cindy's world

We had a fun morning: Mr. W and I walked Allie down to the edge of our neighborhood where the bicyclists doing the Orange County Triathlon went by. These people had the presence of mind, panting and pedaling uphill, to say good morning and smile at our Allie Cat wearing a pink cat head cap with little pink pop-up ears. Well, she did look pretty darn cute. Allie got to watch the bikes zoom by and listen to another lady shouting encouragement while some guy played songs on the bagpipe to entertain the competitors at the top of the hill. It would be fun to go to the Lake and see the swimming segment of the tri, but they likely did that part already. It comes before the bike, right? Surely these people aren’t that drippy from sweat at 7am.

Allie did an older baby’s schedule yesterday: she woke up 7a, had a nap at 8:50a for about an hour and a half, had another nap at 12:50p for an hour and a half, and skipped the last nap, went to bed for the night at 6:30p. That’s what the sleep book would call ideal. 7am wakeup, nap at the right times of 9a and 1p. Last nap is optional at 4p. It wasn’t as simple as it sounds; we’d skipped the last nap because my parents had come over and we were out having all-you-can-eat sushi. The owner/sushi chef “encouraged” us to treat him to sake shots, and he may have taken a few too many. We waited too long for him to complete our order with uni, and didn’t get them. Turned out he thought he gave them to us, and that’s why we were waiting around. Anyhow, by the time we left it was 4:30p; Allie had missed the time window for the 3rd nap AND was late on the 4th feeding of the day, which bothered me because I’d planned on putting her down early for the night due to the missed nap but that’d put the 4th and bedtime feedings too close together. I ended up doing that anyhow; she ate at 5p and again at 6:15p. The 5p feeding was short, tho. I got a lot of crap from Mr. W and my parents for my pushing everyone along so I could get home do what I needed to do. “See, Allie’s fine, the only one stressed about this is YOU,” Mr. W kept saying. Yeah, well, Allie being fine is just luck and I didn’t want to push it any more than we were doing already.

Allie’s been doing other older-baby stuff, too. I put her to bed on her back as usual, and for 3 mornings in a row, we woke to see in the monitor that she was on her tummy. Then when we finished our morning stuff and went to her room to get her, she’d be on her back again. Mr. W claimed that she rolled consecutively from one end of the rug to the other, but I didn’t see it. Her aim is now lethal. You can’t carry her and not pay attention or things will get knocked to the ground or poured on herself. She picks up toys, turns them around to study different angles of them, gives them a test chew or two, and then would deliberately swing them to the edge of her high chair or carseat carrier and drop them. And when she’s nursing, she’s learned that biting me gets me to say, “No!” or pull her off or say, “Ow ow ow” or some sort of reaction. So when she’s done eating (she makes sure she’s done cuz she knows a bite means the end of the meal for her), sometimes she’ll turn slightly up to face me, and I see her eyes curl into little moons of mischief as she starts to smile. Uh-oh, here it comes. She makes eye contact, and bites down slowly, watching me. Sometimes if my reaction is strong (“NOOOO!” I’ve yelled before), she looks startled and concern laces her eyebrows as she looks at me. If I smile or talk to her, her features relax into a relieved smile. Sometimes I won’t talk to her. I’ll keep staring at her sternly. She keeps looking at me nervously, eyes wide, waiting for a sign that things are okay. And then she won’t bite me for awhile. Once this lasted almost 2 days. It’s not gonna be a fun time when the upper teeth start coming out.

Speaking of not a fun time, tomorrow is Allie’s 6-month appointment. I took the day off to give Jayne a long weekend. The appointment is at 11a, so all that means is that Allie needs to be up from her morning nap, changed and fed at 10a so we can be out the door at 10:30a. Timing should work. The problem is that the electricity company has a scheduled electricity outing for our area from 9a to 2:30p to work on some stuff. That’s a long time without babycams! That also means no air purifier/white noise running in Allie’s room during her naps that I won’t be able to monitor, AND it’s trash day so the beeping of the 3 separate trucks will be louder than normal. 🙁 I was hoping Mr. W would want to take the day off to go to the appointment with us, but he said he’s going to work. I’ll just keep reminding myself that I can do this; I did it for the first 4.5 months of Allie’s life. Note to self: park car outside in the morning so we don’t get trapped in the garage during the power outage and not be able to leave for Allie’s appointment.

