cindy's world

On Missy’s last afternoon with Allie in mid-October, she told us almost as a by-the-way before she left, “She knows her hair now. You can ask her where her hair is and she’ll put her hand on her head.” That ended up being a nice trick to charm Allie’s grandparents with. This video was taken last weekend when my parents were visiting. My dad’s holding her and my mom’s taking the video and it’s my mom’s voice you hear.

Allie caught on to most words pretty quickly, but had a little difficulty distinguishing “hair” from “ear” for about a week. They sounds similar, so it’s understandable. It’s funny what she remembers from past unintentional training. She was shown flowers a lot, in the garden, in a clipping at home in a vase, on her walks. We try to keep her from grabbing the flower as it’s usually a thorny rose, so we tell her, “No, you don’t TOUCH the flower, you SMELL the flower.” Then we’d demonstrate a sniff, then hold her hands down and put her face toward the flower and she’d sniff, too. So a few weeks ago, she was fingering a print of a flower on my shirt, and I said, “Flower.” Next thing I knew, she was ducking her face down and shoving her nose in my shirt. She inhaled loudly through her nose. The same thing happened when she was rubbing her index finger on a pattern of a flower on a quilt on our bed. “Flower,” I said. Nose down. Sniff. This age is really fun.

When I saw that our local polling place is just a few streets up in our neighborhood, I thought it’d be a cool idea to go to the voting booths this year with Allie to indoctrinate her into the democratic process. To cut down on line-waiting time, I decided last minute today to fill out my mail-in ballot and walk it in.

In my head, in my perfect scenario, I’m walking up to the table of poll workers with my patriotically-dressed baby girl. The senior citizen volunteers smile at her and maybe say a few “Aww”s, then Allie would hand over my signed sealed ballot. Maybe the poll worker would even let Allie drop it into the ballot box. Then they’d give me an “I Voted!” sticker, which I’d then stick on Allie’s shirt, and we’d take a picture of her in front of an American flag.

In reality, we walked up to the house where a line had already formed coming out of the garage where the voting was taking place. I stood uncertainly in line, telling Mr. W (who was holding my patriotically dressed baby girl) that I didn’t think I need to stand in line to just drop off my ballot. He said he thought I needed to stay in line to check in. The guy in front of us overheard and told me that they had just made an announcement shortly before we got there that anyone with mail-in ballots can just walk in and hand it to a guy by the ballot box. So I did. Mr. W did not walk Allie in with me, but stood nearby. I handed my ballot over to a guy who did not even so much as crack his lips into a smile or bother to part them to utter a greeting. I asked if I could hand this to him, he took my ballot (I’m not even sure he looked at me), handed it over his shoulder to another guy who examined it to make sure my signature and address were filled out correctly, and I said, “Are we good?”
“We’re good,” he said unceremoniously, dropping the ballot into the slot of the box, and proceeded to ignore me again.
I walked out and said, “I don’t get a sticker for coming in with a ballot?”
“I guess not,” Mr. W said. I wanted to go back in to ask for one, to at least score one part of my dream scenario and stick a sticker on Allie for a photo, but Mr. W told me to just forget about it. We walked a few feet down and tried to snap a picture of Allie by a small flag staked into the ground, but she wouldn’t stay still so all the photos were blurry and you can’t even see the cute little elephant holding a sparkler with its trunk embroidered on her top.
We walked home, fed her dinner, and she went to bed.

And here I want to quote Robert Burns’ “To a Mouse.” Most anticlimactic experience ever.

I hadn’t wanted to bother with Halloween this year because I figure Allie’s too young to understand the concept, too young to eat candy, too young to stay up after dark to go trick-or-treating, and spending money on a costume she’s only going to wear once for a few hours? No, thanks. The week of Halloween, however, I started seeing people’s adorable photos of their kids in a variety of costumes, and I thought, “She’s only going to be this size once. By this time next year, she’ll be a kid in a costume, not a toddler.” (She’s practically kid-sized already. BTW, did you know that girls reach half their adult height at approximately 20 months, and boys at 24 months? So however tall your toddler is at those respective ages, double it, and you’re looking at an approximate. Allie is probably already half my height at 11 months, so in another 9 months…she’ll probably already be taller than I am.) But I still didn’t want to go thru the trouble of costume shopping for a few hours’ worth of wear. And then it hit me.

