cindy's world

I had a couple of drinks after what I described below. 🙂

It seems that whenever I see Edgar’s family members, I get a little evaluation of my current physique. There was his birthday, when his cousin made a couple of comments about how fat I wasn’t and how my engagement didn’t count. And then there was Ruby’s bridal shower last month, when Edgar’s mom went on and on about how I am so much smaller now than I used to be. So at their wedding, when I saw Edgar’s cousin (the same one) across the room and waved when we made eye contact, I’d predicted what happened next, despite the fact that we’re social network friends and she sees photos all the time of me online.

Her eyes opened wide in recognition and she opened her mouth in a shocked smile, then came over, her legs barely able to make the strides in the very, very short and very, very fitted, very low-cut white dress she wore. (I had learned since our last meeting that she had some help with the physical enhancements, and I suppose if you paid good money for it, you should show it off.) “Cindy! Oh, my God! You’re so skinny! How’d you get so skinny? I mean, compared to how you were BEFORE. What’s your secret? What have you been doing?”
I chuckled politely, then said, “I haven’t really been doing anything, just breastfeeding and taking care of Allie.”
“Really? Just breastfeeding and baby duty, huh?” She looked at me skeptically, like I was sitting on a Fountain of Trimness and won’t share the treasure map. She complimented Allie, then the conversation ended shortly thereafter with her saying, “Well, you look great! Compared to before,” as she gave my forearm a squeeze and returned to her date.

Eddie’s wife Michelle, whom I’ve known and been good friends with for the past 4 years, who was also at this wedding, and also knows of the prior 2 incidents referred to above, said to me after the cousin left, “Dude. How big WERE you?!” HAHAHAHA!! But in truth, there hasn’t been much of a change in the past years. I think the peak of my obesity, as I refer to it, was a mere 20 lbs or so more than I weigh now, and that was in 2000 or so, when I started running and GAINED weight despite the 3 miles every other day because my crappy-ass physician at the time told me to increase the mileage, frequency, and drop my daily caloric intake from 1000 to 800 calories a day. Talk about hitting starvation mode as my body flew into fat conservation and retention and turned off the metabolism. But Edgar’s family makes it sound like I used to need an assistant to pull up on my fat rolls so that another assistant could sponge wash between the folds as I laid in a collapsed oversized bed demanding Twinkies and gravy fries, pale from not being able to leave the room to go into sunlight as the doorways weren’t wide enough for me to exit the room I’d eaten my way into.

I was just thinking around the time of my cousin Mark’s visit, while making plans with my cousins for Cousin Day Thursday, that I was really happy with the family members I have, because for such a big family (my paternal grandma has 6 kids, so many many extended family members locally), my cousins were great people who have come to my aid, been socially reliable, are responsible and good decent human beings, and are people whom I’d be proud to be friends with by choice had we not been family. And then a little voice in the back of my head had wondered whether in giving credit like this, that I was just asking for Murphy’s Law to strike.

Strike, it did. Right now, I’m irritated and hurt by a cousin who’s holding a grudge against another cousin’s mom and is therefore being hateful to others of us who aren’t even involved, and another cousin who very clearly left us out of a pretty significant event but who unfortunately felt the need to lie to me about it and then include me late. I don’t know how to handle stuff like this. I feel like I need a social advisor. The first cousin, I’m just going to leave alone and let her work out her own drama, and I’m not going to address how she upset me in her string of collateral damage. I’ll just get over it on my own in my own time. The second cousin…I don’t know. Am I supposed to attend even tho I know that within the 60 or so people invited, I didn’t make the cut, and the only reason I know about it now was because I’d unknowingly asked her about it?

And when the recipricol event occurs in the near future on my side, am I supposed to include her?

I was taken back to my childhood and teenager years, in which I’d constantly felt slighted by these relatives, because I’d always thought of them, given them what I could, supported them any way possible even if inconvenient or impractical for me to do so, but the same was not done for me. That was the story of my youth. Even in adulthood, I attended their events, photographed for them, and I can’t think of many events of mine they’d bothered showing up to, even tho they were always invited. My mom had told me that because I’m an only child, these things happen; they would always be in their private circle with their siblings with me on the outside. Well, Allie is MY only child, and I can see this occurring with her, too, where she will love her cousins and want to be around them as they are close in age, and want to do things with and for them, but they won’t think of her or include her when they do special things with and for each other. If Allie is like her mom, this will sting. She will be sensitive to it for a long time, maybe forever. Life is unfair. “I know, but why can’t it ever be unfair in my favor?” Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes) would say.

