I’m starting to think there’s no way to say exactly what/when baby’s first word is. Do we say it’s “mama” because of the “mamamamamama” playing of sounds she did when she was practicing her “m”s months ago? Is it “baba” (“daddy” in Mandarin) that she started doing a couple of months after that as she’s now working on the “b” sounds? Is it the not-quite-full-word sounds like “boon” when she pointed at the balloons floating in a corner of the ceiling when she got her first balloons at the beginning of last month? Or maybe it’s the “buh-buh” she did last night and this morning, accompanied by her waving, as she said good night to the stepkidlet before going upstairs to bed, and to me as we said our goodbyes and I walked out the door to go to work.

I guess I’d thought it would be clearer than that. I figured there’d be a first “meaningless” word, such as “mama” or “dada” (she’s still not doing her “d” sounds, yet) that has meaning to us, but not to her, and then later, there’d be a first “real” word that she says deliberately with intent to communicate. But there’s all this gray area. Do I count the sounds that I know mean something to her (such as the high-pitched moose shriek imitation she does, almost perfectly emulating her small furry stuffed moose toy that my parents got her as a souvenir from Yosemite, whenever we say “moose” or when she sees the toy) but that aren’t truly formed words, like “boon?” But then she didn’t do “boon” after the first two times, since the balloons deflated and Mr. W threw them away. We went on a walk and bought her a cute mylar balloon the other day after she saw a picture of balloons and then pointed to the empty corner of the ceiling where the balloons had been last month, so now she’s batting around the new balloon and saying “bah-bah” which isn’t quite “boon” but isn’t quite “bah-loon,” either.

I think “first words” are arbitrary to whatever the parents want to deem a first word, just like “first walk” is pretty arbitrary, too. Allie now takes up to 6-7 steps pretty quickly to get from one end of the couch to the middle of the room to one of us, or to a toy she wants to play with. This is only when she’s not tired and therefore doesn’t have the balancing skills of a drunk. Some would say this is not truly “walking” because it’s not consistent and she can’t keep taking these steps in a controlled way perpetually, as it seems like the last step of the series is the one where she knows she’s at her goal so she gives up and sort of lunges herself at the target, sometimes falling or sitting down with a plop.

So when people ask me what Allie’s doing these days, is she talking? Is she walking? I just say, “Sorta.”

A bailiff in the building told me that when he brought a young defendant out of lock-up into the courtroom to have the defendant’s case heard, on sight the judge told him to bring the defendant back into lock-up immediately. Not knowing why, the bailiff did as he was told and then re-entered the courtroom in time to hear the judge say that he was going to recuse himself from this case. The case was then transferred to a different courtroom in the building. So the bailiff went to the defendant to give him this information.
“What does that mean?” the defendant asked him.
“It means the judge may personally know something about your case, or maybe know someone in your family, that may cause him to appear biased, so he is removing himself from your case and giving it to another judge to hear.” In a civil case, judges recuse themselves all the time because they may own stock in the corporation that is involved in a lawsuit, or because they had formerly worked for a company that is named in the lawsuit. In a criminal case, recusal is much more rare.
“Well, I live in [local city], and I know that some judges live there, and one of them used to give see me walking to school and he’d always pull over to give me a ride. Maybe this judge knows that judge or something.”
The bailiff later told the judge what the defendant had said.
The judge responded, “That was ME. I used to see him walking all the time around our neighborhood walking to and from school when he was younger, so I used to give him rides.” But when the kid was about 18, the judge continued, he’d gotten into trouble with the law, and at the same time the neighborhood suffered a few residential burglaries. All the neighbors figured it was this kid. The judge’s own house at the time also acquired some evidence of tampering, as if someone had attempted to break in, and he’d always suspected it was this kid, too.
“I can’t be fair on this case because the DA’s offer is 36 months [in state prison] and I’d want to put him away for longer than that just to keep him out of my neighborhood.” Good man. So he passed the case to someone who didn’t have a personal interest in the outcome.
That someone is another judge who ended up allowing the defendant, on the same day, to get probation. =P So no state prison time for him. Guess he’ll be back in the first judge’s neighborhood soon.

First, I mourned her death.

Then, I tried to recreate her.

Yesterday, I discovered…she is resurrected! Oh, joy of joys! She’s supposed to be bigger, prettier, and more multi-faceted than ever. I’m not sure how I feel about that last part, yet. I mean, she did famously well the first time by sticking with what she knew.
Rachel: You don’t want to do too much too soon. You know what happened to the girl who did too much too soon, don’t you?
Jill: No…what?
Rachel: Sh-she died, Jill.
(extra points to the person who could tell me where that’s from)
Oh well, I suppose if you’re going to rise a new phoenix from the ashes of the old one, you want to come back with a bang, and all the splendor you can muster.