Before Allie was born, my court reporter Louise’s daughter was working in Disney Tokyo and had bought a little outfit for Allie. It was for a toddler and not an infant, so I’d put it away for future wear. I dug it out, and it fits! So for Halloween this year, Allie was Japanese. 😀

She had no hair to put up, so Mr. W made do. (har.) We decided to take her to nearby Saddleback Church’s “Blocktober” family event after work, which is a fall-themed campus-wide shindig with toddler areas, kid areas, teen areas, food truck area, shows, trick-or-treating, photo ops, rock-climbing walls, rides, ziplines… but Allie’s favorite thing is something she spotted immediately and beelined for.

“Bbbloon, bbbloon, bbbbloon!” she said, rushing off, before I even saw the balloon arch myself.
There weren’t a lot of kiddie rides she could go on without slipping off (like the carousel horse or the suspended swing ride), so she only got to go on this one. At least it’s a character she’s familiar with, given the theme of her bedroom. She even imitated him!

There were a lot of photo ops for our little pumpkin.

Her big sister even joined in on one of them.

And you can’t be a good authentic Japanese maiden without a nice nature background with water and big rocks in your photo.

One of the children’s classrooms giving out toys to trick-or-treaters found an age-appropriate toy for Allie: a rubber ducky squirter in a tiara! Allie loved it and hung on to it the whole time without dropping it. She bathed with it the other night already.

Can you believe that dressed like that, someone STILL mistook her for a boy? “Whoa there, little guy!” as he patted her head.

We got her home in time for her normal bedtime, which we were pushing back a little each day anyway in preparation for the Daylight Savings “Fall Back” schedule. I considered taping a piece of paper over the doorbell so kids would knock instead of ring the bell while Allie’s sleeping, and college roommie Diana’s dad had a higher-tech solution along the same lines and he disconnected the wires to their doorbell so Alexis could sleep through Halloween, but Mr. W ended up doing the low-tech version: he sat outside the front door on the porch and played on his iPad and presumably ate candy from our giant punchbowl of chocolates while he waited for kids to walk up to our front door. We didn’t get a lot of trick-or-treaters this year at all, according to him. Maybe 10 kids. I tried to tell him not to buy candy from Costco. =P We probably have 8 pounds left over. Where was everyone this year?

Yup, UPS lost the rug. My dad’s theory is that the rug was so large that it doesn’t “fit” in their usual storage areas or in their normal trucks, so some UPS employee put it elsewhere temporarily, and no now one knows where that is. Mr. W called the rug company and told them about the situation, and they immediately said they’d investigate the issue with UPS themselves, and if they don’t get a satisfactory response from UPS in the next day, they’d refund our money. Mr. W said he’d really rather get another rug. Today, the rug company emailed that they haven’t gotten anywhere with UPS and will be cutting and sending another rug for us on Monday, via a different shipper. If this drags on any longer, Allie isn’t going to need a rug to break her falls. She’s flying through stages so quickly. She’s so fast she’s *almost* running now, and much more coordinated. But don’t tell that to the bruise on her knee.

Last Saturday, we thought we’d take Allie to a petting zoo in San Clemente that’s doing a pumpkin patch thing for Halloween. It isn’t big or fancy, and it smells like the ponies, zedonks, chickens, rabbits, etc. that it houses, but it was crowded with kids and Allie had fun. Pumpkins were super-cheap at $4 each, but Mr. W didn’t want to carry a giant pumpkin around with him all day. Too bad; Allie would’ve probably enjoyed eating mashed pumpkin for the next 4 months. The patch was western-themed, so there was lots of hay, a “ball pit” to jump around in with hard kernels of corn in lieu of plastic balls, a fenced-in train that goes in a small circle, old western town facade and a cardboard maze for the tiny tots.

Scary Halloween Allie Cat!

Save a horse, ride a…

…bale of hay? Allie: “Okay, you guys, stop messing with me.”

