cindy's world

One quick anecdote before I get into the zoo stuff: this morning as I was pouring milk for Allie’s breakfast, Allie pointed at the milk carton from her high chair and said, “Baby!”
“Milk,” I corrected her, still pouring.
“Baby.”
“No baby here, mil–” And then I saw it. On the side of the milk carton facing Allie was a photo of a toddler as the milk manufacturer explained why the added DHA is good for developing bodies. “Oh, you’re right. There IS a baby here.”
“Baby.” You’d think I would’ve learned after all the “bbbbloon”s, “bow-wow”s and “mau-mau”s she points out way before I see or hear them.
~ * ~
Yesterday, because the weather’s so beautiful (high 80s!), Mr. W and I took Allie to Irvine Park with intention of going to the zoo inside. The zoo isn’t grandiose with exotic animals the way San Diego Zoo is, but it’s got local animals and a petting zoo. Not bad for $5 parking and $2 per adult zoo entry. We parked in a general area and walked past picnic spots and a pony ride area to the zoo section, Mr. W holding Allie and handing me the DSLR camera. Turns out he’d only brought the 2 new portrait lenses (my xmas present), which was a bit of a pain because I had to be far away to fit what I needed into the frame. But you do get nice focused shots in an otherwise too-busy background.
On the way to the zoo part of the giant park, Mr. W saw a hollow tree and inserted the baby.

I don’t actually know what she was standing on, because she was in there alone, and I’m not tall enough to look in. I didn’t have time to check it out anyway as Mr. W said there’s a big black spider in there so to hurry and take the shots so we can get Allie out.

She didn’t get bitten and she rather enjoyed the view from there.
Having just entered the zoo, Mr. W placed her in front of the sign so we’ll know for future reference where we are. However, the lens did not zoom out at all so I couldn’t fit the sign in the frame.

I ran across the walkway, backed up against an opposing building, waited for all the people walking between us to pass, and managed to get this shot. Unfortunately, I was too far away for her to hear me call her to try to get her attention.

Mr. W said I complained too much about the lenses. I guess I was verbalizing all the difficulty I was having getting the shots in the frame. But the lens was good for stuff like this:

It’s not often we could get a nice clear shot of her eyes since she’s always running around and she has such dark eyes. But the problem with trying to photograph in a busy outdoors area is that one parent has to always be very close to Allie while the other parent runs 20 feet away to get a shot, and it wouldn’t be possible if I were by myself. As it was, an entire boy scout troop and some goats were running my kid over.

It was easier when Mr. W picked her up. For both me to photograph and for the goats to not nibble at her hat.

Allie likes kids (human kids) more than she likes strange animals. This turkey didn’t hold her attention as much as the little girl next to her did. (I say “strange animals” as distinguished from familiar animals, such as Dodo, whom Allie runs to joyously every chance she gets and then squats down in front of to give him a kiss.)

BTW, turkeys make soft, rather pretty and soothing cooing noises. It’s nothing like the “gobble gobble” we were told in school that they make.
Mr. W introduces Allie to a sleeping bear. It must be nothing like what she expected, because she didn’t recognize it and say, “Bay!” like she does when she sees teddy bears.

More father-daughter animal-gazing. I don’t remember what they were looking at because I couldn’t back up far enough to fit it into the frame. =P

Along the pathway, Daddy pointed out some interesting stuff…

…and Baby pointed out some interesting stuff.

Yeah, Allie ran up to and petted more than a few trash cans that trip.
We had lunch at the park’s picnic area, and altho Allie ate homemade organic carrot-kale-celery-fennel greens-ground beef-bell peppers-and-brown rice porridge and freshly homemade granny smith applesauce, Mr. W and I tried the snack bar’s burrito, hamburger and fries. They were surprisingly good, albeit slow to arrive. Soon, it was time to go home.
I don’t know what was said between the two during the walk since I had to run 60 yards away to take the photo, but I imagine it went something like this…
Allie: Thank you for taking me on my first trip to the zoo, Daddy.
Mr. W: Thank you for coming into my life, Allie.

