cindy's world

When we got home after work yesterday, Jayne told us that Allie tried to vault out of her crib after her nap. :/ Allie customarily gets 15 minutes post-nap to hang out in her crib and do her own thing, “own thing” meaning, primarily, to poop. She’d stay contentedly in there much longer, but we don’t want her to sit in her own poop longer than that. In was in these 15 minutes that Jayne looked over at the babycam monitor and saw that Allie’s upper body was on the wide front rail of the crib with one leg already over. She needed only to lean a little more and she’d be on the floor. Jayne freaked out and sprinted for Allie’s room, screaming “ALLIE!” on the way to stop Allie. She said when she burst in there, Allie was so startled and felt so reprimanded that she (Allie) was heaving and sobbing. Jayne said it took awhile for her own heart rate to go back to normal. Now that’s a caring nanny. 🙂

Jayne thought Allie may have gotten an extra height boost from stepping on the crib bumpers that line the perimeter of Allie’s crib. I’ve seen Allie step on them before but didn’t think it’d occurred to her to use it as a step-stool. I was hoping this was an isolated incident so that we could leave the bumpers on a bit longer, since Allie sometimes wedges her head in the soft corner and/or hangs a foot out between the crib slats in her sleep.

But she’d already used the front part of the crib rail like a ballerina leg-stretching bar recently (which she did while I was in there so I just pushed her foot off), and the entire evening with us, she was behaving like a little monkey, climbing onto the La-Z-Boy, climbing onto the back rest of the La-Z-Boy to look out the window behind it, climbing in and out of her tub. When Mr. W said we need to take the bumpers off, I didn’t protest. Luckily, Allie nursed herself to sleep last night and stayed asleep (for the 4th night in a row) when transferred to her crib, so she didn’t notice that the bumpers were gone. Her crib looks so roomy and bare to me now.

If Allie is still able to get herself over the rail, we’re going to have to change the rail to make her bed a toddler bed, with lower front rails and an opening about halfway in, so that she doesn’t hurt herself dropping from the top of the crib rail to the floor when she’s in there alone. I have no clue how to get her to stay in bed during her long latency periods if she has direct access out, so I’m hoping this stage stays away a little (a lot) longer. She can and does open her bedroom door unassisted, but that’s less of an issue to me than her pulling out all her dresser drawers and hurting herself while we sleep.

Last night, just in case, I pulled the little plastic footstool away from the side of her crib and more toward the center of the room. Just in cause she’s still able to vault over the crib rails and fall on the stool. She did fine on Night 1 of the debumperized bed, staying asleep until Mr. W woke her up to get ready this morning, so she probably never noticed the bumpers were gone. Hopefully the nap goes well today.

Just this past weekend, Mr. W was saying that Allie’s “behind” in her developmental abilities because she doesn’t know her colors, yet. He blames that on the fact that we see her approximately half an hour in the mornings before work, and an hour and a half in the evenings after work. “See, we need to retire so we can spend more time with her and teach her things,” he declared in his never-ending string of arguments for getting me to quit my job.
He brought this up to Allie’s nanny Jayne on Monday, and Jayne said, “She’s gotta know her colors — we go over them all the time. She’s just not saying them.”
And then Tuesday morning, as Allie and I cuddled up in the La-Z-Boy recliner in her room about to nurse, I pointed at the colorful elephants on her fleece pajamas and said, “Elephants!” She looked down at her pajamas. I pointed at the elephants floating on the mobile in her room and said again, “Elephants!”
Allie pointed at a pink elephant on the leg of her PJs. “Mmm?” she asked me.
“Pink elephant,” I said. She pointed at another elephant on her knee. “Green elephant,” I said.
Then she pointed at a blue elephant on her thigh. “Boo?”
“That’s right, that’s blue!” I said, wondering if it were a coincidence.
She pointed at other elephants on her PJs, asking with her inquisitive “Mmm?” and I in turn named each of their colors. Then she returned to the blue elephant, pointed, and said, “Boo?” It’s not a coincidence! Encouraged by my enthusiasm, she then placed a tiny fingertip on the blue elephant’s eye. “Eye?” I was very happy yesterday morning.

