cindy's world

(written 12/3/13 but time-bombed for 11/28)

I’ve been hiding behind the excuse of “I’m Asian, I didn’t grow up with a American Thanksgiving tradition” to skate out of massive cooking, cleaning, guests. I do want to do it when Allie’s older, and have family over, but I don’t want to chase around (or chase away from the hot stove) a toddler right now while trying to get lots of done, and our house is really to small at this point to host anything meaningful. When I was growing up, my parents and relatives, which included family-friends, had used American holidays as an excuse to get together for the family just for dinners, but it was always Chinese food (usually potlock), and that was fine by us. I’d like Allie to have those big gatherings to look forward to.

This year, Thanksgiving was very low-key. My mom didn’t know when my grandmother would be available, but turned out that she was available Thanksgiving morning, so my parents picked her up and came over early. Mr. W and I didn’t prepare anything, since it was also up-in-the-air until fairly last-minute whether my mom was getting the flu (turned out to be seasonal allergies), so we figured we’d just try to get into Claim Jumper Restaurant across the street at their opening time of 11am. My parents and grandma got to our house around 9:30 a.m., and the stepkidlet woke up and joined us in the living room around 10:00 a.m. I think she was expecting a traditional Thanksgiving gathering of some sort, so when we told her we were just going to go across the street at 11am for an early lunch, she was very unhappy with us. She said she didn’t have enough time to get ready, and that since we didn’t tell her early enough, she must not have been invited. She ended up going out with her boyfriend and didn’t return the entire rest of the 4-day holiday weekend. I did go in her room after my parents left, soon after lunch, and apologize for not telling her early enough, and explained that not only did we not plan anything, but that we never know when/if she was going to be around, since she may or may not even come home for arbitrary days in a row. We agreed that I’d let her know about upcoming significant-event plans whenever I had them, even if that meant waking her up early (which I never do) to give her enough time to get ready, and she’ll just decline if she’s already got plans (which she doesn’t tell us about ahead of time, either). That’s the only workaround I could think of for a noncommittal busy young adult.

So here’s a photo of us at Claim Jumper.

After Allie’s nap, the three of us went to a park with a nice kiddie playground and Allie got to play until a bit after the sun set and we could hardly see each other anymore. She was happy and had a great time, and to this day still asks to go to the “new park.”

We still didn’t do a party this year, but did a kind of split celebration of sorts. Mr. W’s parents had driven to SoCal to attend a relative’s wedding the weekend before Allie’s birthday, so they, along with my mother-in-law’s two sisters, spent that Sunday with us. They brought presents, so we got a couple of balloons and invited my parents over for lunch with everyone else. Allie had been asking for a “happu burday cake for Allie” for months leading up to her birthday, so we got a storebought purple one that made her happy. It was taro cake (from a Chinese bakery) so that made us happy since it’s not overly sweet, but we didn’t tell any of his family members what it was until after they’d eaten it. Mr. W lied and said it was a purple “fruit cake” even tho they immediately knew it was something different. His saying it was “chocolate” wasn’t believable, either. My parents loved it. Allie…not so much. She ate maybe 4 bites before wrinkling her brow and saying, “Too sweet. Cake too sweet.” Then she just played with the whipped cream frosting with her fingertips and picked out the fruit and ate that.

Her actual birthday on Saturday started as any other Saturday…with dance class. She’s in a new term and got promoted to the age 2.5-3.5 toddler ballet and dance class, where she goes into the dance room on her own without parents participating in there. Allie’s never been a clingy kid, so even the first class, she did great without me and could follow the teacher’s directions. She did look at me and Mr. W regularly through the big parent-observation windows and smile at us. There are a couple of other kids in the class, also promoted from Allie’s last class, who cried unless their moms were in the class, so the moms just sat at the back of the classroom (without participating) so the girls wouldn’t cry. However, the girls would always run back to their mothers’ laps instead of staying in formation in the circle or line in between dances. I’m curious how the bonds between mother and child in those relationships may or may not differ from more “elastic” bonds like the one Allie and I have when the kids become teenagers and adults. It’s almost worth keeping in touch with these moms just to satiate that curiosity later on. Anyway, Allie is once again the youngest girl in her class, and the tallest. Tap is cute on these toddlers. The shoes with their metal bottoms are slippery, and Mr. W likened their tap-dancing (15 mins at the end of each class) to Bambi(s) sliding on the frozen pond.