Fake fall foliage, pumpkins in 88-degree sunshine…yup, must be October in Southern California.

Allie is a chameleon.

Or a pumpkin saleswoman. Allie: “Pumpkins! Get your big, fresh pumpkins right here, $4 each!”

Allie: “You KNOW you want one of these for a jack-o-lantern. That’s why God invented Halloween.”

Allie: “If you buy a pumpkin from me, I’ll do a happy wiggle-wiggle dance for you.”

Allie: “Look at this one with the cool twisty stem. What a swell jack-o-lantern he’d make! Get a second one for a Jill-o-lantern.”

See, isn’t that worth $4 bucks? 😀

Allie taught me something that day about perspectives. There’s our way of seeing things, and then there’s a child’s way. Sometimes when a child leads us somewhere…

…it looks like there’s no purpose. She’s looking at nothing, we think, so we lose interest and move on.
Meanwhile, she’s still faithfully holding her post.

But if we give her time, we will see what she sees.

Look, a new friend!

Sometimes you have to look where others aren’t looking…

…have faith in a change of direction, even if it’s kind of uncomfortable at first…

…to look where others overlook…

…in order to find…

…that when you follow your heart…

…that there’s treasure everywhere.

When you find that treasure, you run to it…

…and you grab it and celebrate the wonders of life. Especially if the treasure is mommy’s and daddy’s bag of fresh bakery cookies.

May you live like a child this Halloween…but be as careful as a grownup. 🙂

The giant carpet rug was scheduled to be delivered on Tuesday. It was highly anticipated and Mr. W even tentatively booked his son to come over and help him move our downstairs furniture, so that he could lay down the carpet rug and expand Allie’s play area downstairs. (Toddlers on travertine makes him nervous.) I’ve always preferred carpeting over hard floors, because it’s warmer and I can sit on the ground and there’s more noise-absorption, so I was looking forward to Carpet Day, too.

Tuesday came and went. No carpet rug. Mr. W grouchily refreshed the UPS shipping info page a gazillion times into the night on Tuesday, but the status is perpetually stuck at telling us anticipated delivery is Tuesday by the end of the day.

Mr. W finally called UPS, requested a trace, and they called us back this morning (at 5:30 a.m. sharp). They’re not sure WHAT happened to the carpet rug since its entry scan into a Southern California sorting facility last Friday. They’re going to start doing a search for the shipment’s whereabouts. Basically, they lost it.

How do you lose a 120-pound, 21 foot by 12 foot package?! Even if they rolled it up so that it’s the shortest dimension possible, it’d still be 12 feet long.

So since we couldn’t move furniture and lay down carpet yesterday as anticipated, Mr. W and I instead went and bought a new Prius to replace the old Prius that he’s apparently run down into the ground. He did say he like the Prius so much that he wasn’t going to get another car until he runs it into the ground. Of course, with his signature driving style, even the dealership that did his oil change last weekend was surprised at the state his engine is in. The guy in maintenance said something like, “I have never seen a Prius engine this run down like this.” Another maintenance guy who’d inspected the car after the “check engine” light came on said that there was no oil left in the engine, and that we were lucky the engine didn’t blow up or catch fire. =P
So hello, new family car. Hello, ice blue Prius V. You’re pretty and way, way too techie for me with the techie package that Mr. W wanted. (This car even parks itself, you need only select parallel parking or parking space parking.)
My only actual beef with this car so far is that it appears the baby’s carseat can’t be anchored in the back center seat. Anchors are only available on the side seats. Even with that info in the manual, we have yet to find the actual anchors, and we tried yesterday. What kinda makes up for it, tho is that the back seats have a tilt, just like front seats, so it gives my leggy girl more leg room in the rear-facing carseats that she has to be crammed into until she’s 2.

Months, that is. Things are going well. Her ankles are looking much better. The skin still looks like the thin shiny skin of scar tissue, but no more redness (well, maybe a little pink), blistering, or swelling. I continue to apply the tea tree oil antiseptic lotion twice a day, which bottle Allie loves to take from me and shake. Most things that aren’t toys (paper advertisements, manuals, shoes, ziploc bags, ointment tubes…) make her happy and since she still complains when we put her on her back for diaper or clothing changes, I’m happy to hand her whatever brings that big open-mouthed smile to her face.