This evening, when we returned home after work, Jayne excitedly told us that Allie had pointed to a pair of socks Jayne had been holding in her hand and said, “Yellow.” I’ve never heard her say “yellow” so I don’t know how she pronounces it. Jayne said she’d looked down at the socks and only then realized she was holding yellow socks, so it was completely unprompted.

In your face, dada!

Speaking of face, Allie in the past couple of weeks has enjoyed pointing out facial features to us. “Eye?” she’d say, poking herself in the eye. Then she’d point to my eye.
“Mama’s eye,” I’d tell her.
“Mama?” she’d confirm, poking me in the eye. And then she’d move on. “No?” she’d say, pointing at her nose. Then she’d point to my nose. Then she’d stick her finger in her mouth and say, “Teeth!” “Ear” comes out more like “Eee.” Eyebrow to her is just “bwow.” Then she’d jab at her neck and say, “Nock nock nock!” After that she’ll jab my neck and say the same thing. She also goes through this with her stuffed animals. She points out her bear’s eyes, nose, ears.

Just a couple of days ago, I finally realized that the “mock nee” she says while in her room, as she’d said for almost a couple of months now, refers to her singing dancing sock monkey that was a gift from Auntie Maggie, sitting on her dresser. She says it like it’s two different words, but always says it together, so I don’t know why I didn’t think to put “mock nee” together for “monkey” before now. We also realized last week that the “me me” she’s been saying for weeks didn’t mean herself; she means Minnie Mouse. Maybe she’s been saying her colors all along and we just didn’t understand her. Maybe she’s been saying tons of other words that we still haven’t understood, yet. Maybe she’s been reciting Hamlet‘s “To be or not to be” soliloquy for weeks when we thought she was just humming and babbling to herself.

Okay, that’s a little unrealistic. More likely, she says “blue” and “yellow” because she’s aspiring to be a Bruin, like her mama.

What color’s the egg, Allie?

Here are some Easter photos and videos, a week late. =P

Mr. W and I went grocery shopping on Saturday, the day before Easter, and he talked about wanting to buy pre-boiled, pre-dyed eggs. There’s no such thing, I’d said. Half the fun/point of Easter egg hunts is egg creation, isn’t it? At least, that’s what my inexperienced little Asian perspective of a mostly-Western tradition tells me. I’d always wanted to dye/make Easter eggs as a kid, and since we’re Chinese in a (mostly) culturally Chinese immigrant household growing up, I couldn’t explain to my parents why I’d want to make a mess like that with perfectly good food. When I moved out after graduating college, I saw a P.A.A.S. egg-dying kit at the grocery store and bought it, wanting to add the missing piece back into my childhood, but never got around to even opening the package. I may have read the instructions in the back and decided it was too much trouble for just myself. Mr. W said that now that we have a baby, we need to give her these quintessential childhood experiences so I would have to get my virgin feet wet in egg dye. I sort of rolled my eyes about the hassle (since she’s still too young to really appreciate or participate in egg dying), but a small part of me was interested, too. Well, guess what we saw in the grocery store.

Gosh darn it, but he was right. We get to be lazy parents for another year. We tell ourselves NEXT year, we’ll really do it “right” because she would be old enough to enjoy and “help.”
Allie’s paternal grandparents had come to visit a couple of weekends ago and brought her her first Easter basket (I didn’t know about Easter baskets full of goodies being a “thing” until, like, last year, either. Apparently these Western kids get goodies, gifts and junk food in as many occasions as excited parents can muster up, often well into the kids’ adulthood. I wasn’t spoiled like that. I’m a little envious.). In it were a pair of small bouncy chick and bouncy bunny wind-up toys, hairbands/bows for her head, and this gorgeous little Easter dress that we put her in. Her nanny left a surprise Easter basket for her, as well, full of sand toys and a book, and we used her nanny’s felt Easter bag for her egg hunt. Shoes and basket from her nanny, dress from her paternal grandparents, hat from me ($1 at Target), and here’s her ensemble:

While my parents, her gong-gong and po-po looked on, Allie went to the backyard where Mr. W had randomly placed the eggs on the lawn, and Allie had her first Easter egg hunt. (We knew we didn’t want to take her to a public one just yet; I’d heard too many stories about parents getting into fights with other parents over egg hunts that somehow became a aggressive contact sports with audience participation.)

