Oh, tuna salad sandwich on wheat, why are you sweet? I mean that literally. Wherefore art thou so sweet? Did they put sugar in your ample mayonnaise? Is that relish in there? Well, whatever the reason, at least the fishy part of you lays between what I assume to be wheat bread given the color, although I guess it could be food coloring to give the appearance of nutrition. I did feel a little bad after throwing your wrapper away, with the sticker on it displaying an expiration date of 5/18. I had selected you because the only other tuna sandwich had an expiration date of 5/16. I didn’t realize until after getting back to my computer that 5/16 is today. What will happen to the other sandwich that I’d left there, looking through the refrigerated glass at potential customers like so many pound puppies and kitties? If nobody picks it today, does it just go to waste? If the prior owners of the snack bar were still there, they’d simply change the sticker and the sandwich would magically be given new life.

And oh, Cheetos, I’ve saved the best for last. Ah, Cheetos, my familiar old friend. You taste of theatres flashing movies like “Mo’ Money” and “Jurassic Park.” Each persistent crunch calls to mind footfalls on a high school hallway traveling between second period P.E. and third period English II Honors. There were days when the ignorance of teenagerhood made you regular company, a time when 320 calories per serving of deep-fried corn meal did not bring with it a concern of lesser-quality milk to feed an infant. (Of course, back in the early ’90s, I’d thought “Allie” would be 11 years old by now.) It’s been a year without you and I’ve succumbed to your bright orange siren call twice this week, unable to resist your crinkly bag depicting promises of miniature Neanderthal clubs in the identical unnatural hue used to paint your speedy mascot. Until and unless shown that your “Artificial Color [including Yellow 6]” appears in my milk production, I shall not regret today’s walk down memory lane.

We’re in day 2 of a Family Law divorce trial. Not really interesting, and it’s been a challenge to pump while trial’s going on. I’d simply leave and pump in the jury room with the door closed, and while I’m gone, my judge will swear in any new witnesses and jot down new trial exhibits identified, and when I return to my desk, I check my court reporter Louise’s realtime transcript on my computer and compare it with notes, and catch up for my minute order. This is all going to change. With the $15 billion deficit that our governor announced earlier this week, California has been cutting its budgets by going beyond trimming the fat, deeper than the muscle, down to the bone. For us, in addition to other measures, this means the state is ripping every court reporter in our county out of their positions, lining them up by seniority, laying off the 60 lowest on the totem pole, reducing the next 60 into part-time workers, redesignated a bunch of courtroom as no-court-reporter and/or partially-reported courtrooms, and the remaining reporters are going back into available courtroom positions by seniority. With this upset, we are losing the reporter we’ve had since I’ve worked for this judge (which is practically my entire career of 13 years).