I think there’s a reason why my closer friends are die-hard friends of mine. They think that I’m an unusually good and considerate friend. I’ve heard this over and over again. I think there are a lot of people like “them” in the world, and less of people like “us.” Those of us who’ve been hurt, flaked on, treated selfishly and carelessly thrown aside by “them”s appreciate the “us”es when we find some. I hope Allie finds more “us”es to fill the special spots close to her heart.

“You can only control your own behavior to do things in the way others OUGHT to have done them,” my judge said this morning after his “How’s mini-minx?” unleashed a purging from me. He’s right. So despite how I FEEL about things, I will still DO what I should do, in a timely manner that is of the utmost consideration, just as I’d always done.

Guess what! The stepdaughter is going to be on internet radio TONIGHT! Well, not her live, but one of her songs. This stepkidlet had a barrage of songwriting when she taught herself guitar at age 17-18 and all her teenage emotions poured out and took beautiful form in her music. Now, however, she has pretty much stopped creating music, and now just sings with her church(es). I really wanted to commemorate her creativity of a few years ago, and asked Garrett and Rebecca if they would air one of her songs on their radio show. I sent them “Ready to Fly,” one of the stepkidlet’s rare happy songs (she WAS a teenager when she was songwriting, after all — you should see my overdramatic teenage poetry; you’d be shocked I didn’t kill myself already).

Listen live if you can! 7:30p-8:30p Pacific Time, and the show is on every weekday. Here is the link to listen:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/garrettmillerradio

If you aren’t able to get to it tonight, Garrett and Rebecca archives all their shows for podcasts, and I’ll post the specific link when I get it afterwards. YAY!!

(For a original song performance video and photos of the stepkidlet at her 2009 city pageant, in which she took Best Talent, Miss Congeniality AND First Runner Up, click here.)

*** UPDATE AT 8:35P ***
That was great! The broadcast just finished. I didn’t know this, but the host Garrett had some trouble uploading the song to prep for the show because it wasn’t in an MP3 format. So he asked the stepdaughter to call in, and she was embarrassed to do it, but she was a great sport and called in. Also, I got my techie hubby to convert the .wma song to .mp3 and emailed that immediately, so Garrett and Rebecca were able to play the song as well as talk to Ana. Here is the link to the archived show…you can listen immediately!
http://tobtr.com/s/3703401
The radio online chat room (simultaneously running during the show) was abuzz during the song. People loved her, and loved the song! Yay! (BTW, I had let Garrett know that the stepdaughter and her boyfriend were both here, and when Garrett first mentioned the boyfriend’s name live on-air, I turned and watched the boyfriend’s eyes go wide, like he’d seen a ghost. It was so funny, I emailed Garrett and told him the reaction. Of course after that, Garrett made sure to keep re-mentioning the boyfriend’s name. HAHA!)

One feature of working full time away from a quickly-developing baby is that we don’t always know when she’s on to the “next” stage of something. Like how one day, we had to bottlefeed her at home in our care (normally I nurse every meal when I’m not at work) and Mr. W realizes that Allie was holding her bottle on her own. Apparently this was nothing new to Jayne, but because Jayne’s with Allie daily for more hours than we are, she isn’t always aware that something that isn’t new to her is new to us.

Last week, we discovered that Allie is able to feed herself and this weekend, suddenly she’s able to use the sippy cup. The feeding herself came with a little practice. First, she was quickly putting little specks of random stuff she finds on the floor or furniture into her mouth before an adult could stop her. (Lint, mostly, sometimes scraps of paper or napkin she’d torn, and we’re usually able to stop her or at least catch her early enough to snap, “No!” and make her freeze.) Then, Mr. W tried feeding her some organic baby puffs. She would open her mouth and take it, and he’d hand it to her and she’d finger it, unsure of whether we’d actually allow her to put something into her mouth for once. When we guided her hand toward her mouth, she’d hesitantly look at us in confusion, then open her mouth just a tiny bit, and do a dainty test bite with her front teeth. Now she knows anything we put in front of her while she’s still in her high chair after a meal, shelled peas or puffs, are fair game. She feeds herself these fingerfoods with confidence.
The sippy cup was a little bit of a revelation. In our initial introduction of the sippy cup, Allie would bite at the extended mouthpiece, unsure of what to do with it. If you’d tried to describe the instruction for “suck” to an infant, you’ll know it’s pretty much a lost cause, so we’d put the sippy cup lid away, but did feed her water with the cup portion of the sippy cup with her solid meals so she’d be familiar with the cup and the water. When we were at a restaurant feeding her her purees, we’d do the same with a glass of water. We started with a straw, plugging up the top with our thumbs and bringing the bottom of the straw to her mouth, feeding her like a little birdie. She soon learned to suck the water out the bottom of the straw and not just leave it to gravity. Then, last week, we tried leaving the straw in the cup and letting her sip from the top. That didn’t work before, but after being “trained” to suck the straw from the bottom for a few weeks, the top was a small change and she did it. We thought, “This is great! Now we can skip the sippy cup altogether.” Then my cousin Jennifer told us that her daycare won’t let her 11-month-old graduate to the next class unless her kid could use a sippy cup. Darn it, back to the drawing board. So yesterday, we tried the sippy cup with the suction lid again. Allie suddenly took to it with no problem. I guess the trick was converting her from the top of the straw to the top of the sippy cup lid, because that’s a gradual change from what she already knows to do. So today, when my parents came to visit, they got to enjoy Allie’s new skills and they took this little 42-second video (among 23 other videos):

