast and slamming the brakes of his old Woody and laughing with his older brother as their youngest brother tumbled from where he stood behind their front seats to the rear of the car. (The kid brother is fine and is not traumatized by their horseplay.) In California, it has gone from that, to a law in my teens requiring seat belts to be fastened on all occupants of the vehicle, to another law saying all kids under age 6 and under 60 lbs had to ride in the backseat on a child booster seat, to this new change, effective January 1, 2012:

Any child under age *8* must ride in a child booster seat in the backseat. If the child is 8 years old or at least 4’9″, however, he/she can use a regular seat belt instead of a child safety seat or booster seat.
Violations mean stiff fines and penalties, and possible child endangerment criminal charges.

This is based on stats that show putting kids in a booster seat (instead of a seat belt on the vehicle’s seat alone) reduces risk of car accident injuries to that kid by 59%. Seat belts are designed for an average-sized adult, so it doesn’t lay right on a kid under 4’9″. Supposedly, the previous law endangers kids between ages 6 and 8 because they’re too big for child safety seats, but still too small for a seat belt to work effectively, so the new law bridges the gap by requiring the booster seat use until age 8. (Wanna read the actual law? See www.chp.ca.gov/community/safeseat.html)

Age 8 is 3rd grade. That’s old enough to be embarrassed. So what does this mean for a kid like Allie? …It means that she’ll be sitting in a regular seat using a regular seat belt by age 6.

99th percentile for height! She’s practically 3 feet tall NOW at 4.5 months.

They DO grow up so fast.

I haven’t written about my body stuff in a long time. It just wasn’t that consequential to me, as long as I’m alive and producing breastmilk, other details about my body didn’t matter.

However, on April 1, I noticed that my tailbone seemed to be protruding more than I’d ever noticed. I could actually feel the BOTTOM of my tailbone if I press in a little with my fingers. I was totally freaked out and grossed out.
My parents came over yesterday and my mom commented on how skinny I looked. She was concerned, and my dad noted the same thing. Mom said when she hugged me that I felt like all bones. I know my pre-pregnancy clothes fit more loosely than before I’d ever been pregnant, but beyond that, didn’t spend much thought on it. Mom asked what I weigh, and I told her I didn’t know. So last night, since she’d asked, I pulled out the scale and stepped on it after dinner. I was 111 with food in my stomach. I couldn’t believe it. I haven’t seen 111 since 6th or 7th grade when I was busy passing it on my way up. Maybe I was feeling my tailbone because stuff that used to cover it is disappearing, not because my TAILBONE had moved.
Thinking back, here are the few weight markers I have:
125-127 shortly before pregnancy
120 in the 1st trimester
156 the day before I delivered
128 six weeks after I delivered
125 two months after I delivered
121 three months after I delivered
now 111 four and a half months after I delivered

I could win some of those weekly Biggest Loser weigh-ins for percentage lost (29%) since pregnancy 4.5 months ago, which would be a good thing, except that I have NOT been dieting or exercising. I’ve done some weight-lifting with holding my 15-pound baby and I’ve done a stroller walk here and there, but I’ve done no gym stuff. So this is due to breastfeeding and depression. NOT good. I’m gonna need to hit the gym as soon as I’m back to work and have lunchtimes to do that. Of course, lunch will also have to be shared with eating, milk pumping, and transportation to/from the gym. How is THAT gonna work?

Some photos from last weekend:

Childhood friend (and my current dentist) Andy and his wife Jenny came by to visit yesterday afternoon. We’d been trying to hang out in South OC for years, since they’re in the area almost every weekend, but somehow could never get it to work. This time it worked. They arrived during Allie’s nap, which allowed us some time to visit without having to worry about the baby getting impatient. When Allie woke up and we introduced her to Andy and Jenny, I found out just now much a baby person Jenny is. She adored Allie! Andy said that kids and babies always love Jenny. Allie certainly seemed to appreciate all of Jenny’s attention lavished on her, and kept smiling and looking at Jenny. These two guests are the first ones whose first impression is that Allie looks like Mr. W. Everyone else says the baby looks like me. “That’s because you’ve got biased friends and relatives saying that,” Mr. W joked.

Since Allie now skips her 4th nap and is awake from 4p-ish to bedtime (7:30p-ish), we all went to have some omakase sushi on the lake. It was a really nice visit with grownup conversation about foods, travels, yuzu, family. I didn’t know that childhood friend Sandy, Andy’s younger sister, was so mean to her brother when they were young kids! I never saw it even tho I’ve known them since Sandy and I were 6, and Andy was 7, but apparently the examples of violence done to Andy by Sandy predated that. Hilarious stories, which I’ll keep private. 🙂 Jenny and Mr. W told Andy to “get over it, it’s been 35 years!” and be nicer to his sister now. Haha! I look forward to having more time to socialize with them in the future.