We’re a trial courtroom and we do primarily Civil Law trials. Under the new rules Civil Trials will not be provided a court reporter. If the parties/attorneys want the proceedings recorded, they have to provide their own private reporters. This is crazy to me. How are they going to appeal anything without transcripts? What if there’s a dispute as to what happened? It’s all going to be he-said-she-said? For me, it means also that I no longer have realtime, so when I leave (to go pump) and miss something, I miss it completely, forever. I guess I can have my courtroom assistant take some notes for me, but it’s still very uncomfortable as she’s unaware of what kind of information I would need written down. And I’d have to count on her to pay attention AND understand what’s going on, both of which are not guaranteed. :/ Also, if I’m going through my notes at the end of the day and I realize there’s a discrepancy, like I have two exhibits with the same number written down, I can’t just go to my reporter’s office and say, “Hey, I think I may have misheard an exhibit number…can you check your notes for me?”
On a more personal level, Louise has been more than a coworker to me. She’s been a big sister, giving me guidance with work issues, personal/emotional issues, and a friend who’s been kind unconditionally, not just to me, but to people around in general. She’s been my outlet at every major emotional episode since I was 21, using her own life experiences and compassion to help me through very hard times. She gets my humor and laughs when I made oddball comments that go over other people’s heads. She’s changed my life in so many ways. Emotionally, she’s taught me to recognize the difference between negative actions stemming from my ego feeling hurt, vs. legitimate reactions to protect or improve myself. She’s taught me about the strength of acceptance and inaction (i.e., resisting retaliatory behaviors, or in childish terms, not “getting someone back for what they did to me”). My physical health has improved thanks to her, too. I started running way back in 2000 with her advice and encouragement, as she has been a lifelong marathoner and gave great tips on training. We worked out at the same local gym for some years, and would give each other new workout ideas and exercises and tips. Since she started her health and nutrition kick some years ago, she’s been sharing her knowledge (and sometimes, cookies!) with me, taught me so much about nutrients, vegetables, organic foods, cooking. Oh yes, and we took a few cooking classes together for fun at a bakery she’d discovered. And she found Rebecca. She’s also helped me out in so many little ways when I was overwhelmed at work, whether it be from putting a cart of files together (when I was in Law & Motion) or by babysitting the courtroom because I had to get away to do something in another part of the building. She also co-threw me my work baby shower.
She’s still in our courtroom reporting this Family Law trial because Family Law has been designated as reporter-required proceedings, but as soon as this trial is over, she’s released from us, as if the Powers that Be just cut the cord that bonds us all to this courtroom, and she’s being dragged away and will be sent on a day-to-day basis to who-knows-where. Wherever her assignment office decides they need a reporter for that day. Louise has been well-adjusted about it all and her perspective is that she’s grateful to still have a job and a reliable paycheck, but our little work family is going to be forever changed.
I keep telling myself that my losing her as “my” reporter doesn’t mean I’m losing her as “my” friend. She’s not disappearing off the planet, and I still have her phone number and we’re online social networking friends so I can still stalk her (heh). As far as my finding one of my favorite people in the world, this job has already done its job. Staying in each others’ lives is in our own hands.
One of the joys of coming to work is dimming, though. Mr. W is becoming ever more eager to leave California as we watch this state go on its downward spiral…and I’m starting to come around and resist less.