Thanks to an app I have, I know that on this day last year, I had my first Braxton-Hicks contraction. I was out on a walk and it took my breath away. I didn’t know then, of course, that we were exactly a month away from meeting Allie out in the world. I thought I was about 2 weeks away. I had really been hoping for a slightly early delivery, since she was getting big in there and I didn’t want labor to be too difficult. Well, she was 2 days late, she was big, but everything was wonderful. (We’ll just smear past the next few months of my head going to hormonal imbalance hell.)

She’s a pretty good walker these days, unless she isn’t paying attention and trips over an unflat surface, my feet, her feet, a toy, etc. She’s just starting to trot, and it looks like running’s around the corner. Because of this, Mr. W expects her to be a lot more accident-prone (altho she seems to be pretty careful generally) and has ordered a 21-foot by 12-foot carpet rug so that we can turn pretty much the ENTIRE downstairs area, and not just the living room area, into her play area. That rug is to be delivered sometime today. According to tracking information online, the “package” is 120 pounds. Yikes.

Allie still eats well, still no food reactions, altho I’m hesitant to try avocado again. That may have to be one of those things she tries when she’s a kid and I offer it from my plate.

She loves to watch (slightly) older children play. At parks, she could watch a soccer game for as long as we let her. Yesterday, she watched the neighbor’s kids play four-square with a kick ball. She’d point excitedly and say, “Bah!” (ball). She’d wave her little arms up and down, yelling “Haa!” (hi) and “Aaay!” (hey). She’d walk right up into their game and try to join them if we don’t run over and snatch her up. There’s something beautiful about how she just smiles excitedly and goes over to greet a kid, reaching out to him/her with a big smile and a “Haa!” It’s as if rejection has never occurred to her. (Well, who would reject this little face?)

Right?

For the most part, other kids are delighted to see her and would talk to her or just smile right back at her as she walks up and smiles up at them. Well, except for that stupid kid in the video and this one kid last weekend:

So far, she hasn’t yet realized that she could refuse something. There are things she dislikes now, such as brushing her teeth. Mr. W would hold her up on her bathroom counter, we’d tell her, “Aaaahhhh!” as I bring the toothbrush up, and she’d whimper and complain, but she would do it with her mouth open and a big sad frown, sometimes fussing her way through it, but always reopening her mouth as needed. When she sees holes anywhere, the finger automatically goes in, and this is problematic if the hole is, as it occasionally has been, an electrical outlet socket. We tell her a stern, “No!” and she’ll pause, look at us, complain, but stop anyway. She’ll walk away fussing, shaking her head, with a frustrated look on her face, but she’ll do as she’s told. It’s the same when we make her not put rocks, leaves, grass, envelopes, flowers in her mouth. She’s not happy about it, but she accepts it. I guess it’s wishful thinking that she’ll always stay that way. =P

I’m starting to enjoy the lack of hair thing. Her peach fuzz is getting longer, but it still doesn’t require much more than a pat-down. No brushing, no barrettes, no bows, no tangles. I’m not taking that for granted. I’m sure I’ll be singing a different tune if she’s ready to start school and still only has peach fuzz on her little head.

She loves little dogs now. She got to pet one a couple of weekends ago, a well-behaved shih-tzu-looking lap dog, and she was gentle and never closed her hand on the hair, never pulled. So now she can spot a dog half a block away and say, “DAW!,” point, and beeline toward it. That’s when I have to kill my back leaning over her to brace her around the waist, cuz that’s when she’s so focused on the Daw (and sometimes balloons [“bbbbloo! bbbloo!” with a vibrating “B” that I can’t do], which the other day she also spotted half a block away raced toward, as racingly as a toddler can manage) that she will trip over anything. The good thing is that she doesn’t cry unless she bangs her head on something in a fall, which rarely happens, and has never happened outdoors to my knowledge.