One last quicky photo op before getting in the car:

Yesterday when we got home from work, we found that Allie has picked up a new trick. When she drops something (toy on the floor, food from her hand onto the tray), she says “Uh-oh” (pronounced “ah-uh”). She doesn’t say it when she drops or throws something deliberately, only when it’s an oopsie. She probably picked that up from Jayne. It was cute, until I had visions of what she’d showcase as tricks picked up from daycare or preschool, when it’s not a highly religious Christian adult that she interacts with all day.

I didn’t do my noontime pumping today, the only pump session I’ve done for awhile. I knew it would be this week that I stopped pumping, but I didn’t know when; it all hinged on when Allie finishes the frozen stockpile at home. Today, she had only 4.5 ounces left in the freezer, which I’m sure she’s already had for her singular bottle feeding after her morning nap. We’d stopped giving her the bottle after her afternoon nap months ago and replaced that feeding with a snack. She doesn’t care; when we get her from her nap and finish changing her diaper, she rolls over, bounces up, and runs off. It’s not like she points to the La-Z-Boy recliner we nurse on and says “mum mum,” which she still does mornings upon waking up and nights at bedtime. So since she’s out of stored milk and my measly 2oz pump yields won’t be enough to fill her bottle for a normal feeding, she’s being simultaneously weaned off the bottle completely and I’m weaning myself off the pump completely to coordinate with her.

I’d looked forward to weaning off the pump for months, but now that it was down to the days this week, it was a little unsettling. Was it the right thing to do, since she’s sick and could use the antibodies? Is the timing okay? Should I replace the morning bottle with a snack as well, or would that be too much food? How will my body respond? Will I be uncomfortable all day? Am I gonna be fat now that I’m not expelling those extra few hundred calories in milk?

I comfort myself by thinking that Allie’s still nursing mornings and nights, so she’s still getting my antibodies, and plus, she’s getting over her cold anyhow. So I’m still burning 2/3 of the calories I had been, despite now losing my excuse to not exercise regularly at lunchtime. And given that I’ve only been able to eke out about 2, 2.5 ounces for a couple of weeks, my body is likely ready to be down to just the 2 nursings a day. Plus, it’ll make Mr. W happy to not be slave to my pumping schedule when we go out by ourselves. I’ve pumped now in the car multiple times, once while it was still driving; I’ve pumped in a clean bathroom stall of a car dealership while sitting on the floor (thankfully it was totally private and no one had been in the restroom that day and no one used it the entire time I was in there); pumped at my cousin’s house; in hotel rooms; parked outside supermarkets, restaurants and parks; my jury room; my jury room restroom; other people’s jury room restrooms; my judge’s chambers; a doctor’s spare exam room. It’s nice to not have to think about it or have to figure out a place to rinse all the pump parts ASAP afterwards for fear milk would dry up or decay in the inaccessible little ports and crevices.

Allie’s cold is significantly better. I didn’t even have to clear her nose the last 2 mornings, and although she still has an occasional phlegmy-sounding cough a few times a day and may need to have her nose cleared after the occasional sneeze, for the most part she’s back to normal.

Except for the napping. By 15 months, more than half of toddlers have eliminated one of their 2 remaining naps, and the one that’s supposed to go is the morning nap. Allie has always fallen asleep faster and often longer for her morning nap. A few random times within the last couple of months or so, she’d skipped an afternoon nap here and there, turning the crib time into a quiet playtime. For the past 2 days in a row, she’d played the entire afternoon naptime in her crib, and although she fell asleep earlier at night, she’d been no different behavior-wise. She may be eliminating it early. In just about everything I read, the babies are supposed to eliminate their morning nap at this point and keep their afternoon nap for the next few years, but Dr. Weissbluth’s “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child” gave us a Plan B if she eliminates the 1st nap instead. I’d instructed Jayne to keep doing the regular 2-nap routine for the rest of the week and if Allie consistently turns the 2nd nap into quiet playtime, then Mr. W and I will eliminate the 2nd nap and start moving her morning nap back until it becomes an early afternoon nap. When she goes to preschool and they give age-appropriate naps, it will be in the afternoon, anyway. Mr. W’s dream of having more awake time to DO stuff with Allie may be coming true sooner than expected.