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.”

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

Would it be papa?

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

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

It’s interesting seeing Allie thru my parents’ eyes. Because they only see Allie for a couple of hours once a week, they don’t realize all the progress she makes. So my dad will make comments like, “She’s making deliberate audible vocalizations now! I think she’s learning to talk!” “She now looks straight at you and concentrates on your mouth when you talk! She’s learning!” “She’s starting to grab things on purpose! She knows what to do with her hands now!” These are things she’d been doing for weeks to months, but I don’t say anything and let them make their own discoveries. No need to make them feel worse; they already feel like they’re missing out.

When my parents first arrived, Allie was in the second hour of what turned out to be a very nice 2-hour noon nap. It was needed, because after she was put into her crib for her morning nap, she popped up and rolled onto her back. After crying for awhile like that, she sucked her thumb until she fell asleep, but woke up with full-body nocturnal jerks every minute (I was watching the timer on the monitor), then every 45 seconds, then every 15-20 seconds, then every 30 seconds…basically she woke up at least 60 times, falling back to sleep each time only to wake up again with another jerk, until she gave up trying to nap after 40 minutes. (She sleeps all night on her back just fine, but then she’s laying on her fuzzy bear.) Poor baby. It was worse than when she was in the car being woken up by Mr. W’s aggressive driving on the road trip. I was really hoping her nervous system had outgrown the jerking; this was why we started napping her on her stomach to begin with.
For Allie’s 3rd nap, even tho she fell asleep on me, as soon as I put her in her crib she popped up and fussed. I picked her up, resoothed her to sleep on me, and tried again. Same thing. Wide awake in her crib. I finally walked out to let her soothe herself to sleep in the crib. It didn’t happen; for the first time ever, she cried and screamed through the ENTIRE duration of her nap period, from 3:30p in her crib until 4:15p when I went and got her. She was in fine spirits after she was picked up and played until almost 6pm with my parents, so it kind of looked like she had a bit of habitual tiredness for that nap, but didn’t really need it. The Sleep Book says that at age 5-8 months, 84% of babies have 2 naps and have dropped the 3rd, the late-afternoon nap. She could be phasing that nap out on her own already. I advanced her bedtime a little bit, we gave her a bath (my first time bathing her sitting in the adult tub with her, while hubby helped and gave pointers from the toilet seat), and she was falling asleep nursing by 6:30p. By 6:45p, she was sleeping in her crib. She’d gone to bed at 6:45p plenty of times before, but we’ve been letting her sleep in until 7a to help her catch up on the missed sleep from the road trip, so she’ll still be getting her 15 hours of total sleep this 24-hour period, even with the missed 3rd nap. I think knowing that babies her age are starting to eliminate her own last nap is what kept me from freaking out while I sat and helplessly watched her scream for 45 minutes earlier (while my mom got tutoring lessons from Mr. W on the iPad). I looked back on her charts to see how she eliminated her 4th nap before. It seemed to be sporadically missed until we just stopped forcing it on her, and she did fine with that extra awake period before bedtime. This was when she was doing 1-2 hours of awake periods, before she started hitting the clock-time naps every 8:30a, 11:30a, and 3:30p. That 3rd nap was always a variable “as needed” nap, anyway. Guess she didn’t really need it today.

So many changes, so little time. And with her 6-month birthday coming up in 19 days, we’ll be playing with solids soon.

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.

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.

For the life of me, I can’t remember at all why we shouldn’t brush with warm or hot water. I guess back 25 years ago, I was so fascinated by the thought that I OUGHT to be curious, that I was too distracted from being actually curious enough to pay attention.

I think about this quite often when I’m leaning over the sink, about to brush my teeth. I sometimes hesitate when my left hand reaches out toward the left faucet handle, toward the side that controls the hot water. If I’d used the left side recently, say, to wash my face or hands first, then the water would be already “warmed up” and I’d end up brushing my teeth with hot water. But if I didn’t, then there’d be enough cold water coming out first that my brushing water wouldn’t be warm. But how much does this really matter? WHY does it matter? Would it really be detrimental? And I kick myself for the millionth time for not paying attention in 5th grade on that fateful day when the oh-so-important information was being handed out.

I noticed that Dodo seems to be a little constipated. He strains in the litter box and scoots a little in there. Over the weekend he strained with no results, came out, drank water, went back, tried again and got poopies out. This morning, same thing. I’ve never heard a cat do little soft mewing grunts before, and it’d be cute if it weren’t so sad. The vet said that this is “normal” considering the kidney disease, because his kidneys are using every spare drop of water to do their jobs. This makes his poop harder. If it becomes a big issue, we can treat that symptom with stool softener meds. *picturing Dodo with one of those old-people multi-tiered pillboxes*

I asked how she thought Dodo would do if he’s unmedicated for a few days while we go on this road trip. She hesitated and said that she certainly wouldn’t recommend it because we’ve made such great headway in treating his kidney disease symptoms, and I agree, but I don’t see that the stepdaughter is able to medicate Dodo twice a day. She’s uncomfortable around cats because she hasn’t had much exposure to them, and when we were in Europe when Dodo got sick, Ann found out just how scared of picking up Dodo the stepdaughter was. I think people assume all cats scratch and bite, altho Dodo doesn’t. Anyway, fighting down a struggling cat and squirting meds in his mouth twice a day is going to be a little much for the stepdaughter, I believe, assuming she’s able to get up in the mornings to do this, and will be around at nights to do it again (we rarely see her at home). So the vet offered another alternative: the vet hospital technicians do house calls! I spoke to the office manager and she agreed to come by the house for $10 a visit to medicate Dodo when we’re gone. Now I’ll have the peace of mind to know Dodo is getting medicated effectively and on time.

I love this vet clinic.