Hubby and I still haven’t reached any resolution on the near future regarding his imminent retirement. He knows he’s going to retire in about 5 years (he can’t wait, he talks about it almost DAILY, especially when traffic’s bad on the freeways commuting to work), and he still wants me to quit when he retires, so we can be a family unit all together, but I’m still not ready to give up the financial security of having my own money, and own work life. Maybe things will change in 5 years. Maybe Oregon, Hawaii or Florida (yes, Mr. W put FLORIDA on the potential retirement location list) won’t seem so far away by then. Who knows.

Mr. W took me to lunch today at a Chinese food restaurant. When the fortune cookies came at the end, he cracked his open, read it to himself, and then commented with a big smile, “Hey, I’m gonna get to retire this year!” Huh? He handed me the fortune. It says, “The current year will bring you much happiness.
Heh.
He told me to open mine. I did, and read it silently. “Hey, I’m NOT going to be quitting this year!” I said in delight.
“Your fortune is ‘The current year will NOT bring you any happiness’?” he predicted.
I handed him my fortune, which says, “Depart not from the path which fate has you assigned.
(more…)

I used to get little trash-talking post-it notes on my desk at work when UCLA played rival colleges, from my coworkers who’d attended those rival colleges, and I used to get some crap from judges in elevators when the stakes got high. But that hasn’t happened in years. This is probably why people at work from rival colleges have stopped picking on me about sports…
My judge (Cal grad), this morning: Hey, UCLA’s 3-0!
Me: Yeah, I heard we’re doing pretty well.
[Meaning, I’ve seen social network posts from fellow Bruins cheering.]
Judge: [something about the new coach]
Me: What sport are we talking about again?
Judge: [an amused laugh] This IS football season.
Me: Oh.

Eddie and Michelle had a kids’ birthday party to attend in local city Irvine this past Saturday, so they contacted me and asked if they could swing by afterwards so that our daughters can finally meet. The last time I saw their daughter Scarlett was through Michelle’s belly at her baby shower. Allie was 3.5 months old at the time. Now Allie is 9.5 months and little Scarlett is 4.5 months. They didn’t interact much, but I can see them running around together in another year or so. 🙂

It was a triple-digit weekend and Allie was wearing a cool pinafore-style top with matching ruffled diaper-cover shorts, white with red needlepoint embroidery, very Bohemian looking (a gift from Rebecca). But as soon as I brought the babies face-to-face, I realized that I’d forgotten who Scarlett’s parents are. In the past, when the four of us hung out, I’d be in UCLA gear and Eddie would be in USC gear. So of course Allie had to be changed into something more appropriate.

Scarlett: Fight on!
Allie: *discreetly* Gag!
This is actually the only UCLA item Allie owns, and only because Christi (flip flop girl) had the foresight to buy this for her the time we visited them up north. The shirt is for girls 12 months, so I’d put it away into the “future wear” drawer. On Saturday when I finally took all the tags off and pulled it on my 9-month-old, it was a PERFECT fit. She would’ve outgrown it without my knowing had Eddie and Michelle not come over! And I would not have been happy about the missed opportunity for Bruinwear.
Scarlett, on the other hand, had spit up on her pretty ‘SC dress and had to be changed out of it, and her parents were prepared with another USC onesie, which she wore after the dress. 😛

On Sunday, my parents came over and took a ton of video footage of Allie, since she’s toddling around on her own and is now up to 5-6 steps walking without assistance. She did most of her continous walking on Saturday and may have gone more steps than 5-6, but she had already gotten to where she’d wanted to go so she’d stopped (we need a bigger house). It’s usually one end or another of the L-shaped couch, where we place her toys for incentive. Unfortunately, my parents didn’t get any footage of a long walk. I think Allie was just distracted because of all the people around her, and of all the dancing she had to do, of course, since we put some music on.
Here’s Allie rocking and doing the head-bang to rock:



And here’s Allie doing body rolls and hippy movements to R&B/hip-hop.


That last toothy smile? She was just hamming it up for the camera for my mom (who was video-ing). She does a lot of stuff to deliberately “play” with grownups. What a clown. Rebecca did say very early on that Allie would have a wonderful personality, a great sense of humor which she would develop very young, and would deliberately do things for a reaction, to make people laugh.

Jayne brought up yesterday after we got back home from work that she would like to take two weeks in October off to fly back east to visit her aging father, who appears to be at the early stages of either elderly depression or dementia. She’s concerned about him, and she normally flies back to visit once a year, and had been planning to skip this year to care for Allie, but had recently heard from her mother that her father wasn’t doing too well. She was in tears.