BTW, while I was downloading the video from my mom’s camera into our PC, I found this never-before-seen photo.

WHAT the…?! I’ve never seen my little baby look like that!
Allie: “Whatever doesn’t kill me…had BETTER START RUNNING!!”

I’m behind, so this is gonna be mostly pix, with just a few of my usual lengthy descriptive paragraphs.

Last Friday, I did my very first outing alone after Allie went to bed (despite the fact that I’m still doing 4:30a wake-ups daily without fail to pump). Rebecca was in town, doing her daily radio show with her co-host Garrett broadcasting from a local-ish Laguna Beach restaurant called The Cottage as a special event, so I drove out to see her and to meet Garrett for the first time. Here they are at The Cottage office during their live broadcast.

Yes, that is THE Rebecca, our favorite clairvoyant! If you’re interested in giving her internet radio show a listen, or feel like calling in for a free mini-reading, she’ll answer questions live on the air! The Garrett & Rebecca Show is on 7:30p-8:30p Pacific time Mondays through Fridays, and you can listen to their podcasts RIGHT NOW for any of their past shows:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/garrettmillerradio
Now you can see what I was talking about on here about Rebecca. 🙂

So ANYWAY, Rebecca and I basically just hung out and caught up over chocolate mousse cake dessert at the restaurant after their broadcast, and Garrett joined us briefly before skidaddling off to his busy life by the beach. The Cottage Restaurant is awesome, BTW. I’ve seen it driving by but never went in. It used to be an old house, and now serves amazing breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Rebecca and I stayed until after closing and they were so nice about it, still coming by to offer us refreshments and service.

Last Saturday, Edgar & Ruby got married! We had to miss the ceremony because it was far away at 5pm, and no way we could be there and get Allie back in time for bed by 6pm, so we skipped the ceremony, put Allie down like normal, then Jayne came over and they babysat (not much to do but be here and get her out of the house in case of flood or fire) while Mr. W and I went to the reception. They had two photobooths with tons of props, and we had fun with THAT. After all, it was the first time we’d gone out together after Allie’s gone to bed. He’d been out with his friends here and there before, but I hadn’t been out past 6:30p since…Allie’s birth.
Here’s Eddie, Michelle, and us not quite knowing what to do with the props — our ourselves — on our first photobooth session.

Mr. W and I celebrated in style, as you can see.

We soon found that the problem with photobooths at weddings is that people can just come in and crash your photoshoot session. And then the camera bears witness to all the fighting that ensues.

I’m just kidding; Eddie’s always welcome where we are. Wait, that’s too blanket of a statement…
We did attempt to get some normal shots in…but the camera was messed up at the time because someone had turned off the light in the booth (as was explained to us later by the boothmaker, Edgar’s younger brother) so the camera went on totally slow shutter speed, causing the blurring. Oh, well.

The day after that, which was last Sunday, my Canadian cousin Mark being in town for the first time in 16 years (by his calculation, but I thought it was longer) gave cause for a family reunion of the relatives on my dad’s side. This is all us cousins with our kids (those of us who made it to the reunion):

Doesn’t my cousin Diana’s little todder Elle on the top make you want to giggle, or at least wave back? That’s what happens when you tell a little kid, “Elle, look here at the camera! Hi! Elle!” She says “hi” back.
My cousin Jennifer with Allie:

Allie never looks so hairless as when she’s with babies close in age (Jennifer’s daughter Alexandra is 2 months older), and the lack of dark hair makes her look whiter than she looks when she’s alone.

Don’t the 2 grandmas look so happy to be holding their respective granddaughters? Aww.