Mr. W and the stepdaughter (who just got back in the wee hours of the night last nite from a 2.5 week West Coast choir tour for her university) just left to go pick up his son for a bikeride and lunch. I’m seeing this alone-time with Allie, who’s napping right now, as practice for tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll hear Allie cry without cameras, but it sucks to not reassure myself after noises and stuff that she’s still asleep by peeking on the cam. I won’t even have the computer for entertainment when she’s down. Oh, the stepdaughter just presented me with a beautiful handmade quilt she got from one of the families that hosted her West Coast tour, as a thank-you for my arranging and booking her Europe trip for her (she’s going to Germany and Spain in 3 days, lucky girl) and for Mother’s Day.

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

Here she is showing off her two teeth!

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

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

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

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

Here are 4 generations of us womenfolk.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hahaha! Oh, well.

I tried something different last nite — I moved Dodo’s food and water upstairs into our room so that there would be no reason for him to walk around the house at all hours caterwauling. It made a significant difference. I was able to close the door of our bedroom and only had to get up twice in the wee hours to bring Dodo, circling the door and meowing, to his food, before he went, “Oh yeah, I don’t need to go out,” and would eat/drink and settle back down to sleep. He still yowled once in awhile, but it wasn’t of a crazy duration since he had less surface area to proclaim as his territory. The baby slept through the night again, as did the hubby.

This Sunday, we went to Eddie and Michelle’s co-ed baby shower. It was a little challenging as the baby napped pretty poorly in the day (noises outside woke her up so that her 2 naps at home, which had been lately 1.5-2 hrs each, were only 30 mins each). She tried to sleep on the hour+ drive to Pasadena, but kept waking up when hubby made the car swerve or jolt. Nevertheless, she was a dream at the party! There were a ton of people there, bunch of kids running around and playing, the noise level was definitely higher than she’s used to. She handled it like a pro and was good natured throughout. Hubby held her the entire party, wouldn’t hand her off because he says I have her all day on the weekdays. So I enjoyed the people and the food as my arms and back got a nice break. Allie finally crashed in hubby’s arms without a fuss when she was 2 hours overdue for her afternoon nap, having been up over 4 hours straight.

I got to test-run Eddie and Michelle’s new nursery and glider for Allie’s evening meal. 🙂 They have very cute stuff. I think they’re ready to be new parents. You can see Eddie practicing right here:

Eddie still has to master the protective daddy face, though. Mr. W is an expert.

If you ask Allie to identify the newest glowing mommy-to-be, Allie would say, “It’s easy! I can do that in my sleep!”

As you can see, I was just happy to be among grownups again. Happy happy!
Don’t Eddie and Michelle look like they’re ready for Scarlett to come into the world? We need a 6th to even out this photo! Come on, Scarlett!

Here are some old friends we haven’t seen since…wow…their engagement dinner! I was just pregnant then. *reminiscing, looking at the photos from the link* Edgar and Ruby are now deeply in wedding planning mode. Big changes coming their way, too!

Michelle told me that a bunch of her friends from the party were exclaiming that Allie is sooo cute, such a pretty baby, and that she looks “just like her mom.” 😀 I’ll take that over, “That kid’s funny-looking. She looks just like her mom.”