Having a whole morning and most of an evening free with a happy Allie is going to be a lot of fun. We can go to parties (there’s one coming up we were thinking we wouldn’t be able to attend as it’s an hour away), have more leisurely meals out, visit my parents and friends at their homes, or simply discover new things about Allie, which we do constantly. This past weekend, the stepdaughter said, “Go in your house,” and Allie got up and walked into her little pink tent castle that the stepkidlets had gotten her for her birthday, and looked out at us from the sheer window. “Most obedient kid in the world,” I joked. I tell her it’s bath time, naptime, bedtime, dinner time, whatever time it is, and she will drop whatever she’s doing, bounce up, and happily go and wait by the appropriate babygate doorway to go where she needs to go. We’d open the gate, and she’d run to the kitchen, climb up the stairs, wherever it is she’s going. If it’s naptime, she picks up her furry blanket that she naps with first before she goes to wait by the gate. Yesterday, Allie picked up a dropped sock from behind the stepdaughter, who was doing laundry, recognized it as a sock and tried to press it onto her own foot. Later, they were playing in the stepdaughter’s room and I heard a, “Show mom!” Allie came walking carefully out to find me in the kitchen with a floral headband and a matching scarf on. After she stood there for a second so I could exclaim how cute she was, she turned and walked back into the stepkidlet’s bedroom. Later, the stepkidlet said “show mom” was an immediate command she followed without further instruction. Jayne has said that she’d told Allie they were going for a walk, and while she was packing some things Allie showed up holding her shoes. So much fun.

I discovered that Flip Flop Girl gets a regular delivery of organic fruits and veggies straight from an organic produce farm, so I asked her about it, she loves it, and we signed up (www.FarmFreshToYou.com). We have a Ralphs grocery store and a Sprouts healthy grocery store within walking distance of our home, but after the 5th straight batch of black, rotten avocados we’d purchased from Sprouts, we wanted a different option. And sure across the street is pretty convenient, but we sometimes have trouble even getting there since we’re always rushing everywhere to fit errands in within Allie’s awake times and in-between mealtimes, and sometimes we just discover that we’re out of something and we’re too tired to run back out again. So it doesn’t get more convenient than opening the front door once a week and, Oh look! A box of fresh organic fruits and vegetables!

We just got our first box last week. 2 lemons, 3 apples, 3 Mandarin oranges, 4 kiwis, 3 bunches of broccoli, a pound of kale leaves, many bunches of spinach, 2 bunches of carrots, and a mystery plant with a white bulb and furry leaves that Mr. W and I couldn’t identify. $25 including delivery. The stuff that we have eaten already were delicious. The mystery item turned out to be fennel, and although we eat fennel seed fairly commonly, we’d never entertained a thought about the plant it comes on. Turns out that a ton of my friends are familiar with fennel plant, and I got a bunch of recipe ideas for shaved fennel salad, roasted fennel bulb, etc.

It was really great when I realized we were low in our variety of one-pot meals for Allie, and I had all the ingredients on hand to cook immediately last night without a grocery store run. I made an all-organic brown rice porridge with chopped carrots, fennel (bulb & stalk), celery, kale and browned beef for Allie, and set a small bowl aside for Mr. W to taste at his request. Allie gobbled up a generous portion of it for dinner, for dessert she had fresh homemade applesauce with multi-grain cereal stirred in, and my little sick girl got hopefully all the right nutrition to fight this cold of hers. I had enough of the porridge to freeze 12 additional generous portions for her future meals.