Allie enjoyed herself so much, and kept saying “More? More?” that her dada simply took the eggs out of her basket and tossed them back on the lawn in places where she had her back turned. It was, like, perpetual eggstravaganza.

My dad, her gong-gong, was super-impressed at how she knew to pick up the eggs and place them in her basket. “How she know to do that?” I said that based on this 20-second video my mom shot, it was because they were all shouting directions at her.

After the egg hunt, dada cracked open an egg and fed it to Allie as a snack.

Allie: “Wait a minute…so you’re telling me that I have to eat ALL that stuff I picked up off the ground?”
BTW, yes, the swing outside has become her outdoor high chair. Works super-well. Then we had a quickie parents-and-Allie portrait…

…and then we all went to dinner at Claim Jumper. Stepkidlet came along. She’s really good at self-portraits, even group ones.

Did I tell you guys Allie’s a mommy’s girl right now? Here’s 30 seconds of proof. She hugs me, pats my back, but when Mr. W asks for a kiss, she shakes her head. My mom then asked for a hug and Allie knew that she couldn’t reach my mom from across the table, so she pretended to reach up and hug my mom (hugging the air in front of her) as a joke. And then when invited to kiss me, she hugged me again.


The stepkidlet, who filmed the above video, laughed and joked about how Allie didn’t want to hug Mr. W, but then we passed Allie over to the other side of the booth, the stepkidlet asked for a hug, and got the same head-shake. “HA, not so funny anyMORE when it happens to YOU, is it?!” Mr. W gloated. Stepkidlet good-naturedly found that really funny, as well. In case you’re viewing this off an Apple device and can’t view videos, here’s a still of a hug. 🙂

Awww. 😀 Good note to end the post on. heh heh.

I’m kind of known to my friends as the girl who never pays full price for big-ticket items. Cars, cruises, hotels, jewelry. I’m not going cheap imitation — what I get is the same as what others get; I just don’t pay nearly as much. Some of it is luck in timing (thank you, Universe!), another part is knowing where to look and how to purchase. In the jewelry department, I’ve just received Item #2 of my Top 2 Best Purchases, Ever. You can see both #1 and #2 in this photo:

Here’s how I did it:

Item #1: The diamond chevron wedding band.
This is, of course, #1 in chronology, but it’s up in the air whether it’s better than #2. Mr. W had spent a small fortune on the engagement ring (also pictured), so I was determined not to create another giant expense on the wedding band. It was hard finding a band that worked well up against a 3-sided engagement ring anyway, so I only perused here and there, thinking if I didn’t see anything I liked, I’d just have the elaborate engagement ring double as a wedding band. A couple of friends with uniquely-shaped engagement rings had done just that.
On a drive to Vegas to visit Mr. W’s parents, we decided to make a stop at an outlet mall to stretch our legs and have lunch. We wandered by Ultra Diamonds, a retail chain jewelry store that I’m fairly familiar with, just to browse. This white gold and diamond chevron ring was deeply discounted on clearance. The price was still well into the hundreds, but I asked to see it anyway, having explained the hard-to-fit problem to the store clerk. I put the engagement ring and diamond band together, and the two matched up like they were meant to be a set. The dip in the band was at the exact right place, had the exact right width, and the little bead-set round diamonds were even of a similar color, size, shape, and setting as the diamonds on the sides of my ring (you can’t see the sides of the engagement ring in this photo, but you can see it here.).
The store clerk (I think he was the manager at that branch) told me they were doing a promotion where if we sign up to be on their emailing list, we would receive a coupon code for $50 off any purchase. He suggested Mr. W sign up, too, so that we would get $100 in discounts. I asked if this store stacked discounts, and he said they did. So we put the ring on hold, signed up, and left for Vegas in order to give the coupons time to be sent. Meanwhile, I had another reason for waiting. Ultra Diamonds was a “platinum partner” of my primary credit card, which means that my cashback bonus from the card can be redeemed for a giftcard to this retailer for double its original value. I used $100 of my cashback bonus for a giftcard to Ultra Diamonds, which gave me a $200 e-giftcard. With the other $100 in the email promo coupon, we stopped by the outlet again on our drive home from Vegas at the end of our visit and not only did I get my diamond chevron band for free, but they gave me something like $7 in change back. Basically, it was like, “Here, take our jewelry, and some extra cash, too.” Better than free.