The last change… yesterday was the first day of Daylight Savings. It’s the change known as the hated, dreaded, “spring forward” clock adjustment where we all “lose” an hour of sleep. I was trying to figure out how to adjust Allie, since she woke up at “8a” instead of 7a, altho she slept the same number of hours as she usually does. Due to all the good naps missed on Sunday, I simply put her to bed earlier than normal and she konked right out, altho that was 7:45p by clock time (or 6:45p Allie-time). I keep her bedtime flexible up to 45 minutes up and down, depending on her needs, so it’s not like she’s never gone to bed at that hour before. This morning, she roused at 7:50a (6:50a Allie-time), and went down for her first nap at 9:30a, so we’re doing fine. I’ll do the incremental adjustment if that’s even necessary. Ideally, the goal is for Allie to be up around 6:15a so that I can nurse her before leaving for work. Susanne will be here at 6:30a for a hand-off. If Allie’s bedtime remains 7p-ish, then we’ll have about 2 hours to spend with her after work and then I can still nurse her before bedtime. Given the early rise time, I may have to advance Allie’s bedtime, too, if she starts seeming fatigued. “That sucks, our baby won’t know us,” Mr. W griped. Maggie assured me that as long as we can keep our egos out of it when Allie cries for nanny sometimes, we’ll be okay, and that Allie’ll still love us. I just have to keep reminding myself that this is temporary, and in Allie’s best interest. For example, even if Allie doesn’t get up at 6:15a on her own in the mornings when I have to go back to work (thanks to daylight savings, I now need to push her morning rise time almost 2 hours back in the next month to make it “in time”), I can choose to wake her, then hand her off to Susanne, or let Susanne bottle-feed Allie’s morning meal, and I can keep working on getting her up earlier incrementally so that I can nurse her before leaving for work. It doesn’t have to be a hard deadline.

Biggest possible change of all: Mr. W is now advocating moving us all to Hawaii after his retirement, not Oregon. I wonder if people would come visit us if a flight is necessary.

I’d thought her “witching hour” was getting shorter and more occasional, but I was wrong. She’s witching away right now. She’s tired, but instead of sleeping, she’s fighting it and screeching in between sobs. I don’t know how to get her over it. Some experts say that babies need to burn off energy before sleeping, and that the way to do it before naptime is to cry because that’s the only way they have to expend energy. Since her fussy time is about 2 hours before her 9pm feeding, I’m going to try to advance her bedtime feeding to 8:30p to see if that would help. Maybe she’s hungrier earlier because supposedly milk supply wanes in the evening; maybe she’s sleepy earlier than we’ve been putting her down. Either way, an earlier bedtime feeding should do the trick. I hear some people put their babies down at 6pm and the baby sleeps through till 6am.

I learned from talking to Payroll downtown that I can use any benefit time (vacation, sick personal, special paid leave) for my CFRA baby bonding time EXCEPT sick time…unless I am personally sick. I don’t have enough benefit time to cover the time I have off for CFRA, so since I have the days off already approved (they HAVE to give me up to 12 weeks by law), whatever I can’t cover will be taken without pay. My OB and my family doctor, whom I saw on last-minute apptmt last Friday, both referred me to the psychiatry dept, so I made an appointment for their earliest available day in early February. I hadn’t wanted to take the time for counseling when my OB recommended it because I didn’t have anyone to watch Allie and I knew I didn’t want to get on psych meds anyway due to my breastfeeding, but now I’m thinking they can give me the medical note for work to say that I DO have postpartum issues and that I need the time off, which would then qualify me to use sick time. BTW, my family doc diagnosed me with “adjustment disorder with acute anxiety.” He said my auditory hallucinations (hearing a baby cry as I drift off to sleep, which wakes me up with an adrenaline jolt so strong I’m laying there gasping for air with my extremities tingling) are symptoms of the anxiety. He didn’t want to put the label of “depression,” postpartum or otherwise, on me without my seeing the psych department for it. I did tell me about work stressing me out on this issue and he said the counselor should take care of that and get me off for longer if I need to.