Last Thursday, the cousins had agreed and planned months in advance to all take the day off, leave our respective tots with their regular daycare situations, and have a child-free day to spend showing cousin Mark around. Mark drove out from Diamond Bar where he had spent the week at my parents’ house and spent Wednesday night at cousin Jennifer’s in Irvine so that we had all day in Orange County. Cousin Diana ended up with a work emergency so she spent the day (that she did have off) putting out fires at work (figuratively); cousin Olivia decided she didn’t want to be in Orange County where we’d made a day packed with plans, so after her attempts to snag Mark away back to Diamond Bar for lunch had been met with avid refusals (my refusal caused me to drop the f-bomb in front of 3-year-old Elle…oops), she settled for after-dinner dessert plans with Mark after he returned to Diamond Bar Thursday night. So it was just Mark, Jennifer, and myself for Cousin Day Thursday and it was A BLAST.
We started in Downtown Disney…

…went to Slater’s 50/50 for lunch so that Mark could do some more of his burger reviews…

(we ordered and split the Slater’s 50/50 burger which has a patty made from half beef, half BACON; the vegetarian burger; and the “peanut butter and jellousy” burger which has for its condiments PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY…blech)
…intended to hit up our lake for kayaking but ran out of time so we just went straight to Yama Sushi on the lake for omakase, and enjoyed the view of the lake from their patio before sitting down at the sushi bar.

Mark claimed that we were “sizing up” the sailboat on the lake here.

The omakase was amazing and Jen missed half of it cuz she had to run out mid-dinner when she realized she’d missed 15 calls from her husband, who was stuck in traffic on his way to pick up their daughter from daycare and couldn’t get there in time. Life sure has changed. She and I made tentative plans to have her return for sushi and lake activities in the near future with her husband and baby, and Mark vowed to not wait another 16 years before visiting again.

It was sure nice having a social life again, even if for a few days and in bits and pieces. For future reference, I was able to do a full day because I left after nursing Allie as usual in the morning after she woke up, handing her off to Jayne shortly before her nap, then I drove to Jennifer’s, pumped there, then did Downtown Disney and Slater’s, then we went back to Jennifer’s, I pumped again, and we got into our respective cars and drove to the lake, then we all split up from there and I went immediately home to catch Allie right before bedtime and nursed her to bed like normal. Oh yeah — after that post about a month ago when I said she’d stopped falling asleep after a nursing, that only lasted 2 nights and she’s now back to nursing to sleep, which makes life easier on me.

A quick keeping-up post:

* I was playing with Allie yesterday evening by holding her so that her front is to my front, then leaning forward so that her back arches back and she looks at her daddy upside-down, which makes her laugh very heartily. With Allie’s backwards-mouth-open position, I saw clearly that her lateral incisors, which are the 2 upper front teeth on either side of her upper center front teeth, are out. They were NOT out on Friday, when the doctor checked her gums and the nurse applied fluoride on her 5 teeth. So sometime this weekend, teeth #s 6 and 7 cut. I knew it was coming because I had been very sore for a couple of weeks again from abrasion/friction during nursing. (She prefers a shallow latch so that she could pull away and see/play with my hair, clothing, etc. while nursing.)

* Allie now uses her little teeth to bite down on baby puffs which she’d only recently learned to feed herself this week. She brings one to her mouth, kind of experimentally, and bites it in half with her front teeth. Yesterday, however, she’s been stuffing the entire thing in her mouth rather greedily. Sometimes two in her mouth, one right after the other, with a delighted smile on her face. Also this past weekend, she learned to sip from a straw the “right way.”

* Pumping has been going well. I get let-downs again, and while at work using the Medela double-electric pump, I get 3-4 letdowns per pumping session, thanks to the tips from college roommie Diana. Who knew I was using the pumps wrong? Apparently I can induce let-downs by rearranging the pumps on myself a little in-between letdowns, and then pushing the “let-down button” to change the speed of suction, and play with the knobs to change things up. Also, I apparently need a non-baby distraction while I pump. Some people let down when they see/hear pictures/videos of their baby. For me, and this is also thanks to tips from Diana, I have to read a magazine or do something totally separate. I guess thinking about Allie is still stress-associated with me. Lately I’ve just been reading “Game of Thrones” on my Kindle while pumping.

* I had a very social weekend. It deserves its own post, since I also have photos. Hope to get to it soon.

I’m documenting this in hopes that I never forget the acts of kindness shown to me.