Today, Mr. W took baby duty so that I could attend Lily’s no-children baby shower in Long Beach. The drive to Mimi’s Cafe there was about 45 minutes, and it was a 10:30a brunch with games, and a 45 minute drive back. I left the house at 9:45a, which means I missed the 10a feeding (and didn’t pump since I was driving), and brunch took longer than I thought, so I skipped out early so as not to miss the 1:30p feeding. I was afraid my body would go, “Hmm…she fed last night at 7:15pm, then her next feeding was 12 hours later at 7am, then no feeding for the next 7 hours…I think I’ll stop making milk now.” Even given that I left the restaurant early and skipped the last game, the cake, the present-opening and the socializing at Lily’s house and was home just in time when Allie woke up at 1:40p to feed her, this was still the longest I’d been away from the baby since she was born. I’m embarrassed to say how many times I checked the baby monitor on my cell phone. Mr. W put her to sleep for her morning and noon naps and said he didn’t have a problem, so that’s good. It makes me feel better that she doesn’t have to have me do it.

I thought this was funny…
One of their guests is a coworker/superior who had introduced the two. They call her their “matchmaker.” She’s a doctor, like Lily and her husband, and pretty smart. One of the games they played was to have the guests guess Lily’s stomach circumference by cutting a length of plastic ribbon that’s supposed to go around her middle just right. When the roll of ribbon got to the matchmaker, instead of just unrolling it to a length she thought would go around Lily’s middle, she pulled out a calculator and started tapping away. “What are you doing? Are you cheating?” another guest asked her. She said she had a dress made when she was approximately Lily’s size and she knew her waist measurement then, but that was in centimeters and the ribbon’s printed with inches, so she was trying to figure out a conversion.
“You’re supposed to EYEBALL it! No algorithms!” another guest said in protest.
What a group of overachievers. Haha!
Anyway, I asked this matchmaker doctor to take a photo of me with the parents-to-be right before I left, and just because someone is smart in their field doesn’t mean they could take brilliant photos, because this is how she chose to frame the photo of us commemorating a pregnancy:

Hahaha! Oh, well.

So this afternoon, Allie made a conscious decision to have a tantrum. And she willfully carried it out with a screaming crying fit for 45 minutes in protest to taking a nap. It wasn’t that she wasn’t tired; she just FELT like having the tantrum. She could be easily distracted from it and would stop crying immediately if something amusing or different caught her eye, and she’d be quick to smile at it, or babble, but then she’d remember, “Oh yeah, I’m having a fit,” and go right back to it, and add some good yells for dramatics. She had two solid naps beforehand, both about an hour and 45+ minutes, so it wasn’t a HUGE deal she protested her third and last nap of the day, but I was pissed at her, and she knew it. She had her fit whether I was carrying her, or she was in her crib left alone to settle. And continued when I went back up to make another attempt at soothing. Her dad came up to her room after the battle of wills raged on for 45 minutes and took her downstairs back to my parents and his social activities in the living room, and placed her in the swing. Of course the moment she got her way she stopped crying, altho she was clearly sleepy. I was annoyed enough to go take a nap in our bedroom, and eventually, after Allie stayed up to when she ought to be getting her next feeding, she consented to a nap in her crib that lasted for a measly half an hour.

And then suddenly I sat up with a jolt. Given the fight that lasted from 2:45 to 3:30p, I completely forgot that I had to take Dodo in to get his blood pressure rechecked at 3p. It was 5pm when I realized this, and ran downstairs to grab my cell and call the vet. They said if I can get him in within the next 15 minutes, they’d still take him. At this point, Allie woke up from that half-hour nap, of course. And since she was already late for her feeding, she needed to be fed immediately so that she’d be hungry enough to eat for her bedtime feeding. I again had to be at two places at the same time, tending to either my boy or my girl. Mr. W took Dodo to the vet; I changed and fed Allie. Mr. W returned quickly from the vet and said that Dodo’s blood pressure has gone from 220 a couple of weeks ago to 180, so the medication is working, but the blood pressure is still too high. The vet’s instructions are to give the same dosage twice a day instead of just the once. Good thing that liquid’s tuna flavored.

Allie knew I was annoyed at her. She kissed butt and smiled and tried to amuse everyone with her tongue tricks until we (my parents and the three of us) went to our local neighborhood Greek place for dinner. My parents were very happy and laughed and laughed at the slitherly snake tongue trick that Mr. W taught her the other day, at her tongue out and sputtery “pttthhhh” he’d taught her a few days ago, and at just the simple tongue out “nyah” my dad had taught her last week. The proud grandparents even took video. Then at the restaurant, as it got close to her natural bedtime, she got fussy and wouldn’t let us eat. Someone had to be holding her and walking her around for about a half hour until she got agreeable enough to sit in her carrier and hang out like a civilized baby.

My parents think she understands us, now. They said Allie was fine until someone said, “Let’s take her to bed now,” then she suddenly had a protesting fit again. I talk to her all day long, so I’m not surprised she understands a few words, and I feel like she’s suddenly very cognitive because you can see her doing things to make people laugh, watching our reactions and studying us carefully, and basically instead of adults teasing the baby, it’s often the baby teasing the adults. She enjoys the reactions she gets. And I’m suddenly able to “read” her intuitively. I guess it’s time to start spelling things we don’t want her to understand.