My moods are getting better, though. Her inconsolable crying isn’t getting to me as much anymore, probably because I now know and finally believe that it’s temporary; she’s sleeping pretty solidly at night in a predictable pattern (she goes down after her 9p feeding and wakes up sometime between 4a and 6:30a for her next feeding) so I’m getting a nice block of sleep at night as well. After I put her down in her crib and turn out the lights, I’ve gotten into a habit of hanging out in the dark in the recliner next to her, texting my cousin Jennifer or Diana asking about how each others’ evenings went, how the babies behaved. I’m there just in case I need to pacifier-plug her to help her sleep, but I don’t usually need to. She frets a little (not cry, just sorta whines), but within minutes to maybe half an hour, will fall asleep. I usually fall asleep in the recliner when she does, checking on her here and there through the camera app on my phone since it has infrared, and waking up at 11p-ish and going to bed myself. If Mr. W is going to work in the morning, he gets up between 4-5a which is when Allie gets up, so I’d do a feeding, then I’d pump and/or hang out with him downstairs a little and have a little breakfast, then I may go back and nap until her next feeding between 7a-8a. Mornings when I’m alone with the baby is hard cuz I have to fit in my breakfast, pumping, storage, cleaning out pump parts, all before she wakes up for the day.

Going out with her is becoming less anxiety-ridden for me, though. She’s usually good unless she has an extremely dirty diaper or she’s hungry. If I have to, I’d feed her in the car or the drive home is pretty hellacious. She cries in the carseat and even tho she falls asleep with the car moving, she’ll wake up and continue crying where she left off when the car has to stop due to a red light/traffic. Saturday, we met up with my cousin Jennifer, her husband Brad, and baby Alexandra at Downtown Disney. It was a long day for us; we went out at noon to buy a new baby carrier wrap (Baby K’tan) that we liked so much we bought one for each of us, and that was when my cousin contacted me. We then had lunch out, I fed Allie in the car, then we went to Downtown Disney. Mr. W wore Allie around in the Baby K’tan and thought it was the best thing invented:

Funny; when Allie was up and gazing around, Alex was dead asleep in her stroller. When Allie fell asleep and Mr. W wore her facing in, Alex woke up so Jen wore her around on their Ergo carrier. The two are rarely both awake at the same time. We didn’t get home until close to 6p and it was a good day out, altho she came home and still had her fussy time before her last meal.

Today is Asian New Year’s Eve. We met Rebecca at Seal Beach for lunch and she got to meet Allie for the first time. Allie loved her right away, must be the calming presence. Allie nearly fell asleep just with Rebecca holding her, and before we left, she and Rebecca had this whole conversation. It was adorable, with Allie cooing and smiling at Rebecca in response to Rebecca’s questions and comments to Allie. I told Rebecca that when I’d first met my cousin Diana’s daughter Elle at 2 months or so (Elle is now 2.5 yrs old), I felt like I knew her when I held her. After that, my arms felt empty, which had never happened before, not that I’d ever held many babies. And then when I spent a little time at Elle’s house for the first time a couple of weeks ago at the Cousins’ Day Out at the Park, Elle came up to me despite having nearly no contact with me, and wanted to hug me. I lifted her up on my lap and she chatted with me, then kept handing me all her favorite toys. Her grandma and my cousin Jennifer were surprised, commenting on how much Elle apparently likes me. Rebecca said that Elle and I have had past lives together; we were sisters in one and in another, we were mother-daughter, altho she wasn’t sure which one was which. I got excited and wanted to tell my cousin Diana, but was afraid it’d freak her out. Rebecca said that yes, it would, and Diana and I have had a past life where we were sisters, too, and there were some jealousy issues that she’s not sure if Diana ever resolved so it may still be something remaining in this life, so to not tell her at this point. I could understand how, even without her having past life jealousy toward me, it could be awkward, too. I mean, this is HER baby, and her baby and I shared a past (or two)? Okay, so I’ll keep it to myself. But it’s kinda cool to think about how some souls know each other and just keep incarnating together to meet up over and over again.

Then in the evening, my parents and maternal grandma came over. It was a very lucrative New Year’s for my baby’s first time. We are now leaving the Year of the Rabbit (Allie’s year) and entering the Year of the Dragon (my year).
“MY red envelope!”

There’s a school of thought that says Allie’s too young to be “sleep-trained” just yet, but there’s been signs that she’s ready for SOME parental influence in the sleep-training direction. The fact that she sleeps more easily in her crib in her room at night instead of in our room with us, for example. How amenable she is to going right back to sleep after a feeding at nighttime. How easily she went into the eat-play-sleep pattern in the daytime, which is a pattern recommended by the book “Babywise” to get baby to sleep through the night (7 weeks on, it says, and she’s at 7 weeks already). Maybe the constant holding earlier helped, because she’s secure enough to be on her own already at night and during the short naps she takes in the day alone. So far, half an hour to an hour is it, and in her swing, but that’s more than I had before. She’s asleep in her swing right now. I’m hopeful that times like this will increase in duration.