After dance class, we drove directly to my parents’ house with an extra large playyard that we used in Dallas in tow. Allie got to play with my parents and great-grandma, then I put her down in my old bedroom for a nap. It took her an hour to fall asleep. She just played on her own (even tho there was nothing but her fuzzy blanket she always naps on) in the playyard, talking, singing, until she finally decided she was going to drop after 1:15p (her naps are usually noon-ish), but when she did, she stayed down 90 mins. On the short end for her, but pretty decent. Mr. W and my grandma napped, too. I chatted with my parents, drank tea, and made this collage.

After Allie woke up, we went to a park/playground across the street. My cousin Olivia and her daughters, now a ‘tween and a teen, came to visit as well, bringing Allie some presents. We all played at the park together.

Soon afterwards, Olivia and the girls left, and Vicky and her stepdaughter came over and brought presents as well. That was a cool visit. The stepdaughter was only 13, but was SO amazing with Allie. Turned out she has a 7 year-old half-sister at her mom’s house. That explains it. She was so much better with Allie than I ever was with kids Allie’s age. I just didn’t know what to do with kids, so I interacted with him as little as possible, not that there were many babies around me when I was a kid.

Allie got another cake from my mom, this time sweet potato. That’s a first for me. Allie again, after 4-5 bites, refused more and frowned, “Cake too sweet.” She knows how to make her mama proud. 😀

On the drive home from my parents’ that evening, Allie asked to hold the big Hello Kitty that Olivia and her girls got her. She hugged it the drive home. As I drove, I heard her chatter. “Hello Kitty! Hello, Hello Kitty! Dada open Hello Kitty! Allie wanna hold Hello Kitty! Hello Kitty, are you okay? Hello Kitty so putty! Uh-oh, Hello Kitty went pee-pee. Hello Kitty went pee-pee on her butt. Are you okay, Hello Kitty? Hello Kitty so soft!”

Allie’s 2-year well-baby checkup is next week, because work has been so crazy about time off and won’t give it easily. I was told by our new supervisor that I can’t request time off until the first week of December, so I’ll have stats by then. Meanwhile, here are some behavioral thingies…
Stuff she knows:
* her shapes (circle, triangle, square, rectangle, heart, star, dodecahedron…just kidding on the last one)
* reciting her ABCs, skipping E, H, I, J, K.
* reciting her numbers 1-10 in English, skipping 6, and 1-10 in Mandarin.
* her fruits, veggies, animals, even some insects

Stuff she likes to do:
* stack up blocks, wooden shapes from sorter kits, cubed fruits/veggies in a tower
* play toddler games and “color” on her iPad
* watch videos of herself and Disney/Sesame Street clips
* jump off things or hop forward in lieu of walk
* give a running commentary of things around her, and of things that she saw or had happened recently
* opine on things she should be eating for meals and snacks
* help move clothes from washer to dryer, help unload the dishwasher, help throw things in the trash, help put things back where they belong, help close open doors/cabinets, help sweep
* make jokes and then say, “That’s funny!” while laughing
* spin herself or me in the swivel office chair
* play on kiddie playgrounds
* play pretend in her kitchen and with her toys (and accuse us of playing “pretend” when we just go thru the motions of doing something to appease her without actually doing it, such as dipping bread into oil/vinegar before giving it to her)
* guess who anyone is talking to on the phone (she’s almost always right)