Item #2: The Solar Seiko watch.
On Sunday, my ESQ watch started doing the tick-once-every-few-seconds thing, indicating it was running out of battery. The last watch battery I’d purchased less than 2 years ago had cost a little more because it had a 3-year warranty. The problem was that I couldn’t remember what store I’d purchased the battery from, and I couldn’t find the receipt, so I wouldn’t be able to get a free battery replacement. I could just get the battery replaced at another place, but with Murphy’s Law I’d probably find the receipt right after I did that, so I would’ve voided the warranty for nothing. I started browsing for new watches online. The crystal of that ESQ watch has a big deep scratch on it, anyway. I may be in the market for another watch.
In my surprisingly difficult hunt for a simple, clean-looking ladies’ watch in silvertone (i.e., steel with no yellow gold) with a date function, I discovered Seiko’s “Solar” line. The Solar watches run on any light source, even fluorescent. The light penetrates the watch’s face and is converted to energy for a self-recharging battery that runs the watch, and it does that so efficiently that a fully charged watch will run for 6-12 months (depending on model) without another encounter with a light source. If the watch happens to die from lack of charge because, say, you left it in a closed drawer for a few years, it needs only to be exposed to sunlight, incandescent light, or fluorescent light for minutes before it jumps to life again. 1-2 minutes in sunlight equals an hour of charge if the watch needs charging; 3 hours in sunlight will fully charge the watch. My Kindle won’t even finish charging in 3 hours. Anyway, it’s very green (as in environmentally friendly) and the never-needing-a-battery-change perk appealed to me. I think houses should be powered by Seiko solar cells. As a huge bonus, I found the line to have attractive ladies’ watches with calendar dates! The only downer is that the watches with calendars are priced between $200 and $500. Kind of hard to justify spending hundreds on a new watch when a battery replacement on my current watch with another 3-year warranty costs under $25.
I went to bed to sleep on it after looking into this watch line on Monday night. Tuesday, the image of a beautiful Seiko Solar watch was “suggested” to me thanks to sophisticated web search engines remembering what I’d looked for previously. This watch had a calendar but was way dressier than my usual taste in everyday-wear watches. It also cost $425, thanks to the 24 diamonds around its bezel. I thought I’d check out my go-to discount watch site, BlueDial, for this model anyway, just for kicks. And saw that this model was on sale for $163. Wow! I’d prefer to keep it under $120, but $163 wouldn’t break me. I decided to “think about it,” and then something else caught my eye. One of the check-out options was to pay through Amazon. I do tons of shopping on Amazon and had linked two credit cards’ cashback rewards to Amazon so that my purchases there would be made strictly from cashback bonuses, i.e., free for me. If I could pay for this watch through Amazon, that must mean that BlueDial is an affiliated seller of Amazon’s, which means I could buy through Amazon and apply my cashback toward its purchase. I logged into Amazon and did a search for this watch. There it was, only 1 left through BlueDial. I threw my remaining cashback bonus at this purchase, and ended up paying…$21 and some change out-of-pocket for a $425 watch. Score!
As a bonus, this watch arrived in 2 days and I got it on Thursday. I brought it with me to work on Friday to show my favorite Family Law judge, who is a collector of high-end watches. I’d told him the story of this watch on Thursday and he’d asked me to bring the watch in after I received it, so I did. He was very impressed (although this watch is small beans compared to the $4000 Omega Speedmaster Moon Watch he’s currently on the prowl for), and said that this watch was a better deal than my better-than-free wedding band. He recommended a trustworthy local jeweler/watch repair shop to me and Mr. W and I went there at lunch to get 4 links removed from my new watch so that I could wear it. (While I was there, I also had the jeweler re-rhodium-plate my engagement ring, and they inspected and cleaned both rings for free.) The watch face is bigger than any other watch I’d owned, but that’s the current style. And my left hand is now WAY more blinged out than I’d ever thought it would be. Less than the price of a battery change.