One of the biggest fallacies I’ve found about infant care is “when the baby sleeps, you should sleep.” I’m sure all babies are different and some people can actually do this, but I can’t. I’ve spoken to many new moms and their experiences are the same as mine — when baby naps, baby demands to be held, so you hold baby and can’t sleep yourself, unless you’ve somehow mastered sleeping while sitting up with a baby over a shoulder. I can’t; I can’t settle my mind down and plus the position hurts my tailbone. When she sleeps, sometimes I can do things one-handed, and throughout the day there seems to be an ever-gathering list of things I must do, increasing in urgency in my head like unrelieved urine (which is sometimes really on the to-do list), so when I get a moment of peace, I’m more about “What can I do off this list? What’s the most urgent or important?” than about napping. I’ve made many phone calls while she was asleep cradled in one arm, and ate many breakfasts and taken many vitamins with her propped up on one shoulder, bouncing her and walking around the room so she doesn’t get tired of one view and start fussing. I haven’t figured out how to pee holding her, yet. Or pump and clean pump parts. *sigh*

Another challenge I’ve had is that due to my baby inexperience, I didn’t know what to do with her as her waking and alert hours increased. I know I’m supposed to interact, but how? So I’ve been attempting some minimal tummy time (it lasts probably 10 seconds before she tells me in no uncertain terms she’s getting pissed at me), I’ve shown her colors around the house, I’ve propped her up in a Boppy when she’s tolerant enough to and read a couple of children’s books to her while she looked at the colorful pages and tuned me out. I’ve danced with her to my Labor Music playlist as I sang the lyrics I remembered to her (“Oh girl I think I love you, I’m always thinking of you, I want you to know I do it all for love; I love it when we’re together baby, I need you forever, and I want you to know I do it all for love…” That’s often made me cry, I’ll blame hormones cuz the Color Me Badd song’s SO upbeat), narrated what I’m doing as I did small amounts of housework I could do one-handed, massaged her and sang children’s songs with her propped up in front of me so I could “help” her do the hand motions and as she smiled her big open-mouthed smiles I’d laugh with her. She doesn’t track rattles and things all that well, but based on her solid tracking of people she’s interested in, I think it’s just a lack of desire in tracking toys. What she seems to enjoy quite a bit is when I sit her up over my shoulder and take her for a little walk around the back yard so we can say hello to the squash vines, Mr. Avocado Tree, all the pretty white roses contrasted against their deep green leaves, and then we walk through the gate to the front yard, and we greet The Magnolia Tree and ask for it to produce some big white flowers so that Allie could sniff them. We wave to The Bonzai Tree at our front yard, walk a few houses down (being careful her face isn’t in the sunlight much, or she flinches in the sudden brightness), meeting palm trees and other front yard gardens. Then we come back through the gate, avoid the mean hummingbirds guarding their precious feeders, she looks around and looks up at the blue sky, and we come inside.

Stroller walks with her are touch-and-go, as with car rides. She doesn’t like the confinement, especially when the straps are fastened, and she pushes against them and cries. A car moving does usually lull her to sleep, but the moment we hit traffic or red lights, she starts crying. SoCal traffic really ticks me off these days. Last week I ambitiously took her way out on a stroller walk around the neighborhood, planning to get to a local park with a playground, but halfway there in the neighborhood, she’d had enough and started wailing. I realized then that I’d forgotten to bring her pacifier, so I had to turn around and hustle back through residential streets of people coming home from work looking at the lady pushing the screaming baby through their neighborhood. I could see them wondering why I wasn’t able to do anything about the crying, or, at least, that’s what I saw in my head.