She’s still generally a happy kid, albeit more willful, especially on what to wear and what to eat. She may love a food, but won’t eat it simply because it wasn’t her idea and she wasn’t given a choice on the matter. We can usually entice her to eat it by saying, “You don’t want this? Then I’m gonna give it to Dada.” “Nooo! That’s MINE! I wanna eat it!” Emotions are developing. When she wants something, she wants it BADLY and is VERY VERY sad or angry when she doesn’t get it…for a minute. With emotions and awareness and humor also comes the hurt feelings. Last week she said something we thought was silly, but she was being serious, so when Mr. W laughed and repeated what she said, she frowned and said, “Don’t tease Allie!” We didn’t even know she knew the word “tease” or what it entails. She’d also said last week, when she felt insulted at our laughs, “Don’t laugh at Allie!” Which just makes thinks worse for her cuz now we’re repeating and laughing at THAT. She gets over it pretty quickly, though. Part of the adorableness in her speech, and why we laugh and repeat so much, is watching her find each word and component of a sentence to put together to express her thoughts. Things don’t come that naturally and smoothly, yet, so she’s actively constructing to communicate. Her word choices are funny and surprisingly good sometimes. Like when it’s time to go out and we remove the iPad from in front of her but she wasn’t ready to part with it, yet. “Nooo, dada, leave it! Don’t take Allie’s iPad away!” There’s a little pause after each word as she chooses the next word. Altho “leave it” is said smoothly together, so I wonder where she hears that. It’s not like we have a dog. She’s also started using tenses correctly. When I told her I wasn’t ready for the butt paste yet, so to not open the tube until I was ready, she solemnly tightened the cap she’d just loosened, brought the tube to her chest, and announced, “I will hold it for Mama. I will give butt paste to Mama when Mama is ready.” A little pause between each enunciated word, even ending consonants carefully pronounced and accounted for. And over the weekend, she walked by our bedroom closet and said, “Dodo was in there.” Past tense. :'(

Because the last post was so…not a fun post, here’s a fun post about Allie’s first time participating in Halloween a couple of weeks ago.

Halloween this year was on a Thursday, so after work, we rushed home, changed Allie into her authentic Disney’s Snow White dress (adding a long-sleeved shirt inside), and put on her Snow White wig. The wig lasted MAYBE 10 minutes, which is 9 minutes 56 seconds longer than it lasted the first and second times. (This is the 3rd time.)

Mr. W’s plan was simply to walk through the neighborhood and across the street to Subway for an early dinner, and on the walk back, it’d be dark enough by then to hit a few houses on our street just to give her a little flavor of Halloween without going nuts. So we set off. Allie kept tripping over the front of her still-too-big dress, so Mr. W brought parts of the skirt up and the bodice in with these awful office bracket fasteners. =P

Toward the end of our street, the front door of a house to our left suddenly opened, and a woman’s voice beckoned to us. She wanted us to go to their house for an early trick-or-treat, because apparently the woman’s young daughter had been looking out the window when we were walking by and the daughter had excitedly called out to her mom, “OH MY GOSH, mommy! SNOW WHITE is in FRONT of OUR HOUSE!!” So Allie got her first trick-or-treating experience when it was still light out:

At Subway, Allie had the kids meal with a small turkey and cheese sandwich on wheat, with milk and, of course, the Snow White staple, apples.

It’s kinda painful to give her sandwiches without her having front teeth. I have to tear things into little bites she can stuff into her mouth, or at least bite off using the teeth on the sides. *sigh* It’s messy and I just feel bad for her, altho she doesn’t seem to care much. She’s got 3 of her 4 adult “second” molars now, so the crazy drooling has at least calmed significantly. It was nice to have gotten an answer to why she suddenly started drooling like an infant a couple of months ago.
On the walk back, we hit maybe 8 houses on our street. Allie soon mastered ringing the bell, commenting on their pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns, saying “trick or treat,” “thank you,” and “Happy Halloween.” On the walk leaving each house, she’d comment things like, “That was nice.” “The man was nice, give Allie candy.” “Doggy was pretty.” “I like those pumpkins.”
Once, she tried to put a wrapped candy bar in her mouth as she does with many things, and I told her, “Hey, take it out. That’s not food.” Well, it’s not…until the wrapper comes off. She took my statement at face value and didn’t try it again. She is still oblivious to what candy is and I’ll keep it this way as long as possible. She doesn’t like stuff too sweet/salty anyway, so the longer I can reinforce that in her taste buds, the better. There will come a time when this will change, but why start early, is my theory. (BTW, not only did she not eat any of her loot, but I didn’t even SEE any of her loot because Mr. W immediately turned it around and gave it away without my even knowing about it.)
After coming home, she wanted to be on the other side of the door, and give out candy. So she parked just behind the door, on the stairs, and waited.

