cindy's world

We met up with my cousin Jennifer, her hubby Brad, and their little girl Alexandra for dim sum last Saturday morning. I’m pretty sure that the last time we’ve all seen each other was at Alex’s first birthday party 6 months ago, so reacquainting the two little girls was overdue.

While waiting for Jen, Brad and Alex’s arrival at the Irvine Spectrum, we let Allie run around the quad by a Ferris wheel. (We’d agreed to meet in front of Capital Seafood for dim sum, but as it’s the first building nearest the street, Allie kept trying to dart toward the parking structure across the street. Kinda scary.) Allie saw a little boy about her age running around with his daddy and some other guy. She decided to follow him. When he finally saw her, he decided to chase after her, and Allie played coy, turning around and running back across the lawn, the small boy in pursuit. She climbed onto a chair, he climbed up after her, and suddenly, she decided he was in her space. I thought it was cute, though, and asked if the boy’s dad was okay if I took/posted a photo. He said it was fine and that if his wife were there, she’d be taking photos, too. So here’s Allie and Hudson.

Hudson was friendly and even hugged Allie, but she’d apparently already made up her mind.

Turns out Hudson is 18 months so he’s got 2 months on Allie, a month for each inch she has on him. =P This is starting to happen a lot.

Soon, Jennifer, Brad and Alex arrived. The two little cousins were a bit shy with each other, and Alex so shy that she didn’t want to go near Allie and wanted to be carried by her parents. Our fiercely independent girl didn’t push, but she was good running/walking on her own to the restaurant. Both girls ate pretty well, across from each other between their respective parents, and Jennifer was impressed watching Allie gobble up the extra steamed cauliflower and carrots I’d brought along. Dim sum isn’t known for being very veggie-oriented. Alex ate well on her own and can use a fork, and did resist veggies like her parents predicted. Allie ate a lot of the Chinese broccoli we’d ordered for the table. I let her sample everything, but didn’t want her to eat a ton of the sodium- and MSG-laden food. Allie didn’t much miss it.

After brunch, we tried to get the girls play together for a bit.

Alex wouldn’t get close enough for Allie to hug, so Allie hugged the nearest bush, instead.

Yes, I’ve heard jokes about her almost being a tree-hugger. I’ll have you know that while we were waiting for Jen, etc to arrive, Allie did indeed hug a few palm trees in between dancing from one music-blaring wall speaker to another to another.
With her daddy in tow, Alex got a little friendlier.

Here are the two either playing invisible soccer, or doing the kid-n-play.

They even watched a few horses go by.

When we were walking back to our cars, Alex was holding on to Jen’s hand toddling along, and Allie was running along ahead of us. I thought it would be cute to get a photo of us two mommies walking with our little girls, holding their hands, but Jennifer misunderstood me and picked Alex up. I figured a photo with us holding each of our girls is fine, too, so we took that. The girls refused to smile.

And then we moved to do the photo pose I wanted, but Alex got shy again and refused to be put down, so I didn’t get that photo. Oh, well…next time. But meanwhile, Allie decided to play Runway Model and struck a pose.

I was a little surprised at Alex being so shy since she’d been in daycare for most of her life, so I thought she’d be very social. However, her cautiousness may highlight something Mr. W is concerned about — kids in daycare deal with all sorts of little personalities, some overaggressive, and they have to know how to protect themselves. Allie doesn’t know to do that; she’ll walk up to any kid and want to share toys, give them hugs, touch their hand, and for some kids, this is invading their personal space. Mr. W is afraid that in a social setting, Allie may get picked on or pushed or something because she doesn’t know to stay away from other kids until they’re ready for her. I don’t have enough kid experience to know either way, whether it’s a learned protective behavior we’re seeing or just a personality thing. I’m not very concerned at this point. I rather like my friendly secure kid.

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.

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 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.

Allie had the typical Southern Californian weekend for most of the weekend. Mr. W had ordered a new bicycle hitch rack for the car (I think it’s a Thule) and had been itching to try it, so on Saturday morning, we drove out to the historical old town district in San Juan Capistrano, Mr. W hitched the covered kiddie trailer to his bike, and we rode along a riverbed bike path a few miles to Capistrano Beach.