Last Friday I had a cousin outing and cousin Jennifer, her 3.5-month-old girl Alexandra, her mom, my mom, my cousin Olivia, her two elementary-school-age daughters, myself, and Allie gathered at my cousin Diana’s house with her 2.5 yr old daughter Elle (where sisters Diana/Jennifer’s mom was babysitting), with plans to have sandwich lunch at the house and a walk to a nearby park. Allie was fine until Olivia and her 2 daughters got there; then the noise level of shrieking excited girls/women got to her as she was passed to Olivia and she started crying in the unfamiliar environment with the unfamiliar people and unfamiliar sounds and smells. I took her upstairs into a quiet room and Jennifer came up to keep me company, force me to eat (I was stress-nauseated and had no appetite at this point), comfort me. She brought me Allie’s pacifier and soon Allie fell asleep in my arms. I stayed up there until it was time to walk to the park. Half the people went on ahead and some of us stayed behind while I breastfed Allie, then we went. The rest of the day was decent, and I was happy to let my mom hold Allie and comfort her, doing her grandmother thing as Jennifer and I played like children on the playground at the advice of my mom. Even with random bouts (brain fart: that word looks weird) of crying, my mom and aunt thought Allie wasn’t acting abnormal or badly. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m still traumatized with her first weeks of colicky behavior.

She took awhile to be put down last nite, cried, but I was feeling better and happy that it didn’t emotionally tear me up. Ultimately, after her 9pm feeding, she was asleep solidly by about 10:30pm.

These are some photos from the Cousins’ Park Day on Friday. My mom told me in the car on the way back that I should wear some makeup so I don’t look like a “yellow-faced mama,” whatever that means in Chinese. I told her I don’t have time to spend on luxuries like that, and she said letting Allie cry for 2 mins while I made myself look decent wouldn’t kill her. Looking at the photos, I guess she’s right. Jennifer had time to look cute.

Olivia & Allie

The scene:

Being kids:

Alex: “hello, a camera!” Allie: “zzzzz”

(rest mouse pointers over photos for captions)

One of the most memorable things from this park day: Cousin Olivia came up to check on me and Jennifer after the Allie Overstimulation Meltdown, and stayed and counseled me about my postpartum crap. She said, “Of course when they’re older, you have to take some of their preferences and personalities into consideration, but right now, you’re boss. Don’t revolve your life and day and [tiptoe on eggshells] around her. Still do what you need to do; if she cries, that’s okay. Babies have starved to death, frozen to death, been overheated to death; no baby has yet cried to death.”

I’ve gotta learn to blog more concisely with such limited time these days.

Today is Mr. W’s first day back at work, so I took night duty last nite. We switched sides of the bed so that I was by Allie’s rocker sleeper. Putting her down was challenging; she was fussing for awhile and I couldn’t get her to stop crying even though I was holding her. I finally had to use all five “S”s: I swaddled her, turned her on her side in my arms, kept a pacifier in her mouth (sucking), shook her to and fro gently, and shhhh’ed her in her ear. It worked! Thank goodness, because I had run out of “S”s. Keeping her down was another challenge. She basically woke up twice an hour and I had to shhh or rock (often both) her back to sleep. Mr. W didn’t sleep as well as he wanted but better than when he had night duty.

This morning, Mr. W got up at 4:10 am, got ready and left. I noticed that Allie was putting herself back to sleep even tho she was up often with all the morning noise, and I suspected it was because she had worked her right arm out of the swaddle (I could hear her struggling with the swaddle every time she’s swaddled) and had it by her face or head. It seemed to comfort her.

I didn’t know what to do with her while I got ready, so I put her in her cosleeper, turned on the vibration and music, and begged her to just hang on for 10 minutes and not cry too much while I brushed my teeth, washed my face and went to the restroom. I could hear her moving around a bit, but when I peeked in pensively, I saw this:

Wha-? Why can’t this happen at night? She stayed there probably a good half hour while I ran around getting dressed, ready, and cleaned up a bit downstairs, got all the baby stuff in the car. I emailed the photo to Mr. W at work and he responded, “She is so cute when she sleeps unexpectedly.”