Oh, I think she’s also starting to wean herself. Nursings are now about 6 minutes or less a side in her hungry mornings, and 3-4 minutes a side in the middle of the day. At night, she dozes as she nurses, so that may go longer, but there’s been a few times now when she’s decided she’s done with nursing and still wide awake, so I’d put her to bed in her crib wide awake, and just let her settle down on her own. Sometimes it’s a nerve-wracking 45 minutes, and I think the best she’s done was 10 minutes, but so far it’s always been before 8pm. The most helpful thing Mr. W has ever said to me about that is, “She’s fine! She’s never NOT slept at night.” That being true, I remind myself of that every time she’s up kicking around and bear wrestling instead of being able to be put down asleep.

I’m still undecided about Halloween. Since it’s on Wednesday this year, I don’t think we’d have time to participate between coming home from work, feeding her dinner, and putting her down to bed by 7p. So I didn’t get her a costume. Well, she has two Halloween-themed outfits, one of which she wore on Saturday.

Allie: “You’re getting sleepy…verrrrry sleeeeeepy…When you awake, you will put on my shoes and take me out for breakfast.”

It worked! Mr. W took us to…wow, I can not for the life of me right now remember WHERE we went to breakfast, but I know we had! Maybe I was under Allie’s spell, too.

She likes soft furry textures. She loves her pink “A” blanket that Jordan got her (she has to nap with it daily), my Footsie UC bears, the fluffy lambwool rug, her fleece PJ fabrics, the big fuzzy bear that she still sleeps on in her crib. She will stop in her tracks when she comes across one of these things, and either pull it up to her cheek and lean her head on it with a big smile, or she’ll squat on the ground and lay her cheek onto it if it were on the floor. Doing this to the Footsie stuffed bear and to her fleece PJs is how she bonked her head on the bottom shelf of her low bookshelf once, and the travertine floor the other day when she pulled the new PJs out of the bag onto the floor. Yes, each of those led to a brief cry, seconds-long. I laughed involuntarily both times, so I’m glad she was unhurt.

Here’s a 30-second video clip my parents took when they visited on Saturday. They brought bubble necklaces to amuse Allie with. I think it’s funny how in the end, you can tell my mom (behind the camera) panicked.

I read a touching story contributed for Sylvia Browne’s book “All Pets Go To Heaven” about a big blonde labrador retriever named Chance who had passed, and how he’d pulled strings from the Other Side to bring his grieving owners to another dog like him to take his place in their home. It was a fascinating story, but my favorite part of the anecdote is a poem from the submitter of the story.

“I am attaching a poem that I wrote; for about a week each morning I would wake up, and I had more and more of this poem in my head. Well, I think Chance sent it to me to write; in fact, I know he did. Thanks to Sylvia and reading her books for so long, I have no doubt that Chance is home, with us, and waiting for us to join him when our time comes.
I’m Still Here
Your heart has been heavy since that day —
The day you thought I went away.
I haven’t left you I never would —
You just can’t see me, though I wish that you could.
It might ease the pain that you feel in your heart —
The pain that you’ve felt since you’ve believed us to part.
Try and think of it this way, it might help you see —
That I am right there with you and always will be.

Until that day comes don’t think that I’ve gone —
I’m here right beside you, and my love it lives on.”

I think it’s an old Cherokee saying (I could be wrong about the source, I just don’t remember) that goes, “There is no death — there is merely a change of worlds.” It’s an interesting point that the poem (or, Chance himself) brings up; we teach our babies object permanence as one of the earliest lessons. We play peek-a-boo, we play “Where’s Baby/Mommy/Daddy?”, so that the baby knows that just because it can’t see a person or object doesn’t mean the person/object is gone. And yet, that’s all we believe as adults. For many people, if we can’t see it, we have a really hard time believing it exists. But there is so much more than meets the eye. (And now I have the Transformers theme song in my head.)

I’ve been closely following Flip Flop Girl’s food allergy mystery involving her toddler, Sienna. Sienna’s about 5 months older than Allie, and has eczema flare-ups and other skin reactions to various foods, and Flip Flop Girl, along with their team of pediatricians, have been trying to isolate the specific food items that are causing the reactions. Good thing her 3-year-old son Kyden has been logging all this stuff down in his blog! 🙂 I’m learning a lot.