The jeweler, a really nice guy named Raul, was very impressed with my jewelry. The engagement ring caught his eye right away when I came in, and when Mr. W told him about the heart facet in the diamond, he immediately took out his jeweler’s loupe and checked it out. He was delighted, saying he’d never seen anything like that before. Doing the inspection of the band, he noted that the diamonds are very good, as well as consistent in shape, color and quality. I told him the story of the acquisition of #1 and he was wide-eyed and more impressed. When Mr. W told him how I got an amazing deal on the watch (which is a line the shop carries, altho they didn’t have that specific model and he was very admiring of it), he guessed, “What did you pay? Let me guess, $300?” When I told him the out-of-pocket amount I paid of $21, he froze in amazement and said, “How did you do THAT? I couldn’t even do that when I liquidated!” referring to when he was manager of a top-of-the-line fine jewelry chain that has since ceased to exist after a court-ordered liquidation. Hee hee!

BTW, I’d found the watch battery receipt and had gotten my other watch’s battery replaced for free. Now I have 2 working watches, which is good, because I probably don’t want to wear my diamond watch all the time for casual or athletic encounters, even tho it’s waterproof up to 100 meters.

The stepkidlet took this photo of Allie on Easter Day (Sunday).

Simple photo, not much to the composition. Allie’s just standing and smiling in the living room holding her Easter basket, ready to go in the backyard for her first egg hunt. But here’s what it took to GET that shot!

Crazy, huh? The things we have to do for kid photos…

Here are two favorite videos, sent by my mom, to illustrate some of the stuff I was talking about in my last post.

This is Allie doing the slide on her own.

Photo Sharing – Video Sharing – Photo Printing
And this is Allie in her first co-ed soccer game with some kids from my parents’ neighborhood. (She’s the youngest one by FAR; the next one up is 3 years old.)

Photo Sharing – Video Sharing – Photo Printing
I found the last one HILARIOUS cuz Allie’s just following the kids running around, and at one point she gets distracted and wanders off the “field.” One of the older kids tries to get her back on track and points out the ball to her, but she doesn’t see it and goes the wrong way. And then she puts out her hands in a shrug and says, “Ball?” Like, Where’s the ball? And then she decides it’s more fun to march to the beat of her own drum anyway.

Baby-boo is 16 months old today!

We celebrated by doing one of Allie’s favorite things: taking a bike ride to the beach.

Allie loves this baby seat, the Ibert. Mr. W did a lot of research and this came highly recommended. Not bad at about $80, easy to install and to remove if Allie isn’t going to be riding with him. Her legs don’t get in the way kicking. She feels nice and secure with the snap-down bar and the straps. She loves that thing so much that the other day, when it was time to get her out of the bike, she protested, and pulled the bar back down and snapped it closed herself, holding it down with her hands so Mr. W couldn’t lift her out. He thought that was hilarious. This also gives her more visibility than pulling her in the bike trailer, and allows more interaction between the rider and the baby. The trailer is good for less ideal weather, longer rides, or multiple/bigger kids. The extra interaction is how Mr. W discovered that Allie hums when riding, and occasionally says, “Wheeee.” She also points out stuff to him as they go.