We told her of course she should take the time. She had already planned a Plan B for us in her absence. There was a lady from her church, a pastor’s mother, who cares for her own grandchildren (the pastor’s kids) regularly and loves babies and children. Jayne had approached Missy before Jayne realized she was able to nanny for us, to ask if Missy would be interested in this position. Missy couldn’t do it permanently, but did want to help us out a few days a week, which we couldn’t do as we worked daily. Anyhow, Jayne said she’d already talked to Missy and Missy was happy to come for the two weeks Jayne would be gone, and to be Jayne’s back-up for any other unforeseen situations such as ailment. Jayne proposed having Missy start visiting to aquaint her with Allie and Allie’s routine, and then having Missy here with more and frequency until she’s here daily the week of Jayne’s departure. We told her this is fine, and of course she needs to go east to visit her father because Allie will always be here and Allie will be fine, but she may regret it if she doesn’t go see her father and something happens.

And Jayne burst into tears again and said she’s so scared that Allie’s going to forget her in 2 weeks, and that she never thought she would love someone else’s child so much. Aww.

(Sorry, men…this may be TMI for you as it’s all about breast milk. You’re welcome to read, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

Pumping is going so well — now that I know how to induce subsequence let-downs and thus have stopped stressing about it — that the family freezer is now overrun with gallon Ziploc bags containing bags of frozen breast milk. I guess I was never less than 3 Ziploc bags, or about 2 weeks, ahead of Allie’s usage, but Allie had a jump in consumption a couple of months ago that coincided with a milk decrease on my end, which ate away at my stockpile cushion so swiftly that I got really stressed, which just added to the whole problem. Now, the freezer has 7 Ziploc bags full of the filled Lasinoh storage bags, and I’m halfway into filling the 8th Ziploc, and I’m about 5 weeks ahead (meaning the milk she’s drinking today was pumped out 5 weeks ago). This past week, since we started meat (just chicken, which we are still “hiding” in kale and/or carrot), Allie’s milk consumption dropped predictably. Instead of two 8-oz bottles a day after each nap, she’s down to two 7-oz bottles. She’s still nursing after she wakes up in the morning and before she goes down for the night, but I don’t know how much she’s taking in at those times.

I’d called the lactation nurse last month to ask if I should be reducing my pumping to match with Allie’s reduced nursing sessions (she nurses/drinks milk 4 times a day), and the nurse told me to hold off for another month to prevent a sudden decrease in milk production that may drop off too early, since I would ideally like to reach the one-year mark in giving Allie breast milk. For now, the nurse said, just reduce the pumping times to 15 minutes a session, instead of 20. Mr. W complains about the loss of freezer space, saying his freezer is overteeming with breast milk, so I think I’m good on my stockpile and can drop off a pump session now, even tho I don’t think it’s been quite a month, yet. After a month, the lactation nurse advised, I can spread the pump sessions to every 4 hours instead of every 3, and thereby eliminate a pump session in the day.

I probably can’t drop the 4:30am pumping session (darn), since that one yields the most milk (I did drop the time spent pumping so now I get 6 oz instead of 7-8), but dropping one of the 3 that I do at work would probably be helpful and give me half an hour back of worktime. All I have to do is match my pumping with the times that Allie actually would nurse when we’re together. That means delaying my morning pumping from 9:30a to 10:30a, eliminating the 1pm pumping, and bringing the 3:30p down to 2:30p. I get my lunches back, could MAYBE hit the gym again (the lactation nurse warned that if I start strenuous exercise too suddenly, that it could also adversely affect my milk supply), and it gives me more time to “refuel” before Allie’s bedtime feeding.

I think I’ll start this today. Hopefully it doesn’t wane my milk supply too dramatically, but I guess I can always add the eliminated pump session back in.

I realized recently I don’t know anyone who had to wean themselves off the pumps. My friends’ babies either weaned themselves early from the breast, causing my friends to dry up on the pumps and switch to formula; or my friends quit breastfeeding for whatever reason before the year-mark (when baby could take dairy) and didn’t pump as they intentionally switched their babies to formula; or my friends are able to be around their babies enough to breastfeed regularly and let the babies’ own supply/demand control weaning naturally. I’m kind of amazed that it looks like I’m going to be able to give Allie breast milk all the way through her first year, which is what the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends, and then put her straight on cow’s milk when she’s ready for dairy at 1 year without having to bridge any gap with baby formula. I was just hoping to get through my personal minimum of 3 months for her health benefits initially, and when that passed, I set my goal for 6 months with some trepidation, and then when that went well, was crossing my fingers and aiming for a year, without daring to hope too much. I still have 2.5 months to go, but it’s looking good. *still crossing fingers*

A day before Allie’s 3-month birthday, she found her thumb and ever since then has rejected the pacifier. She doesn’t suck her thumb much, only when she used to suck on the pacifier, which is to self-soothe as she falls asleep.