It’s a pretty beach that was relatively empty at 9am, except for a 5K race going on behind us. The beach even set up a handicap access to the water’s edge.

Allie plopped herself in the sand and immediately started the now-familiar process of shoveling sand into her little bucket.

Allie had so much fun frolicking…

…and climbing…

…that she didn’t want to leave.

She was eventually cooperative when we strapped her back in her trailer for the ride back to San Juan Capistrano.

We had brunch at Sarducci’s, and on the way back to the car, Allie got to play on a playground at the park, and even got to go bouldering! She loves to climb. She’s not very good at it, yet, but she always makes the attempt.

We got home in time for Allie’s noon nap, then went to a local park and playground to let her play with other kids. Allie gravitates toward any ball and most of the kids’ parents are generous about sharing. Her daddy helped her climb more playground toys, go down slides (she now does it on her own as long as I’m at the bottom to catch if needed), pushed her on swings, and she loves steering wheels and picking up handfuls of sand to help other kids build their castles or fill their buckets. One young boy was climbing a high kids’ rock wall and made sure he called his mom or dad over before climbing each time, announcing in a well-trained manner that he will never climb without an adult present to watch him in case he falls. Something to remember when Allie’s old enough to do the same.

On Sunday morning, we took advantage of our annual pass and Allie’s current under 2 age and hit up Disneyland again. With the time difference, I woke up later than I’d wanted so we got to Disneyland at 8:30a, half an hour after it opened. But it was still enough time to tire her out, which was the goal, so that she could take her noon nap an hour early under the new time. Allie got to explore Toon Town.

She knocked on doors and rang doorbells to see what special effects are in place.

She got to drive me around on a firetruck.

She met some of the residents of Toon Town.

She accidentally drove into the mailbox of a resident.

Allie: “I’m sorry I crashed into your mailbox, Mr. Goofy.”
Goofy: “It’s okay, it’s nice meeting you anyway. I’ll see you in court.”

Allie tried to hire the firm of Chip & Dale to represent her, but no one was in, so she settled down to wait by their mail box.

Since neither Chip nor Dale showed up, she first tried hiding behind a ladder. But she remained highly visible.

She finally got the great idea that she’ll just disappear. She hid among the shipments bound for the next train.

Success! We made it home, Allie had lunch in the car on the way, and right around noon, Allie hit her nap on time and slept over 3 hours. She woke up for a whole different new adventure, one that wasn’t as fun… see the next post.

Allie’s started playing peek-a-boo while eating. It (unfortunately) goes like this:

Allie: *grabbing steamed carrots or a skinned orange wedge*
Allie: *bringing it to her eyes*
Allie: *smearing it on her eyelids and forehead while covering eyes with hands*
Allie: PEEK!

Often it goes into her hair as well, and she ends up looking like a certain scene from “Something About Mary.”

We’ve had more park time, lake time and Disneyland time recently. This one-nap thing is great. Here are some favorite photos.
Saturday, 2/23 at our Lake:
A princess needs her castle, but Allie destroys them as quickly as her daddy makes them.

The little digger experiences wet sand for the first time.

Sunday, 2/24 at Disneyland:
The weather was forecasted to be warm, but we neglected to think about what it’d be like from 8a-11:30p (before her nap), so Allie ended up underdressed in her long-sleeved onesie, dress and leggings.

So we HAD to get her a jacket. A Disney Princess jacket. One with enough room to grow in.

Even tho we rode on the Monorail, Finding Nemo Submarine ride, Storybook Land boat ride, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, the Haunted Mansion, and Pirates of the Caribbean, Allie was the most excited on the Disneyland Train. She’s learned to wave at all the people passing on the trains, stagecoaches, and rides (because people at Disneyland wave back), so she was happy to be on one. Unfortunately, after sitting idle for awhile, an announcement was made that the train would not be leaving the station after all due to injury to the conductor. Mr. W somehow learned the guy had a heart attack. So we got off. Allie was very patient and very good about having not gone anywhere, as well.

Saturday, 3/2 at Sycamore Park:
We met up with my parents for breakfast at Julie’s Cafe near their house (which service was so lacking it caused me to write a rare review on Yelp about it), then my parents suggested we go to Sycamore Park a couple of miles away.