Nothing happened for awhile. I asked Mr. W to go out to the street and usher in kids, since we live on the inside of a cul de sac street. He walked out and returned reporting that our street seemed abandoned. I guess the slew of early young kids were out trick-or-treating the same time we were, and it was too early for the older kids to come around. Still, Allie waited some more.

It was getting very close to her bedtime, so we changed her out of her Snow White costume, but she insisted on going straight back to her waiting spot and being ready to hand out candy.

Then, FINALLY, the ONLY people to ring our bell that ENTIRE evening.

Allie did end up getting a well-rounded Halloween experience before going to bed that night, and to this day still talks about how she “gave candy to little girl.” Too bad the kids didn’t say “trick or treat” to her, that would’ve made it more complete. Well, so would the consumption of candy, I guess, but she doesn’t care about that part, yet. She did repeatedly ask for a “happu birday cake” for her birthday later this month.
BTW, when we took Allie upstairs to start her bedtime routine, Mr. W put the giant bowl of candy outside our porch so the kids could take some on their own without ringing our bell, since we’d be unavailable. The entire night, we heard people at our door only twice. The first time, we heard excited kids talking, and when we looked after they’d left, the giant bowl was EMPTY. Greedy kids. I knew I should’ve handed out dental floss instead of chocolate.

We liked our pumpkin patch photos from 2012 (in San Juan Capistrano) so much that we wanted to take Allie to a pumpkin patch again this year. We walked by the same pumpkin patch/petting farm when we were taking photos with Kari in October, but the place was so crowded that we decided to pass and find a smaller, more intimate pumpkin patch. We tried a couple of small ones, but they were SO small that we just did a walk-through and left, and I didn’t let Allie participate in the bounce house or the inflated obstacle courses where bigger kids were going nuts, for fear she’d be kicked in the face or squished. At one patch, she requested, “Allie go in that house, Allie go in that house,” but I explained that the bounce house was for big kids and Allie could go in those when she’s bigger, maybe next year, but now she’s too small, and she was fine with that. “House for big kids. Allie little girl. NOT little boy. Allie little girl. Allie too small.” And we left. Then I was told by a friend about a larger nice pumpkin farm relatively close to our house, near the Laguna Hills Mall. THAT was a hit. Here are some of those photos, from October 26.

A giant pumpkin, lit up from inside by our little grinny goofball.

There were lots of rides, including Allie’s first pony ride!

And of course the carnival-type vehicle rides.

Allie said this is her favorite ride (“swing-swing!”), not that you can tell by her serious expression.

This isn’t a ride, but it’s a vehicle. She likes to climb on high things, so she’s finally smiling. A little. Okay, at least she’s not frowning.

I know Allie looks totally unimpressed, but she claimed to have had fun. She wanted to go back the next day and talked about it for a few days afterwards. She’s just stoic like her mama when in public. Also, you may notice that in some photos she’s wearing pigtails, and in others, a ponytail. We were there in the morning (pigtails), went home, and after her nap she wanted to go back, so we did (ponytail).

Just for fun, here are some comparison pix between last year and this year.
Sitting on a saddle strapped onto a bale of hay.

Allie using the pumpkin patch to meet boys.

I realized with a start today that I’d missed the marker post about her turning 23 months old. I did post that day, but it was about her use of the word “never” (which she pronounces “nebber”) and about her first meal of true crap. I’ll flesh that out a bit more.

At 23 months, she’s using full sentences. I’m not sure when it started, because it seems she has been creative with her word use for some time now, finding alternative phrases to communicate when we don’t understand what she’s saying, being expressive to make jokes, to reminisce with us, to express her desires, to complain. I’m still surprised at her vocabulary of arbitrary things we didn’t teach her (such as “Look, mama, rockets! Just like Dumbo Ride!” when she saw the spinning Astro Orbitor ride at Disneyland today which, like Dumbo, is comprised of the passenger “car” circling in the air around a fixed center rod), and her use of conjunctions (“Allie and dada and mama in the car, going to Disneyland,” said this morning on our drive) and pluralization (“Mama has pink jacket, too, just like Allie! One, two pink jackets!”).