After Allie went to bed last night, I asked Mr. W what he thought of Allie’s latest one-pot meal. “Delicious,” he said. “I wish WE could eat like that.” I think that’s his way of saying I’m a great mom but a derelict wife. Mr. W will be getting a one-pot meal with organic spinach tonight. =P

Now that Allie has had a wet cough for the 3rd day, and now has a runny nose, she LOVES the nasal suction tool. She used to cry and squirm and bat my hand away when I would try to suction out a booger, but I think she now realizes she NEEDs suction and that it makes her itchy wet nose feel dryer and less itchy, she now asks for it by pointing and saying, “Mmm?”, she lays back voluntarily and watches the bulb or aspirator expectantly, and if we’re too slow for her, she’ll grab it and put it in her nose herself. She stays very still when we’re suctioning and smiles when we’re done. Sometimes when we’re done, she insists on Round 2, pointing and asking us to do it again, being upset when we tell her we’re done. This is true for the nasal aspirator bulbs, the 2-piece bulb with a straw that Mr. W jimmied (my favorite one), and the BabyComfyNose. So now we can switch off so that when one is drying after being used and washed, we can use another one. And I don’t think I’ve ever pulled so much slime out of Allie’s nose before, even the last and only time she’d been sick almost exactly a year ago. (But she was smaller then, so she produced less boogers per square inch.)

Aside from the occasional wet coughs (that would sometimes wake her up when she’s napping or starting fall asleep at night) and even less occasional sneezes, Allie’s still the same old happy-go-lucky goofball. She now knows how to open a closed door, and is tall enough to reach the L-shaped handle by simply going on her tiptoes, too. She opens doors, and she closes them when she knows it’s time for you to go. Every morning, Jayne holds her by the open garage door so we could wave goodbye to Allie as we leave for work. “Bye,” Allie would tell us matter-of-factly as she walks to the door, often before we’re even ready to leave. “Bye,” she’d say as we picked up our stuff and exited, and “Bye,” she’d say as she struggles to close the door on me while I’m still putting on my shoes in the garage. Jayne has to keep the door open with her foot and the last thing I see of Allie each morning before leaving for work is her struggling to push the door closed in Jayne’s arms.
Same thing when we come home from work. She’d walk to the gate in the living room and tell Jayne “bye,” even before Jayne has gathered all her things. Jayne would laugh and translate, “Okay, you can leave now, mommy and daddy are home.”
“At least she doesn’t cry when people leave,” Mr. W comforted himself saying yesterday.

The other day at work, I bent over at the hips to pick something up off the floor, and saw my hair sweep the floor. This was especially gross because I was in the shared restroom. Time for a haircut. I figured Friday was a good day, as I had taken the day off to get my annual physical checkup, and was still having Jayne come over to care for Allie so that I could have a “me” day.

Turns out I’m not used to thinking in terms of “me” anymore because I had a hard time the whole day feeling comfortable. I felt like I was plopped in a body and said, “Here, take care of this body for today” and I didn’t quite know how to do it and was fumbling around. After leaving Allie with Jayne, I drove off to the vet’s to get Dodo some prescription cat food, and realized on the drive that I forgot to medicate him this morning, so I had to go back home. Good thing I’d left early and my doctor’s appointment wasn’t until much later. And then in leaving, I was about to go to the wrong Kaiser clinic location when it suddenly occurred to me that my ob/gyn was in a different facility.
The checkup was uneventful. Doctor said I looked great, saw/felt nothing abnormal in the exam, my weight was 118 lbs and blood pressure was 118/56, pulse was a little high (for me) at 73, but my OB was happy. It’s nice to know where I stand with the numbers once a year, since I don’t weigh myself at home anymore. Of course, it’s not exactly a cholesterol screening, either. I noted as I was getting dressed that Allie’s birth announcement card was tacked up on the bulletin board of that particular exam room. I snapped a photo of that on my phone and texted it to Mr. W.
Then after that, the day was mine. I had a massage appointment at 2:30p and that was it. I already got the cat food, so that was the important errand. Next on priorities is the haircut, and buying some healthy-grain pasta for Allie so that I could make her another one-pot meal, and I needed some facial cleansing cloths I’ve seen at Costco. I’ve also purchased a variety pack of small semolina pastas at Costco, so I figured I’d go there. But first I was hungry and it was brunch time.