That park contained the most intricate playground I’d ever seen, with multiple tiers of bridges and paths with play activities up and down and all over. Allie was still a little young for much of it, but she got some help from Daddy.

There are lots of surprises around the corners, such as this slanted, protruding window.

Daddy was suddenly very intensely busy for a long time. Turned out this is what he was doing…

We did find a separate toddler section, where a little girl 3-year-old was running around. Allie happily went up and said “hi,” then hugged the girl, who hugged back, then the two played together for a bit, but I didn’t photograph them in case the girl’s mom had an objection to a stranger getting a photo of her kid. So here’s daddy playing with her again.

Later that Saturday afternoon, we hit the Lake again, where Allie and her daddy were busy as crabs.

Allie had fun bringing her little bucket to the lake’s edge to fetch water for her daddy so that he could make castles for her again, although she had too much fun shaking the bucket on her way back that she spilled all the water, twice. Plus, there was a girl around 5 who settled down to build sandcastles a couple of feet from where we had set up and the girl kept panicking and freaking out anytime Allie walked in her direction, blocking her sand mounds and yelling “NO! NO! NO!”, even when Allie was just trying to get to the lake behind her, and it annoyed me, so we eventually went to play at the playground there instead. There were much friendlier and less spazzy kids at the playground and Allie made some friends. (Even that girl’s mom kept saying, “Sunshine! Stop that, it’s okay!”)

Sunday, 3/3, at Disneyland:
Yup, we hit up Disneyland again on Sunday morning, to get on rides we didn’t get to the week before. Small World finally opened up after being down for months for renovation. Allie loved it and now anytime we hum or sing “It’s a Small World,” she will bring up her hands and snap her fingers while bobbing her upper body or head left to right in time to the music. The ride was too dark for photos without flash, which was not allowed. We also went on the Alice in Wonderland ride, and on the way out, Allie thought she’d visit the Mr. White Rabbit’s house, which was just her size.

Me: Hey Allie, wanna ride the spinny teacups? It was one of mama’s favorites!
Allie: Seriously?

Allie: I’m outa here.

Thanks to the stepkidlet who is a multi-year premium passholder, we found the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh ride way in the back corner of New Orleans Square, which featured Pooh characters being carried away by balloons, balloons for Pooh’s birthday party, balloons everywhere. Allie was very happy to point out all the “bbbloon, bbbloon, bbbloon!”s to us. Outside the ride, we saw some of Pooh’s sweet props and we couldn’t resist.

Allie: Mom. Seriously. This is getting ridiculous.

The flying Dumbo ride got a “meh” rating from her.

Hubby passes on his shotgun know-how.

The littlest chauffeur in all of California Adventure. Hopefully, she doesn’t learn her driving skills from her daddy, or it will be Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride all over again.

Mr. W: Did you have fun this week?
Allie: It was acceptable, dada.

This little girl is 15 months old today.

The peach fuzz is getting longer, but even dressed like this at Schabarum Park last weekend, some older lady asked my mom whether Allie’s a boy or girl. My mom was SO offended. I guess unless a baby has long hair, people will think she’s a boy.

Allie’s main source of recreation these days are walks or trips to the park. When I took her myself last weekend, I was surprised how many people knew her (“Is that Allie? Oh, I didn’t recognize you in that hat!”) and how well she played with other kids. She even knew what sand toys were as she picked up some other kid’s rake and started clawing lines into the sand, then put the spade in the kid’s bucket a few times, imitating the sand-scooping action (she doesn’t have the coordination for actual sand transfer down, yet). I was also pleased how well the kids at the park shared their toys and played together.

She loves kids, and when she sees anyone under the age of 13, she’d point and say, “Baby!” This offends the age-sensitive 6-year-olds, but I thought it was funny when another toddler at Costco pointed at Allie and did the same thing. Allie looked a little stunned. Allie will walk up to any kid and make serious eye contact, and try to touch the kid’s hand, cheek, or sometimes foot if the other kid’s sitting in a stroller. It’s very sweet how she doesn’t have any inkling of possible rejection, or any insecurity about walking into a bad situation. At the park, she’ll just go. She doesn’t turn to see if we’re following. And as much as she now loves to play with the sand, she still loves the swing. She’ll slide if she’s sitting on one of our laps.