Yesterday evening, Mr. W and I took Allie to Claim Jumper restaurant for dinner, and while I always bring her containers of homemade babyfood with us to restaurants, she’s starting to eat some tablefoods, so when I saw the big bowl of mashed up hard-boiled egg at the salad bar, I thought, Hmm. I was holding off introduction of egg, as previous AAP recommendation is that egg white is allergenic so to avoid egg altogether for the first 10 months (I think), then only introduce egg yolk, and then after the first year, egg white as well. But Allie’s pediatrician had said that AAP recently changed their guidelines and introduction of the two together is now okay. Allie doesn’t seem to have had reactions to foods so far, and I know that college roommie Diana has started feeding her baby (2 weeks younger than Allie) hard-boiled egg yolk, so I thought I’d give it a try.
But I’d learned some stuff from Kyden’s blog.
So first, I rubbed a piece of rubbery hard-boiled egg white on Allie’s forearm. She was sitting in the high chair, self-feeding on some baby puffs, and she stopped what she was doing after I rubbed the egg on her, looked at me with the oddest concerned look on her face, sucking in her lower lip so that her mouth formed a straight line. She looked at her arm where traces of yellow egg yolk powder could be seen. Then she looked at me again. “What the heck did you do that for?” she seemed to think at me. Then she looked at her arm again.
There was no reaction whatsoever on her skin, so I put a few clumps of yellow yolk on her baby spoon and offered to her. She opened her mouth trustingly. There was no expression change as she seemed to mash the yolk on her tongue. I offered her the sippy cup, she sipped, pointed at me, grunted, “Uggh!” So I fed her some more yolk. She ate it as if she were eating any of her food. When we were out of egg yolk, she went back to her puffs. And nothing happened. So I guess she’s not allergic to eggs.

But she does seem to be reacting to SOMEthing. Pretty much since her first weeks out in the world, her ankle wrinkles have been red with occasional patches of dryness on it. The pediatrician said it was just dry because her foot’s always flexed, it’s not eczema or anything. He said to just put Aquaphor on it twice a day, as with her then-bumpy section on her neck rolls. The tiny bumps (it looked like heat reaction) on her neck rolls went away, and then her neck rolls went away altogether, and I’ve stopped using Aquaphor on her neck. However, the ankle thing stuck around. She doesn’t seem bothered by it, and when I touch it to apply the Aquaphor, she doesn’t draw her feet back or seem to think it’s itchy, and a second pediatrician said it was just dry skin, so I haven’t been concerned with it. I kept hoping she’d outgrow it once she started not flexing her foot, but she didn’t. And then 2 nights ago, the spots got ANGRY.

What the heck is that? Both ankles are red and patchy in blotches, and her left ankle actually grew stuff that looked like tiny blisters.

These photos are taken the morning after, when the ankles are much better, but the blisters are still present. Simultaneously, she got a rare case of diaper rash. So the 2 nights her ankles were worst, were the same nights we saw a widespread diaper rash. She still didn’t react much to contact with the affected areas; we applied Desitin to the diaper rash, and Aquaphor to the ankles. Anytime she seems to have a flare-up of something (which we normally discover when we change her as we prepare to put her down to bed for the night), it clears by up morning, altho it may recur by the next evening. Such was the case this time, but the only new thing in her diet was string beans, and I can’t imagine a reaction to that. Nevertheless, I eliminated string beans the 2nd day, and the issues were still there, so I reintroduced string beans.

What I also did was buy some tea tree oil antiseptic lotion at a local organic food grocery store, and applied that to her ankles. Now all the redness is gone, and the ankles have gone back to just patchy dryness where the skin looks almost like post-burn or post-scab skin, and the blisters have dried up. We’ve asked Missy to apply a protective organic butt balm to Allie during diaper changes, and we’ve continued use of Desitin, and the diaper rash has not recurred.

The baby stuff is pretty puzzling. If anyone knows or suspects what the ankle stuff is, I welcome suggestions.

Meanwhile, here’s Allie being held by my dad last weekend, spotting a plane overhead.