I was able to get ready, get her ready, and be out the door at 9am for her 10am lactation appointment. As soon as I got her in the car, I felt great. The sun was shining, and I am successfully mobile. After parking, I couldn’t figure out how to unfold the stroller, tho…none of the buttons and latches worked. So that was my only frustrating point in the day. I finally hand-carried the carseat carrier with her in it to the appointment and got quite the workout.

At the appointment, she was THE PERFECT BABY. I was happy to see the same lactation nurse I’d been with the other 2 times. I pensively showed her 2 photos of Allie’s second poopy blowout from yesterday. The first was yesterday morning when I was at my doctor’s appointment. As relayed to me upon my return, Allie had her very first shower with Mr. W because that poopy squished out the diaper; he said she enjoyed the shower and was happy and smiling. The second blowout was yesterday evening; Mr. W thought it was diahrrea because it was mucousy and very very liquid. The nurse said I can email the photos to the pediatrician to make sure, but in her heart of hearts, she thinks the poopy is fine, not diarrhea, and wet/mucousy is within the very wide range of acceptable breastfed normal poopies. She said Allie looks so robust and healthy that she really doesn’t think something’s medically wrong. Allie drank 4 oz of breastmilk while there and was a happy camper, smiling and not fussing the entire time. It was like a totally different baby today. She fell asleep on the walk from the clinic to the car and stayed asleep for hours in her carrier. Before we left, the nurse took her measurements:
* weight: 11 lbs, 2.3 oz (85th percentile)
* length: 23.9 inches (off the charts; past the 95th percentile, the nurse was impressed and said this was really rare for her to see)
* head circumference: 38.2cm/15 inches (65th percentile)
So she’s tall and lean, according to the nurse. She said if Allie were her family member, she’d be very proud at how healthy and robust she is. She told me I rock, and look at how “in love” Allie is already with me, the way she looks at me! I said Allie looks at everyone like that; the nurse said, “She didn’t look at ME that way!”

I asked when I should stop swaddling; she said, “Oh, she’d HATE to be swaddled now.” She explained that older babies like Allie want their hands free to put at their faces; some babies even hide their eyes with their arm. She said it makes them feel very vulnerable to have their hands locked down by their sides in swaddle. That would explain this morning. I have yet to tell Mr. W this. His theory is that having her hands free makes her feel insecure and wakes her up as they move in her nocturnal jerks and swings.

I asked when I should start pumping to prepare for my return to work. The nurse seemed alarmed and told me I should’ve started already. “You don’t know how many phone calls we get in here from mothers saying they have to get back to work but their baby won’t take the bottle!” So apparently by this point, I’m supposed to be pumping and storing after one morning feeding, and replacing one afternoon/evening feeding with freshly pumped milk bottlefed to her by someone other than me. Getting one bottle a day lets her know others can feed her in other ways. “Especially with how much she’s in love with you already, she will definitely prefer your skin to a bottle if you don’t get her on the bottle once a day now.” So I did the evening pump today and Mr. W fed it to her. Unfortunately, babies are more efficient than pumps so I only got 60 ml (2oz) out for her. She’ll be hungry again soon.

After the appointment, I went to part 2 of my day: visiting at my cousin Jennifer’s. The two babies were both asleep when we first got together; Allie slept in her carrier for HOURS. It was great chatting with Jen and my aunt. (Jen and I were deeply in a conversation about how to store pumped milk in bags when my aunt, her mom, turned to us and said, “You two are so BORING!”) We hung out all day, my aunt cooked a healthy homemade lunch for us, and they were GREAT at relaying their experiences and counseling me about my neuroticism. I was in such a good mood all day, Allie woke up, ate, went back to sleep for HOURS on my shoulder. The whole day everyone commented at how beautiful and easy/quiet Allie is. Wow. Jennifer also observed Allie looks at me with an enamored expression on her face.

Mr. W seemed to have a pretty decent day at work. I am so grateful to him; what a trooper daddy he is for the past 6 weeks of baby duty and mommy training me. He does/did more than any father I have ever heard of. But we both came out of his leave okay, I think. I’ll be taking night duty daily now that he’s back at work; I hope Allie’s behavioral changes continue in the positive direction.