I tried to approach the plan logically. I know where my haircut place should be; I’d been going to the same salon since I discovered it after moving to the current residence in 2008. So the meal should be some place close to it. I decided to give Break of Dawn restaurant another try. College roommie Diana had suggested we all try it when she and her hubby visited some time ago, and Mr. W and I had found the food a little rich for our liking. Nevertheless, after looking the location up on my smartphone, I put in the info on my nav and off I went.

The small restaurant was at least half-full and I was seated immediately at a table by the window. The menu threw me a little; the descriptions didn’t tell me enough about what each item was, the form they were served in, so altho I was drawn immediately to some kabocha soup, I needed some help. A guy who may have been the owner came by and asked if I was ready to order, and I kind of was, I just needed some clarification. The 3-course meal included the kabocha squash soup and a choice of an entrée and I was interested in the chicken stew option, and it had a dessert, but I wasn’t STARVING, so I asked him about portion size. He said it’s enough to make me full but that stew and kabocha soup wasn’t good together because it’s 2 “watery” things. Okay, so I asked about something else, and he asked what it is I’m looking for. I said I wanted to try the soup, but ordering the soup entrée came with 2 items of fried things and I don’t want to eat anything fried, so I asked for his recommendation. He told me he doesn’t recommend things and that he doesn’t know what I want or am looking for so I should just study the menu longer and order later, and then he walked away. Good thing I wasn’t rushed for time. Geez. The busboy who had seated me and brought me the menu and water soon came by and asked if I was ready to order, as it was clear the other guy was by now ignoring me. I just ordered the chicken curry stew and left it at that. The food was fine. But it didn’t fill me up. I left anyway without ordering anything additional. Pretty uncomfortable experience. The Vietnamese owner guy never came back to my table.

Off to the important thing on my list: the haircut. I pumped in my car in a secluded area of a parking lot near the salon (that was fun), then drove to the salon. I was happy to see that the guy whom I’d gone to exclusively to cut my hair for the past 5 years was there, altho he was giving an order man a haircut so it looks like there would be a wait. I could wait a little bit given the time. Richard looked up and smiled at me and I happily said, “Hi!”
“Hi,” he took a few steps toward me. “Can I help you?”
It dawned on me that Richard did not recognize me. Has it been that long? I’d gotten one haircut after giving birth and sure it was almost a year ago, but he ALWAYS cut my hair and we would chat and he’d kid around with me and asked how my pregnancy was going and blah blah! Could it be he’d NEVER recognized me in all the years I’d been going there? That can’t be it; he’d told me before when I was 8 months pregnant that the time I’d been there previously, the owner of the salon asked him if I’d gained a little weight, and he had laughed and told her I was pregnant, and that when the owner asked how far along I was, she was shocked that I didn’t look MORE pregnant. Maybe he’d fallen and hit his head some time in the past year and now has amnesia, but somehow retained the knowledge of how to cut hair. Anyway, after ascertaining that he would be unable to fit me in until 2:30, the same time as my massage appointment, I said I’d come back another day and left.

I now had time to go to Costco before my massage appointment after all, but the Costco closer to the massage place, and one I was unfamiliar with, was only a couple of miles from my earlier doctor’s appointment. As I drove back the way I’d come, I thought about how this was so poorly planned as to make it un-executable. I should’ve just stayed in this area and I could’ve avoided the discomfort at Break of Dawn, and the trip-for-nothing at the salon. I even drove unsteadily, the reflexes operating when to go, how to smoothly merge into traffic, making snap judgments on whether I could pull out and turn left all now rusty due to lack of use.
Turns out the Costco I’d found was the puniest Costco ever. I circled the place twice and the only pasta they had was one brand of spaghetti. Plus their layout was different from other Costcos so I had a hard time doing the quick beelines to the stuff I needed to get. At least it helped me in accomplishing the impossible: getting out of Costco with only $26 in purchases. Mr. W, the big Costco fan, had never done THAT.