Today is Day 4 with the new nanny, Missy. She seems more independent and confident than Jayne, and handles Allie well. Allie appears to love her. She’s able and has been doing everything with Allie that is a part of Allie’s routine, only the timing was off the first 2 days and Allie was taking her second nap pretty late, so I’ve had to make her bedtimes later to balance between her routine sleepy time when she’s rubbing her eyes and her being yet physically not tired enough to go down easily. Turned out Missy didn’t read the notes I’d left for her about Allie’s routine. When she did on Wednesday (yesterday), the day was picture-perfect and Allie was in a great mood, not hungry nor overtired.

I’d been offered 3 days off last week, the first 3 days of Jayne’s absence, and took it. Allie and I got to hang out, she got half of her flu shot (half-dose for babies on first shot, then the second half-dose 30+ days later), I nursed exclusively didn’t have to pump/wash pump parts or bottles for 5 days straight. It was nice, except for Friday, when the stepdaughter wanted to go out for lunch together when Allie and I were planning to get some fall jackets for her, so it was a rushed lunch out with the errand. I gave the stepdaughter time to walk around with Allie while I finished my lunch, and when we were making our way back to the car, suddenly Allie threw up all over her new jacket and my arm. In looking at the splatter of vomit on the ground, most of which were the last course of pears she’d just eaten for dessert, I pointed to a bright red and green area and said, “She ate flowers?” The stepdaughter leaned down, looked at the intact petals and leaves, and said, “Oh! I didn’t even know she did that!” Yeah, you have to watch the kid when you watch the kid these days. Allie was fine, though. The worst that came out of that is that she lost her pears. She didn’t throw up her first two courses of chicken with spinach, or her beets.

Things have been going pretty well, so when my supervisor offered me this week and next week off last-minute (I’d been on the wait list), I declined. It’s a good thing to let Allie get used to a new nanny, in case Jayne is unavailable again for whatever reason. Jayne had always wanted her friend Missy to be her “backup” in the rare times she may be sick or unable to start her car or something, and Missy lives 5 minutes from us, and has always expressed a willingness and interest in at least part-time or as-needed care of Allie. Plus, the more who love Allie, the better; it keeps her flexible and secure in the knowledge that her world is full of people she could love and trust. The stranger-danger lessons can come when she’s just a TOUCH older. 🙂

Jayne comes back next Thursday. I hope things stay as uneventful as they have been. I know Jayne’s been in contact with Missy, checking on Allie, and she’s probably still terrified that Allie’s not gonna remember her or want her when she comes back. She said she’s already mentally prepared herself not to take rejection personally. It may take Allie a minute to warm back up, but I don’t expect there to be any issues. I had been told not to take it personally if Allie wants the nanny over me sometimes since her daytime caretaker spends more awake time with her, but that hasn’t happened, either. She’s always ecstatic and excited when we come home, giving a little gasp and stopping whatever she’s doing to clammer over to the edge of the gate, looking out toward the garage entrance to the house when she hears the garage door and house door open (according to Jayne, and I’ve seen this myself when Mr. W comes home if I’m with her already), then giving us a big smile and reaching her arms out to us.

I can’t wait for her to be big enough to enjoy things like traveling, but at the same time, I’m loving this age and don’t really want it to pass that quickly.

When I watch Allie nap in the day or sleep at night through the babycams (there are 2 in her room), I often see orbs of light zoom around from one end of the frame to the other. I’ve thought about them being reflections of light or dust, but as for light, the orbs are there even at night when there’s no car driving by outside to cast light and her room’s dark, and as far as floating dust, they go way faster than any current in her room (judging by the lazy movement of a very air-sensitive Flensted mobile, “Elephant Party,” a gift from Dardy, hanging from the ceiling within view of one of the cameras), and they often change direction very suddenly. I’ve seen dust float by a camera and it does not move like these orbs.

I’d like to believe that we have physical ways of capturing the presence of spiritual beings, like light orbs on camera, but refracted light on a lens can give a similar image in still photography, so I don’t quite know the difference visually.

But it’s nice to think that while my little girl sleeps, angels protect her and keep her company.