Christmas was spent at home in our pajamas. Allie was getting better with her screaming in that she still fussed but did it less often, with less severity and for much shorter periods of time. But as soon as Christmas Day hit at midnight, she wailed and screamed and cried and wouldn’t settle down for hours on end. This continued through Christmas Day until we were just exhausted; Mr. W made a few too many half-jokes about giving her away, putting her in foster care until she was older, or handing her over to other family/friends to care for until she was old enough to stop screaming. She finally settled down after a feeding, falling asleep in my arms, when my parents came over as they often do these days with box dinners for us. When she awoke, she got crabby again.

Two days before Christmas, I had managed to go alone to the mall to get my parents two sets of double-walled glass teacups that they’d liked. While I was there, I also got Mr. W L’eau Par Kenzo cologne (he’s a cologne fiend) and a waffle recipe book so he could get more use out of the waffle iron he’d recently acquired. I was wondering how to secretly wrap this stuff while caring for a baby and with Mr. W also home when I stumbled upon a donation-run giftwrap station in the center of the mall, so I gladly handed the stuff over and was done with everything as soon as I walked out. The mall was getting crowded by the time I left.

We exchanged gifts on Christmas evening, with Mr. W looking surprised when I brought a box out from under the tree with a card and handed it to him. We had somehow developed an unsaid understanding that we weren’t getting each other presents. Then he got up and went to the tree, dragged out a large “prop” box that was supposed to be empty, and handed it to me. Everyone loved their stuff; he got me a super-nice sheet set that I had fallen in love with at our massage place the moment I laid down in the luxury. I had considered buying it from the massage spot, but the price tag turned me off. He spoils me. And speaking of spoil, my parents got me a denim Coach bag and an “Allie” necklace with her birthstone and my birthstone; they got Mr. W a Coach wallet-slash-cellphone-holder and a Coach beanie. My mom proudly announced she did all her Christmas shopping in one store.

Today, Mr. W got up at 7am after Allie’s morning feeding and went to the gym. Allie went back to sleep and seemed to wake up a few times, making her usual gurgles, fist-in-the-air stretches, squeals, bicycle legs, all with her eyes closed, and falling back to sleep each time. She slept so well I managed to go downstairs and have some breakfast on my own before the cat did his yowling thing and woke her up for good. I had just finished feeding her brunch (which she asks for by peppering her cries with “le! Lehhhh!” It sounds very French) when Mr. W came back and suggested I get ready for an outing so we could have a bite out and take Allie for a walk.

It was beautiful outside today, sunny, although a little arid for my tastes. We drove to San Juan Capistrano and had a nice lunch al fresco at Sundried Tomato Cafe. Allie woke up in her stroller and fussed. Once the pacifier lost its power to console her, I decided to take her into the restroom and change her, as she was squirming something wicked, too. My first public changing experience with her was pretty unpleasant. There was no changing table, so I had to place her on the marble counter between the two sinks on her changing pad. She screamed and scratched and writhed the entire time, probably because she was uncomfortable as it was freezing in the bathroom. Then I couldn’t find the diapers in the daddy diaper backpack Mr. W brought. I must’ve unzipped 7 compartments before I found an inner pocket. She was meanwhile sliding off me as I had to hold her with one arm, and clawing my chest and neck to ribbons and deafening me with her wails. Finally, the deed done, I exited the bathroom, rather embarrassed as I was sure people in the restaurant were wondering who on earth was killing a baby in the bathroom. Thankfully, the bathroom stayed empty while I was in there (I wouldn’t go in if I heard that, either) and the moment we walked out into the warmer restaurant, Allie was silent.

We then braved the mall again to return a set of the glass teacups; my parents took the gift home and found a crack in one. Allie started crying her “Le! Lehhhh! Le!” in the car so I fed her in the backseat really quick, Mr. W put her in a harness-type carrier, and wore her into the mall. We bee-lined to the tea store, did the exchange, and bee-lined back to the car. Allie slept in the carrier the whole time. Whew.

And with that, we concluded our first Christmas holiday with a baby.