She loves playing pretend, such as serving us in her play kitchen. She served me “coffee” this evening, making a pouring motion from her coffee pot into a play demitasse and handing the cup to me, warning me, “Careful, mama, is hot, blow-blow,” and I said, “Mama doesn’t drink coffee. Mama drinks tea.” Allie told me, “Pretend.” So I did. I pretended to enjoy the hell out of that cup of hot air. Even when playing with us, she’ll tell me, “Mama, pretend eat Allie’s finger,” and then she’ll stick her index finger in my mouth and laugh as I make gobbling motions and sounds. Over the weekend, she placed her bottle of bath bubbles on the ground and squatted over it, saying, “Allie sit on bubbles.” I said, “That bottle’s to small. You can’t sit on that, you’ll fall.” Allie said, “Allie pretend!” and then proceeded to do exactly that. Then she picked the bottle up and put it back.

Mr. W’s noticed that when Allie gets to play with the iPad or watch videos on our smartphones, which we really try to keep to a minimum, her eyes focus inward. Today, I got her wandering right eye to come right back by putting the phone up to her face and she focused immediately on the screen and her eyes converged. Maybe we’ll have to do more close-up work with her.

Her broken front teeth still don’t seem to bother her. It’s still sad to see her having to put food to the side of her mouth to take a bite, but she doesn’t appear to have any qualms about having to readjust. Feeding her sandwiches is pretty messy, tho.

Allie definitely has an opinion about what she considers attractive. Luckily, I’m always in the “putty” category. Dada is a hit-and-miss. Ha. She prefers her pink shoes to brown shoes. She sometimes asks for pigtails, sometimes refuses them, but mama’s long hair is always “putty.”

Her biggest physical feat lately is her ability to jump. She loves it. She jumps straight up, she jumps forward, she hops in lieu of walk, she jumps off steps and sidewalks. She’s still pretty careful, thankfully, and won’t jump off of anything more than a few inches high without asking to hold our hand first. “Mama, help! Help Allie! Hold Allie’s hand!”

And lastly (that I can think of), she’s still on Team Mommy. Dada was tackling her and tickling her on Saturday, and she scrambled around, tried to get away in between giggles, and managed to get out, “Mama! Help Allie! Mama! Help Allie! No, dada, no!” I went over there to help Allie, and as I pulled Allie (gently) from his grasp, Mr. W let go of Allie and tackled me in the same way. Allie got away and ran a few steps, then stopped to look as I said, “Allie! Help mama! Allie! Help mama!” as Mr. W said, “I got mama! I got mama! Hahahaha!” Allie developed a look of concern and ran right back toward me and said, “No, dada, no! Mama! Allie help mama!” and took my hand and pulled, then placed her own body between me and Mr. W in an effort to break his hold. I was so impressed. I’ll end on that note. 🙂

Mr. W has said before that he’s “always” gotten into trouble for his exaggerations. For saying things like, “You always…”, “You never…” etc. I’ve yelled at him before for that, too. I don’t like being accused of things that aren’t true and 2 times does not an “always” make.

Earlier this evening, we had dinner with Allie at Claim Jumper. Allie spent a good part of the time chanting about wanting to get out of her high chair, and/or to go outside and play. “Allie can’t get out. Allie can’t get out. Allie go outside. Allie go outside.” We didn’t cave. Suddenly, she said sadly, “Allie never never go outside. Never never never go outside. Allie never never go outside.” I told her to stop exaggerating, she’s outside plenty.

Then on the walk home, she pointed at stores we passed and said, “Allie never go in there. Allie never go in THERE. Allie want ice cream. Allie never eat ice cream. Allie never go in there.”
In amazement and awe, Mr. W asked me, “Where did she learn that?”
I looked at him incredulously and said, “From YOU!”

They’re always listening, parents. Always always always.