Still only has 15 teeth, still missing the lower right molar. But that’s okay, she eats raw apple slices (skinned and cored) by crunching the pieces between her front teeth or her left side. Allie still isn’t what I’d call picky with food, but she’s starting to see the entertainment value of food now, much to our chagrin. When the edge of hunger is relieved, she’ll start pulling food out of her mouth to examine it, test its texture by squishing it between her fingers and smearing it on her tray. Sometimes she’d flick it and it’d go flying. If it lands anywhere on her tray, she will pick it up again and eat it, but it does slow down the whole meal process quite significantly. Stuff like oranges also gets very, very messy. With edamame, she likes to put it on the tray, push her index finger down on it until the bean comes out of the skin. Then she’ll eat the skin, then separate the two halves of the bean, then push them around on her tray like little cars. And then when the bean’s nice and cold and dirty, she’ll offer it to me. Sometimes I let her feed me some because she finds it so gratifying. Since she’s napping, I made her a big pot of pasta to freeze for future servings. It’s chopped organic veggies (broccoli stalks, carrots, kale, fennel) with a quinoa/corn pasta spiral in roasted tomato and red pepper bisque (low sodium, of course). I thought about how my dream for this kid is to have her one day say, “Ooh! Kale and fennel! Yummy!” instead of what I’d seen other kids do: “What is THAT? *sniffing suspiciously* It smells disgusting. *poking with a fork* Ew.” Okay, maybe the first scenario isn’t entirely realistic, but if the second one happens, I’d kick her ass.

Allie imitates sounds but doesn’t seem to have added many words to her spoken vocabulary lately. But she’ll hum, sing “la la la” and snap her fingers when she hears music or someone else singing.

Her focus, as it seems to have always been, is still on motor skills. Earlier this week, Mr. W left Allie in the living room (which has basically been turned into her fenced-off playroom) for a moment and when he returned, she was sitting on the couch. Tall babies. *sigh* This makes me very nervous about her crib situation.

Her one mid-day nap is going pretty well. Her latency period is shorter these days, probably because she’s more tired by the time she goes to bed. Now she’ll fall asleep in 10-15 minutes (sometimes less) instead of 45. Her noon naps are still approximately 2 hours, longer with me, sometimes shorter with Jayne.

We’re not potty training, exactly, but since my parents bought her a Disney princess potty for Christmas (my mom thinks I should’ve potty trained her before she turned a year), we pulled it out and put it in her bathroom when we noticed that if she ran around with her diaper off before her bath, she will always stand by the side of the bathtub and pee on the floor. She must then have some control/awareness of it, right? Allie was at first scared of the chair with the big hole in the middle she could fall in, but now we let her sit on it and make the magical flushing sound with the plastic gemstone handle, and altho she hasn’t peed in it, yet, and I don’t know how to tell her it’s for peeing, she now enjoys sitting on her “throne” during bathroom time. We placed it across from the adult toilet so that I’ll sit on the toilet to show her what it’s for (pretending), and she’ll turn her back to her little toilet, put her hands on my knees, slowly back up and keep checking to see the toilet by bending and looking between her legs, then lower herself onto the toilet by steadying herself with her hands on my knees. Then she’d sit there looking up at me with a big smile, as if to say, “This is fun! I’m sitting down, too!”

Re bathroom time, I can’t get her to clamp her teeth and open her lips so that I could brush the front of her teeth. She’ll do the “aaah” thing and let me brush her tongue, but I can’t get the toothbrush to the front surfaces without her pushing away. Something to work on.

Meanwhile, the days march on with lots of laughter and discovery.

Yesterday was a court holiday for me. Thank you, Mr. Lincoln! Mr. W took a personal day off from his work so that we could hang out and celebrate Valentine’s Day early. We still had Jayne come at her regular time (which is getting later and later :/ ) to take care of Allie.

The first thing we did was hit the gym. It’s been too long and too sporadic for me. I felt really good working out and was happy doing it, like I did the last time I worked out before that, and thought once again about how I really should regularly return to the gym. I’ve just gotta figure out when/how. We used to gym during lunchtime on weekdays, but Mr. W isn’t so much into it anymore. He’d rather use that as “lunch date” time since with Allie we can’t go on regular evening dates or outings. I’m considering doing Insanity on my own at work during lunch, but Mr. W isn’t happy to lose his lunch dates.