I got to the massage appointment early, so I had half an hour to visit a coffeehouse a few doors down, and things started going right after that. I ordered a blueberry muffin (cuz I was still hungry from brunch) and a spiced Chai tea latte, and while I waited for the tea, was able to rinse out my pump parts in the tidy restroom. I enjoyed my beverage and snack while reading a chapter on my Kindle (A Storm of Swords, the 3rd volume in George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” series, aka “Game of Thrones” series), then with 5 minutes to spare, walked to the massage place.

The massage was needed and very relaxing, and as usual after it was over all too quickly, I thought about how great it would be if they’d allow the option of renting the massage room after a massage so that patrons could take a nap.

Last thing before heading home: I went to the healthy/organics grocery store across the street from the house and bought Allie some organic whole grain baby waffles and other stuff. And then I got home, beating Mr. W by only half an hour or so as he returned from work.

I don’t think I’m gonna need a “me” day for awhile. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Even with little Allie’s phlegmy coughs that she’s had for the past 2 days (Jayne has a cold), she still makes me happier than having a whole day with endless possibilities to myself. Especially when she now added a part in the morning routine when she’d pull off during nursing and then struggle to sit up and pull herself up to my face, just to plant a kiss on my lips, followed by a gleeful smile with solid eye contact.

We never received our studio photos in time to include the prints in Christmas presents to Allie’s grandparents (and great-grandma). I emailed the photo studio Christmas evening to inquire about it. A few days ago, I received an emailed response from them indicating that they had thought we were okay with getting the prints after the studio re-opens after the holidays. Well, we were, but when we left, we’d agreed that it wouldn’t be a problem for them to get the prints done before the holidays, so that was what I’d expected. I thought if they couldn’t do it, they could’ve contacted me. The studio apologized for the confusion and said they would throw in a couple of extra prints for free, which was very nice of them. Last night, I got the share-able “unprintable web digitals” via email. The photos ARE small, but not as small as I’d expected, altho Mr. W was unimpressed with their size. Here are the two poses we’d purchased from the photo studio, the top being 300K and bottom 425K:

I also heard from Kari, the photographer who came to us for a separate outdoor photoshoot. She emailed me that a CD with her edited digitals (presumably full-size resolution) along with two large prints will be mailed to us. It should’ve gone in the mail yesterday. I can’t wait to get those; I made our Christmas cards this year from Kari’s photos (she emailed me about 15 fairly quickly after the photoshoot so that I could do holiday mailings) and people LOVED them. Mr. W will want to use Kari again for any of our future photography needs.

What makes me happy and hopeful that Allie truly is the “wonderful person” Rebecca had seen when I was pregnant and/or when Allie was a newborn, is when Allie shows spontaneous unprompted signs of a loving personality. Earlier, I was at the kitchen sink rinsing out her breakfast bowls and prepping some peaches and cherries to make into a pureed snack (or dip) for her, and I heard the playful “wap wap wap” of her feet when she’s running with deliberate small but loud steps. Then I felt her tiny arms around my left leg. Before I could turn around, I felt and heard her plant a kiss on my butt (which is where her lips reach against me). I looked down and she looked up. We smiled at each other. “Hi, baby!” I said. I would’ve hugged her or patted her head but my hands were wet. She released and I went back to what I was doing. I felt her arms around my leg again for a second hug. And then she wapped off to the breakfast nook to find Mr. W.