Today, I thought it would be interesting to reintroduce the pacifier to see what she would do with it. Obviously, if she showed too much interest, I’d take it away again so I don’t have to wean her of something later that she’s already weaned herself of. So while daddy was changing her diaper and she needed a distraction, I popped her old pacifier in her mouth. She looked surprised and smiled playfully, and then started chewing on the nipple. She then pulled it out, looked at it, giggled, turned it around and around and observed it from different angles, then put it back in her mouth for more tentative chews. She laughed, pulled it back out, turned it to its side, then tentatively gave the rim a few chews. She thought that was funny, also, and pulled it out again. She test-chewed various corners of the pacifier before deciding that the slightly thicker and harder rim between the nipple and the handle was the best for her teething needs.

So now we have a new bath-safe chew toy. She isn’t interested in sucking it, so I think she may be around the corner from self-weaning off the bottle, as well. Soon she’ll be eating what the big people eat.

When the stepkidlet returned after 9 weeks in Europe this summer, she was full of stories of cultural differences in child-rearing. Her relatives in Spain, according to her, don’t have any bedtime for their toddler, and allows the little girl to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning with the adults. The girl is hyper, fussy, and doesn’t nap well or at all. When mealtimes come, the girl is placed in her high chair, and then one adult immediately clasps the girl’s forehead and chin, forcing her mouth open, and the other adult shovels food in the girl’s mouth. The girl isn’t even given a chance to decide whether she will resist the food. It’s all force-fed immediately. This toddler is also fed soda in her bottle and eats junk food all the time. In telling us these Spanish habits she’s observed, the stepkidlet mentioned that Allie’s nanny Jayne had said that she doesn’t know how she would care for other babies if she decides to nanny professionally after Allie, because if the parents don’t have a healthy napping/eating/playing routine established for the kid, she isn’t sure she could handle it. Jayne calls Allie the exemplar baby, and considers herself spoiled by the regular, predictable breaks she gets when Allie takes her hour+ naps twice a day. (I’m pretty sure I’ve warned her that Allie will naturally drop the morning nap sometime in her first year.) The stepkidlet said thoughtfully that when she has kids of her own, she wants to raise them the way I’m raising Allie, which unfortunately means that her kids can’t be around her own mother, who raises children in the Spanish-culture way. I’d thought she was being facetious.

Today, the stepkidlet joined Mr. W, Allie, and me at the Lake. During Allie’s lunchtime there, the stepkidlet helped hold Allie and hand her the sippy cup while I fed a chicken and carrot puree, a purple yam puree, and red Bartlett pear puree for dessert. The stepkidlet was full of questions about the steps it took to make each vegetable item, and then she said she definitely wanted to follow my parenting style for her own future kids. I laughed and told her I’d be here, she doesn’t have to memorize everything now. She said again that she wants to learn this because she won’t be able to bring her kids around to her mom if she wants them to be raised healthily. We chatted about nutrition and early established healthy eating habits.

It didn’t hit me until earlier, while I was reading a parenting book about infant nutrition and having dinner on my own (Mr. W was playing Diablo III), that the stepkidlet paid me a HUGE compliment. They say that emulation is the sincerest form of flattery, but when that emulation is of one’s parenting style, I don’t think it gets bigger than that. Everything I put into raising Allie is the largest amount of effort I’d put into anything, with what feels like the most significant consequences. I’ve had many people roll their eyes at me and tell me I’m making things too hard on myself, I should stop breastfeeding and pumping and let her go on formula; I should make her adapt to my social routine and just let her crash in the car or in strollers for a few minutes here and there if she’s tired enough to do it; I should feed her commercial jarred babyfood to free up time for myself to do my own things. Yeah, a lot of what I’m doing is less than perfectly convenient, but I’ve known since pregnancy that if 100 hours of pain and effort yields even a smear of advantage in health, development, disease-prevention, etc. for Allie, those 100 hours are happily worthwhile spent for me, disproportionate to the advantage gained or not. I’ve had 35 years of doing whatever I wanted to pamper myself, I can give the next few to Allie to make sure she starts off on the right foot. I know this doesn’t guarantee that she won’t eat fast food here and there on her own, or loooove full-fat cupcakes, but I hope that she’ll also be healthy enough to eat fresh fruits and veggies and whole-grain superfoods and learn to surf with me from a young age. 🙂 And hike with her dad, and bike-ride with both her parents, without crying too much about the TV show she’s missing at home.

So yeah, when the stepkidlet observes my parenting, Allie’s behavior and habits, and observes the way other relatives raise their kids (her own mother included), and then on her own asks me to teach her what I’m doing so that she could pass that on to her own future kids, I think it’s worth a blog post. 😀


Stepkidlet: “I spy…an Allie Cat!”
Allie: “I wanna see an Allie Cat!”

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