P.S. Today marks her least nutritious meal she’s ever had: restaurant chicken nuggets (but made with real chunks of chicken breast), mac-n-cheese, bits of carrots/peas/potato from my chicken pot pie, and a few pieces of shoestring fries. I took 80% of the fries off her plate and gave them to Mr. W. She did eat grapes, honeydew and cantaloupe for dessert, though. She tried the fries and said, “Allie like it.” She said the same thing about a tiny bite of her dada’s pickle. Crap. Well, she’s almost 2 years old, I suppose it’s inevitable that she try some of this junk, but it’s so high in sodium and so low in nutrition that I felt like the shittiest mom in the world when she stopped mid-walk on the way back and said with a sad little frown, “Allie’s tummy hurt.” I hope it was just because she was running and jumping so soon after she ate, and not because she ate total garbage. 🙁

We liked our photos shot by Kari Flores last year so much that I’d booked her again for this year. We did the shoot on Sunday in San Juan Capistrano’s historic Los Rios old town district. Allie was more temperamental than she was last year, since she’ll now exert her will just to assert her will, even if her true intentions are in line with ours. So when we asked her to smile, she said “no.” Just because she wanted to say no. Even when we make her laugh, she’ll clamp down on her lips and try hard to keep a straight face. Just because she’d previously told us she doesn’t want to smile for us. But she giggled up a storm in the car on the way back, and then declared to her dada, “Allie’s happy.”

Kari sent this “teaser” yesterday. It makes me hopeful that we have some smiley photos in the mix. 🙂

Bet you can’t tell I spent 40 minutes curling my hair that morning with a curling iron.

To address Allie’s eye issue, Mr. W and I took Allie to her first pediatric ophthalmologist appointment yesterday. The doctor was a young(ish) Indian guy and I liked him. Could’ve been one of my UCLA friends. By that I mean he seemed cool and was one of my generation. Allie did really well, was cooperative, even with the dilation eye drops. The nurse was expecting a full-on fight and tantrum but the most Allie did was whimper, and even held the Kleenex to dab her own eyes after each of the drops (3 in each eye, 30 secs apart). So here’s the diagnosis.

Like I thought, Allie has intermittent exotropia. This only happens when she’s tired or otherwise not “feeling it.”
Unlike what I thought, the doctor says it’s alternating, meaning both eyes turn outward, and that it only appears to me like only her right eye turns out because Allie favors her left eye. So she’ll fix on the image with her left eye and let her right eye do its own thing.
He also found some mild hyperopia (far-sightedness) in both eyes. This could be due to her difficulty focusing inward (converging).

He said her intermittent exotropia has good control and good recovery, and that he measured the degree of outturn at 20 degrees.
Also interesting, he found no amblyopia.

His treatment plan: alternatingly patch both eyes for an indeterminate amount of time. Followup visit in 3 months.
So basically, I cover her right eye with a patch 4 hour a day on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Then I cover up her left eye with a patch for 4 hours a day on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays. She gets a break on Sundays.

We bought a box of patches on the way home and Allie allowed us to put one on her in the afternoon, and she asked me to do one, too. So I did. She kept hers on for 20-30 mins before taking it off. I was nauseated and had a headache within the first 5 mins, started to feel edgy, like I was on the verge of a claustrophobic panic attack, and my patched eye had an over-sensitivity feel going on. I wanted to rip it off immediately but kept it on cuz Allie still was going around and playing with hers on. My headache and nausea persisted the rest of the night. I still have a headache now.

Mr. W and I also spoke with 3 people who had patching done in their childhood. It didn’t correct anything for any of the 3. Two of the three, however, didn’t have what Allie has (drifting eye), but instead had what used to be referred to as “lazy eye,” where one eye’s vision was just a lot worse than the other eye. Allie’s eyesight measured at good and even between the two eyes, altho the doctor wasn’t able to tell us in the quantitative measurement of the 20/20 scale because Allie wasn’t cooperative in identifying the Allen pictures (which are used in place of letters) on the chart. At home, however, I could ask her what each image in the Allen pictures are, and she would tell me, “Birdie. Hand. Bike (it was actually a stick figure of a car, but I can see why it looks more like a bike with a steering wheel). Telephone (this surprised me cuz it was a rotary phone and she’s never seen anything but cell phones in the house). Happy burday cake. Horsey.”