Allie vocabulary seems to have blossomed this month. She uses words we didn’t even know she knew. Walking through the garage, she pointed at our bikes mounted on the wall and said, “Bike?” We thought Jayne pointed out our bikes to her when they would leave for their stroller walks to the park by exiting the garage, but Jayne said she never did. “We see other kids ride bikes, though, and I’d tell her to look at the kids on their bikes.” Sure enough, Allie points and says “bike” whenever she sees anyone ride by on a bicycle. Earlier in the week, she pointed up and said, “Moon.” There was indeed the moon hanging in the sky. We theorize that she got that from our readings of “Goodnight, Moon,” because each time she points out the moon, it would be followed by a wave and a “bye-bye.” Riding on the bike, each time we pass a playground, she’d point and say, “Pock!” (park) and whimper in protest when we wouldn’t stop. We took her to my parents’ house this morning and she got to play most of the morning at the playground across the street from their house. When we left, she said waved at the direction of the park and said, “Bye-bye pock.” Today, she called her snack smoothie a “smeemee” and pointed whenever she was ready for more. She also says more, although it comes out more like “mo.” She attempts to emulate words more, saying “beet” when I fed her beets. She got a playful glint in her eye earlier when she emptied all the blocks out of the wooden box they come in and said, “Hat,” then turned the box upside down and put it on her head. Also today, she pointed up at the wallpaper trim of Pooh and friends in her room and said, “Pooh.” Even when she’s not talking, we’ve all been surprised recently by how much she apparently understands. “Hold on to the swing,” “throw the ball,” “put that rock over there,” “put this shirt in the hamper,” “blow a kiss,” “where’s mama’s eyebrow?”, “pick up that hat and bring it to me,” “blow this dandelion fluff.” She did it all.

In the car this morning coming home, after playing at the park, I noted the glazed look on her face and said to Mr. W, “She’s pooped.” Allie snapped out of her reverie, looked at me with a surprised expression, moved her seat belt buckle aside, pointed at her butt/diaper, and said, “Poo?” I laughed.

She takes her single nap at noonish, and we can’t figure out why she’ll sleep over 2 hours with us and about 90 minutes with Jayne. I’m thinking Jayne talks on the phone when Allie’s napping and Allie can hear it. Allie still nurses twice a day, about 10 minutes in the morning after she wakes up and 20 minutes before she goes to bed.

She’s still a mama’s girl. We took her for a quick visit to Dwaine’s before getting to my parents’ house, and as she’d only been there once, she was very shy and clung to me. We did manage to get a picture, though.

If she’s scared or hurt, dada isn’t enough, she verbally would request me. Most of the time, if she’s with Mr. W so I could get something done, I can’t walk by her without her dropping whatever she’s doing and whining until I pick her up or she gets to follow me around. I consider this only fair given that for the first almost-year of her life, she was totally daddy’s girl. As long as she’s got better things to do, however, she’ll let others watch her without me. At the playground by my parents’ house today, I wasn’t there half the time, and she had a blast playing with some other kids who were there, chasing around a ball, being pushed by grandma and grandpa on the swing, and she realized she could climb up a toddler section on her own, walk across the short platform, and sit at the edge of a small slide, push off, scoot herself off the slide the rest of the way, and get down all on her own. She’s on her way to independence.