After the gym, Mr. W found a hotel restaurant that makes sustainable food dishes, so off we went to try out 6ix. He had the breakfast buffet which I thought was just standard continental breakfast hotel stuff, and I had corned beef hash which had 2 poached eggs. I wasn’t sure if corned beef hash was something I’d like, and altho I was pleasantly surprised to find it’s not overly salty like I’d expected, it wasn’t anything to write home about. The smoked salmon and lox from the buffet bar that Mr. W got, however, was excellent, and also not overly salted/smoked.

And then we went to the “pièce de résistance” of our day: Disneyland. We now know our upcoming vacation dates for the year, and were considering a “stay-cation,” as he put it, instead of a trip somewhere far. Mr. W thought it may be fun to take Allie to Disneyland/California Adventure for a few days in the mornings when the crowds aren’t bad, and have her back in time for her noon nap. And then for a few more days, we can say in San Diego for the San Diego Zoo. Of course this means annual passes would be needed. So after years of not having annual passes, Mr. W and I got a lower-level annual pass for each of us yesterday. The price had almost tripled since our last pass-holding about 5 years ago. Over $350 per person! Good Goofy and Oh My Mickey! We opted not to add on more money for included parking, so we just parked in the area for Downtown Disney and ordered a drink each at the Uva Bar for the parking validation. The two drinks cost $30, so actually, we may has well have paid for parking that day and saved ourselves the calories. =P

Disneyland and California Adventure was fun. We only rode the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Toy Story’s Astro Blasters, and a new Little Mermaid “underwater” ride, since the lines were irresistibly short. The purpose of the trip was mainly a scouting mission to check out the new Cars Land (meh) in California Adventure and to see where we would take Allie so our future trips with her would be efficient.
I’ve never noticed how many babies were at Disneyland before. Or maybe there are more babies there now than there used to be (they’re free until age 2). I watched a mom buy a Mickey-head-shaped ice cream sandwich and feed it to her baby in the stroller. The kid couldn’t have been more than 7-8 months old, and it wasn’t like the mom was eating the ice cream herself. She seemed to have bought it solely for the baby, who didn’t even seem particularly interested. She opened her mouth, but didn’t know how to bite down on the sandwich, so she closed her mouth again, and when the mom kept trying and the baby got some ice cream, she kind of pulled away from the coldness and made a face. Mom kept trying to feed it to her. I don’t know what the point is. Isn’t it good to keep the junk food away from the baby when the baby isn’t even asking for it, yet? When we left the area, the baby had taken a few bites the mom was still trying to get more in the baby’s mouth. It was at Disneyland that I had first seen baby bottles filled with Coke, too.

After Disneyland, we got home early to snatch up a crabby Allie (she only napped an hour, even tho she normally naps less with Jayne than with us for whatever reason) and a yowling Dodo and had a family trip to the vet. It was a long-overdue visit so the vet could teach us how to administer shots to Dodo to help with his severe anemia. Thankfully, Mr. W said he could do the shots. I didn’t think I’d heard right when he first said it, and I made him confirm it. He thinks shots are easier than administering liquid meds into Dodo’s mouth which Mr. W has always refused to do. Granted, the shots are a once-a-day, every-other-day thing for a 2-week course, so it’s only 6 shots, and the meds are twice a day, every day, 5 oral syringes’ worth daily. But I still have the heebie jeebies about stabbing living things with needles. The vet demonstrated for Mr. W with a saline shot into the skin of Dodo’s upper back, Mr. W did a practice shot with the saline, and then he did a “real” shot with the medication. Dodo was great and very tolerant, but I did see him flinch when Mr. W stabbed him. 🙁 My poor baby boy.

“Hey mommy.”
“Yes, Allie?”
“Do you know what today is?”
“It’s Saturday.”
“More than that, it’s Lunar New Year’s Eve! It’s almost the Year of the Snake!”
“Oh, is that why you made me wear this today?”
“Yes, mommy, it sure is. Now let’s wish your blog readers a Happy New Year!”

“Gong xi fah tsai!”

Yesterday for Allie’s second Chinese New Year’s Eve (see her first here), we met up with my parents and grandma in Irvine for dim sum. Allie was at first a little pensive that her dim sum experience would be like last time.