Christi also asked her pediatric ophthalmologist friend about Allie’s treatment plan, and the response was she would’ve done corrective eyeglasses, and that alternate patching wouldn’t have been her plan because it discourages the eyes from working together. I agree; since Allie’s problem only occurs infrequently and the eyes get a chance to cooperate most of the time, why would we make the brain separate the eyes and take away that benefit? Yeah, it’s a separate muscle training thing, but still, there’s gotta be a better way.

I’m still interested in vision therapy. Allie’s pediatric opth does SOME vision therapy, but only for older kids (age 5+) and doesn’t think it’s effective for Allie’s condition, and he pretty much said what I’d expected a Western doc to say about it, i.e. there’s no conclusive evidence it’s more effective than traditional methods, such as patching and surgery. He said he’s conservative in his approaches, so he would only do corrective glasses that force Allie’s eyes to work harder at convergence if Allie were already wearing glasses, and would only recommend surgery if her eyes were turned out more than 50% of the time. We’re at less than an hour a day of outturn presently. Probably less than half an hour. So I’ve called 2 local pediatric optometrists who do vision therapy already. One said they don’t do it for kids this young because they’re simply not old enough to follow instructions, which I understand. But the suggestion was to bring Allie to them for an evaluation in a year, since if she’s ahead of the curve in her abilities and understanding, she can start this earlier, too. The second office is going to have their vision therapy coordinator call me back and discuss. I expect this call some time today.
Earlier, a coworker came in and told me that her younger sister had much more severe exotropia in her childhood, and that instead of patching, they were recommended to take her to vision therapy in a local college of optometry/ophthalmology. It worked. The sister isn’t completely cured, just like Allie’s ped opth said she wouldn’t be, but it’s well-controlled to where the sister’s eyes are cooperative and straight all the time unless she’s exhausted, and she has no issues with 3D vision. Allie, btw, tested fine on 3D so her eyes ARE able to work together. (Doc put 3D glasses on her, showed her a picture of a fly and said, “Touch the bug’s wings.” And she swiped 2 inches above the picture.)

I have other things to blog about, such as our trip to Dallas a couple of days ago (Allie’s first plane flight, first stay in a shared room with us, first stay in a different time zone), but here’s a quickie about something else cuz I’m SO EXCITED ABOUT IT.

Every so often, I try to do the Crow Pose. Just to see if gravity still applies to me. It always did, and I would quickly, sometimes slowly, roll forward face-first into the floor. I usually catch myself before my nose makes actual impact, though. Tonight, I thought I’d try again, fully expecting the reaffirmation that yes, I am not impervious to the laws of physics.
Only…I WAS. In disbelief, I did it again. And again. And again. There were a few times I couldn’t get up because I rushed it too much, but mostly, I got up. I don’t know what stars aligned themselves tonight, how it is that I’m exempt from Newton’s principles, and this will probably never happen again after tonight, but it almost doesn’t matter, because I set up my phone’s camera timer and I GOT PROOF!

I love my yoga photos. 😀 Here are the other ones I have, in reverse-chronological order.
9-25-13, with our yoga instructor, at work:


7-4-13. I think this is some sort of Pigeon Pose variant.

6-29-13. Elephant Trunk Pose. I have short arms so you’ll have to take my word for it, but I’m off the ground.

It’s hard to get a video of Allie doing any substantial talking, because as soon as the cameraphone comes out, she goes mute. I found a way over the weekend — catch her while she’s distracted by something else, i.e. reading a book with her dada. My mom, by the way, had major objections to sharing this, since Mr. W is just in a pair of shorts, but this is posted with Mr. W’s permission. “All you see is my hairy legs,” he said.
I didn’t catch Allie saying some of my favorite things, such as “Let’s see. Hmm. How about…this one? Hmm.” But I caught a lot more stuff than I had before.

Now you can see how well you understand AllieTalk. Mr. W translates behind her for every line, tho. BTW, we don’t regularly “read” any specific book with her, since her whims on what she wants out of her vast library changes minute-by-minute, so almost everything you hear from her, we’re guessing, is stuff Jayne worked with her on. Colors, etc.