Jayne reports that Allie is usually the best-behaved girl at the park; she’d run up to strange kids and play with them, help them put sand in their buckets, touch them and hug them. The problem are the mean kids who would push her away and the other day, Jayne let Allie crawl into a playground tunnel after a little boy, but got up to check on them, and saw the little boy in the tunnel trying to step on Allie’s fingers. Mr. W is a little concerned that because Allie doesn’t interact much with other little kids (like siblings), she doesn’t learn to be wary of kids so she’ll get abused when she eventually goes into daycare or preschool. I won’t worry about that, yet. For now, I’ll just enjoy the fact that my baby is friendly and loving and loves to help and share. She’s big enough to stand her ground if she needs to, and besides, both Dwaine and Andrae had offered to give her karate lessons when she’s older. 🙂

My judge needed to work on some stuff that had an impending deadline, so he took a vacation day to come in to work. For him, this means that since he’s technically “on vacation,” he won’t be sent new hearings and he could put all his attention on the deadline stuff uninterrupted. For me, however, this means I can be floated to fill in for anyone, since my courtroom is technically “dark,” or not open for business. Usually I dread these days cuz this is how I ended up nearly locked out of the parking structure (while my car was locked in it) in Compton after hours, how I had various days from hell including this one in Torrance Court, and why I cried when I was very pregnant and I was told to take public transportation to Compton Court to fill in.

Today, however, I was floated out to a judge just upstairs in the building whom I like, and that courtroom had an easy enough morning that I was able to bring more pertinent work with me and finish it up before anything happened in that judge’s courtroom. We ended up getting a 1-count child molestation jury trial, and we started the rather difficult task of picking a jury (since this is a sensitive issues to many people). The judge in his usual style jokingly picked on me, and laughed or played along when I’d occasionally dare make a comeback comment. I had a great time, made even more interesting because at lunch, a film crew came through to film a courtroom scene segment for a program that the local law enforcement, fire department, and some parent groups were putting together for high school kids for prevention of drunk driving. This judge did a cameo, playing himself as he sentenced one of the high school kids in the hypothetical scenario they were depicting to the high-term of 10 years in state prison for vehicular manslaughter. The bailiff also did a cameo, walking in with the student in handcuffs and chains, and I was just there as a prop at the clerk’s desk so it looks like the courtroom is in full swing. I asked the director/cameraman if I could snap a photo of the behind-the-scenes as they set up a shot, and he said sure, as long as I don’t capture his bald spot. We all laughed, and I thought, “I don’t even see a bald spot.” So I took this one really quick.

It wasn’t until way later after work when I examined this photo that I realized, oops, I did what he’d told me not to do. But it’s blurry anyway.
The people were really nice, and very grateful for our allowing them to do this and for all the advisory answers we gave them to their courtroom procedure questions. The director/cameraman invited me to go down and pretend I was setting up the shot, and he took these photos on my cameraphone for me. Ah, the eye of a professional.

An artsy angle:

I’d overheard them discussing something about a verdict scene, so I asked them if they needed sample verdict language. They said they hadn’t planned to film the verdict scene today, but asked me about it and the director had the sudden inspiration of doing a voice-over of the verdicts being read while the film showed images of photos of the defendant from baby to the mess he was in now. So I typed up the two verdicts, printed 3 copies out so the production team, school and student actor could have them as souvenirs (they requested them), and the director asked me to do the voice-over for the reading of the verdicts, since it would be my job in a courtroom anyway. I went to the mike, recorded it in one take, the director was happy and excited, and even had me turn the microphone toward the crew as they stood far away so they could chorus “yes” as voice-over pretend-jurors when I asked, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, are the verdicts that I have just read, your verdicts, so say you one and so say you all?” When the production team left, they shook my hand and promised to send copies of the finished film and asked me for the T-shirt size I wear, so I guess I’m getting a thank-you gift. I wonder what would be on the shirt.

Super-fun day at work.

My parents-in-law told hubby a couple of weeks ago, “Your daughter’s making us feel guilty for not visiting, so we’re driving down to see you guys.” We had both thought they were saying the stepkidlet may have said something to them, but turns out, they meant Allie. I’ve gotten in the habit of posting an Allie pic and having “Allie” wish people happy birthday/anniversary/whatever-the-occasion on the social networking site, and both my father-in-law and mother-in-laws’ bdays were recent. As an example, this is what “Allie” posted for her grandpa on his birthday:

“Why were you hiding behind me on my birthday, grandpa? Does that mean I should go hide behind you today? Happy birthday!”