But it wasn’t. We let her have some dim sum. Those molars came in handy. She didn’t seem bothered by the MSG, but I limited her food anyway, making sure she had a full breakfast before leaving so what she had was just a snack. She behaved pretty well at the restaurant, altho she kept freaking my grandma out because she’d lean back in her chair to look up at the ceiling decorations, and my grandma thought she would flip herself out of her high chair. Allie ate everything we placed in front of her — sticky rice, shrimp, egg tart, those long flat noodle things that they wrap shrimp in, steamed veggies and meatballs. After lunch, her grandpa told her shocking secrets about what was really in those mystery meatballs.

Then we all came back to our house. My grandma and parents had Allie distribute the red envelopes. “Give this to Dada.” “Give this to Mama.” “Give this to Po-Po.”

So Allie did; she brought envelopes to Tai-Po. She brought envelopes to Gong-Gong.

Here she is bringing me one.

It wasn’t until we checked our envelopes after everyone had left that we realized my grandma had lost her mind. She’s on a fixed income (collecting social security and a meager teacher’s retirement salary) and gave me, Mr. W and Allie an envelope each. I was already shocked at the amount in mine and Mr. W’s, and then the amount in Allie’s was more than triple ours. We put the cash aside in an envelope labeled “Money to Return to Grandma (Slowly).” Because if we try to just push it back at her, she’d be offended. So we’ll have to wait for special occasions for which she CAN’T return a red envelope, such as her bday, to give her this crazy amount of money back. We may have to split it up between several occasions, though, or it’d look suspicious. Christmas, Mother’s Day, etc. But she’d still know it’s the same money being pushed around. Such is the Chinese way. =P

It’s nice having just one nap a day so we have so much time to do stuff in. I think Allie still gets sleepy around her usual morning nap time, but we try to be out so she’s distracted and would stay stimulated. We go to Costco, play at the park, have brunch out. And then we give her an earlier lunch (around 11:30a) and then put her in her crib early (around noon). She now takes less than 10 minutes to fall asleep, where before her latency time was more like 30-45 minutes. I used to think there was a problem that she wasn’t immediately zonking out until I read that the average well-rested toddler plays in their crib for half an hour before putting him/herself to sleep.
With me, Allie would typically sleep 2.5-3 hours or more in total, but for some reason, with Jayne she’s getting 1.5 hours or so.
The only weird thing about this nap from my experience is that during her usual brief wake-ups between sleep cycles, when she’d roll and switch positions and go back to sleep every half hour or so, now she wakes up and WAILS. It doesn’t last long, and she’s usually back to sleep in a minute or two after she lays back down, but I don’t know why it’s such drama when she’s up in between her natural sleep cycles now. So it’s not uncommon for 2-3 stand-up-and-wail sessions for a couple of minutes each to happen during each nap from what I’ve experienced.
I haven’t seen this adversely affect her night sleep at all. She does drop to sleep at bedtime faster since she’s up for a longer period of time after her noon nap and has actually fallen asleep more than a few times nursing and was transferred into her crib asleep. She still may wake briefly to switch positions between sleep cycles, but it’s silent and she’s barely awake when she moves around and resettles. She’d usually be asleep close to 7p and wake up on her own a little after 6a. So it’s been really nice.
Some moms have told me, when Allie was months old, that “all” babies stop sleeping through the night at 9, 10 months and again at 14-18 months, but so far, so good. Those mommies that have told me this opted not sleep train their babies and they co-slept, so I’m not sure if that may have something to do with their experiences. I don’t know why co-sleeping babies would wake up during the night; I would’ve thought feeling mommy and daddy asleep next to them would lull them back to sleep. But we’ve never co-slept so I have no idea. I wouldn’t have been against co-sleeping, but I never considered it because Mr. W was adamantly against it from the beginning, and this is an issue you need both parents onboard for.

Allie was put in her crib earlier at noon, was asleep before 12:15, and 20 minutes in, she sat up and wailed a couple of times. Then she looked around, stunned, pulled her blanket up to herself and hugged it while it was all bunched up, then rolled to her side, and went back to sleep, all within 1 minute. It’s now been 54 total minutes of sleep time. If she wakes up by 2:30 or so, we should be able to visit with Rebecca at the coffee shop. 🙂