I was nervous about Stage 3/4 foods for Allie when she’s ready to move beyond the purees, because I wasn’t sure how to prepare finger foods and “real foods” fresh every day when I’m at work all day except for the 1.5 hours or so I get with her after work until her bedtime. But what I’ve been doing is making a one-pot meal en masse that usually has some sort of grain (typically brown rice and/or quinoa, or tiny semolina pasta) made into a porridge with fresh veggies (carrots, peas, edamame, green beans, corn, tomato puree) and a meat (beef, fish). Then I freeze them into 1.5 to 2 oz portions in silicon ice cube trays and she’s good for about a week. I try to give her a different one-pot dish for lunch from her dinner, and I add to each frozen dish some extra veggies as I get them (freshly cut, steamed, frozen), chopped bell peppers, broccoli, carrots, asparagus, zucchini. Sometimes she gets the extra veggies on the side as finger food. Jayne has never had a problem feeding her. She gets fresh seasonal fruit after each meal that Mr. W cuts up for her in the morning as I select and place her frozen foods in serving bowls to thaw out for the day’s feedings. All the day’s food prep is done before we get her from her crib each weekday morning. Snacks are kind of left up to Jayne’s pleasure, with some suggestions from me. Allie sometimes gets tiny baby waffles that are frozen like Eggos, heated in the toaster oven, which would be dipped in Greek yogurt, hummus, or eaten with a scrambled egg that Jayne would make. Sometimes it’s half a slice of sprouted whole wheat bread with Colby cheese bits. Sometimes it’s veggies and fruit. She drinks her cow’s milk from a straw and water from a sippy cup, still gets 3 servings of breast milk daily (nursing morning and bedtime, plus a bottle after the first nap or nursing when I’m home). Nutrition must be adequate; Allie’s pooping regularly, 2-3 times a day, and I think she shot up a couple more inches in the past month as her head is now well above the tops of our living room baby gates/blockades. The seats on our couches come up to her waist. She’s now attempting to climb, getting a knee up on the couch, but unsure of how to get her other leg up from there. She uses her underfoot toys as stepstools but hasn’t realized she could move a toy to where she wants to go and use that as a step, yet. *keeping fingers crossed that she doesn’t figure this out anytime soon*

Brain development is fascinating. Based on what I’ve learned in reading The Wonder Weeks, Allie is now at the development of “programs.” She understands a whole series of events and can put them together and control the outcome. Something as simple as, “Allie, where’s your sock? Get your sock and I’ll put it on for you” is pretty complicated when you think about the process. The above is what I said to her when I happened to see that she’d taken a sock off at some point in her play and had left it by some toys in the living room. So her response was to put her hands palm up like a shrug, as if to say she doesn’t know where her sock is, then walk around leaning forward so that her face is closer to the ground, as if to say, “I’m looking for it.” She walked around for a bit with her hands raised up, then spotted the sock. The hands went down, she ran to it, picked it up, brought it back to me, and then waited for me to pick her up and place her in my lap to put the sock on. In order to get to this point, she has to first understand what a sock is, that it is separate from her, understand distances, that she can bridge the distance, she has to stick out her hand toward it and move her fingers in a gripping fashion to pick it up, and then she has to remember to bring that sock to me and have me help her put it on. All of that were learned in bits and pieces in her development for the past year. Her being able to understand “programs” is handy in that we can now just say, “Ready for your nap?” “Ready to go night-night?” and she’d stop her playing, run around to the gate at the stairs, and pull on it, waiting for us to open it so she could step through and make her way upstairs to her room.

Her memory development is a cool thing to observe, too. Last night, for example, she was having her bath using an organic home-milled chamomile baby soap I’d purchased from a friend’s wife who handmakes all her organic products (Moxie Organix, if any of you are interested). Allie pointed to the soap bar and said, “Baya!”
Mr. W corrected her, “Soap. Not banana. Soap.”
“Bayaya,” she insisted.
Looking at the bar, the translucent cream color does bear an uncanny resemblance to banana flesh, albeit shaped differently.
“No, soap.”
“Baya.”
“Soap.”
“Baya.”
After she was taken out of her bath, dried off, diaper put on, she ran back into the bathroom where Mr. W still was, and pointed at the bar.
“Bayaya!”
“Soap.”
“Baya.”
“Soap.”
An application of lotion later, she was put in her fleece footsie jammies, said her goodnights to Mr. W, nursed, and as I started to move her off the Boppy to place her in her crib, she pointed at the bathroom door and said with all seriousness, “Baya.”
“You’re still on that?”
She went in her crib, played for the usual 20 minutes or so until she went to sleep. 11 hours go by. We go in her room to pick up a standing, smiling Allie from her crib. “Good MORning, sweetheart!”
*point* “Baya.” The way she smiles mischievously when she says “baya” tells us she’s deliberately telling us it’s a banana even thought she knows it’s not, so it’s a game to her.

“One” rhymes with “fun.” And she is lots of it.