So, last Friday, they drove all the way down from Vegas just to hang out with us for 2 days before driving back Sunday morning. Saturday morning, we took Allie for her first boat ride on our Lake. It was a chilly foggy morning, but Allie still had fun exploring the party boat.
With grandma and mama.

Mr. W was excited to see these paddleboarders do their early morning yoga on the water.

Allie even got to be captain of the boat for awhile.

Allie points out ducks to grandpa.

As they got ready to leave Sunday morning, they found the time to give their youngest grandchild a little ride on her trike.

Allie: “Hey mama, did you get lots of good photos to guilt grandma and grandpa with for the next year?”
Me: “Shhh, we’re calling these photos ‘memories.’ ”
Allie: “Blackmail material, memories, potato, potahto. You and I know what’s really up.”

It was a fun visit. Grandpa kept remarking throughout the weekend, watching Allie good-naturedly go through her routines, feed herself and cleanly eat all her food and snacks, hang out with us at restaurants, take her naps and go to bed on time without fussing, “I never thought I’d believe in giving a baby set routines, but now I’m a believer. She’s something else! What you’re doing is really working. I’ve never seen a baby behave like this.” Score. Let’s hope we can keep the charade up until and through her “Terrible Twos.” Heh heh.

Almost exactly 7 years ago to the day, I gave up on a huge 6-inch avocado I’d been coveting for weeks, waiting for it to soften and ripen, and just sawed into it with a plastic utensil knife. It almost broke my knife and wouldn’t slice through, so I had to pry it open. I found the flesh totally hard and rubbery, bitter and inedible. But the white part of the seed had popped out of the brown outer shell, looking like a little brain, so I put it in a cup of water to see what would happen. I documented that here.

The little avocado brain sprouted roots in the cup, then a stem, then leaves. Almost a year later, I realized I couldn’t just have this avocado plant sitting in a plastic cup of water forever, so with some help from my court reporter, we potted it. It became sort of a courtroom mascot, healthy, straight, with very even and regular leaves.

It grew…and grew…and people came to my courtroom to see if it were really true. Did I have an avocado plant growing from the seed that I nurtured myself from “birth?” It was so healthy it was later moved to a bigger pot and couldn’t sit on the corner of my desk anymore. People coming by asked me when we could expect avocado fruit. I didn’t know, so I asked around, and learned that there’s a “female” avocado type and a “male” avocado type, and the two need to cross-pollinate so ideally, the two would be in a grove close together with bees traveling between the two trees’ flowers. I don’t have a grove, so my dad came up with a different solution after asking a botanically-gifted buddy of his: grafting.

In the meantime, Mr. W and I got married in 2008, moved into our new house, brought the little avocado tree (it was a skinny little tree by this time) with us, and eventually planted it into our backyard.

And then 6 more years later, we finally did it! My dad came over on Sunday and did some magic with a sprig of avocado he’d collected from his buddy’s tree and left at our house to acclimate to the environment for a few months. My little avocado tree, now taller than I am and with branches, all sturdy (but still skinny) in the backyard, is no longer a virgin. My reporter and I had always referred to the tree as “he,” since the energy felt like a little boy to us, and as my dad prepared to graft, he observed that there are FINALLY flowers on the tips of the branches/sprigs. The only way to tell male from female types are from the flowers; the female flowers have a small “bud” at the base of the flower and the male does not. The avocado tree is MALE, just like we thought. (Maybe I should name him Riley.)

So now the female branch in its own little pot is bonded to the male branch. Dad is keeping the pot intact to lessen the shock and to increase chances of the branch’s survival. He’ll check back on it in a week but meantime, we were instructed to keep the little branch watered. If the graft “takes,” I guess he’ll trim the grafted part off the plant. I think.

I hope we can get a few avocados out of my plant son before Mr. W makes us move out-of-state.