My judge is visiting his brother in Northern California all this week, as the brother undergoes a medical procedure. This means the courtroom is dark, so I’m available to float anywhere. I’ve been nervous about this because my pumping schedule at work (9:30am, 1pm, 3:30pm) makes it very difficult for me to properly man a busy courtroom. In my own court, if we’re in trial, my courtroom assistant takes notes of the exhibits introduced and the witnesses sworn so that I could log them when I return, and my judge will swear in the witnesses for me. In someone else’s court, especially if it were a criminal calendar court, I may miss 5 or more cases when I’m gone for half an hour.

My immediate supervisor has been kind and if there are no major clerk shortages, she’ll keep me in locations that will allow me to pump. The last 2 days, I’ve been helping clear the Family Law backlog by entering tons of documents at my desk. Altho I’m doing that again today, my supervisor said she had no choice but to put me to cover a Family Law courtroom this afternoon at 3:00pm because that clerk is scheduled to leave early, and she says they may be in trial all day. I mentioned that I’d have to pump at 3:30, and she said helplessly that she had no one else available to cover that court, and gave a quick rundown of where the regular relief clerks are assigned today.

Hearing a friend’s name in another courtroom, I suggested seeing if we can work something out, and she was agreeable. The coworker had no problems since he had a light calendar in the morning and nothing scheduled for the afternoon; he agreed to relieve me at 3:30p so that I could leave to pump. I was grateful for that solution, but wanted to check the judge I’d be working with to make sure that it’d be okay with him as well.

The judge is one of my favorite judges in the building, and one of my family law resource judges that I often go to with questions on procedure and such. Upon hearing my pumping schedule issue, he immediately said that he will then adjourn any trial that may start this afternoon at 3:30p so that I could pump, and no relief is needed to relieve me. He asked how long pumping takes, I said half an hour. He looked thoughtful, and then said, “I’ll just adjourn for the day at 3:30, then. I have no problem with that. I’ll tell them upfront that no matter what, we are finished today at 3:30.” WOW. I did not expect that! That means I could even leave to go home on time!

I feel a little like dancing.

Allie does many things that make me laugh aloud, but two of my favorite scenarios are as follows:

1) First, two facts. One, although Allie smiles claps when we say “clap clap clap,” she also associates “yay!” with clapping, because usually when we’re cheering about something she did correctly or obediently, we say “yay!” and clap in front of her. Two, because she doesn’t poop as often as other babies, I’m usually pretty happy when she has a nice poopie. I’ve figured out that after she wakes from her naps, if I leave her alone in her crib for 10-15 minutes as she plays on her own, which she does well, she uses that alone time to poop. Before I realized that, I didn’t know why she always has poopies twice a day after each nap with Jayne, but none on the weekends with us. Hubby has since discovered, while watching the babycam at work, that Jayne leaves Allie in her crib after she wakes from her nap for sometimes up to half an hour. So I’ve discovered that when she’s distracted and playing with us immediately after her nap, she’s not pooping. That’s a lot of background for a little description of a scenario…
We’ve accidentally found that when we’re changing her and she has a nice poopie, and we say, “Yay!,” she’ll just start clapping and smiling, but with a surprised look in her face like she doesn’t know exactly why she’s being complimented. So she looks like she’s clapping for herself for pooping.

2) Allie has discovered that she doesn’t have her hands free if she wants to bring a toy somewhere, because she needs both hands to crawl and sometimes two to pull herself up. She went thru a few times of looking confused with a toy on the ground that she’d dropped when she started to crawl or pull up, not knowing how to bring it with her. Now she’ll pop the toy in her mouth like a little dog and bring it with her that way, then take it out of her mouth again to play with when she’s reached her destination.

Of course, her uncanny imitations of a moose toy, the coffee maker, people blowing their nose, all are hilarious, too. Our laughing brings a gleam to her eye and she’ll do it again just to entertain us.

Allie her had 9-month doctor visit yesterday. The nurse said she dropped in height percentile! She is no longer taller than 99% of girls her age; she’s taller than about 90%. Here are her stats:
* Height: 28.75 inches (that’s 2 feet and almost 5 inches! she’s almost HALF my height!), 88th percentile
* Weight: 18 lbs 4.2 oz, 41st percentile
* Head size: 44 cm (about 17 1/3 inches), 51st percentile
The nurse said that because Allie’s head did not shrink, the head size measurement at her last checkup at 6 months must’ve been wrong. “They probably just measured it too loosely,” she speculated.
No shots this time, yay! The only “medication” was brushing her 5 little teeth with fluoride. The fluoride was a thick brown fluid that was applied with something resembling a nail polish brush. It was bubble gum flavored, and Allie kept licking her sticky lips afterwards. The doctor warned me that at the 1-year appointment, there will be A LOT of shots. 🙁 Then after that, no shots until 18 months.

Allie was super-cooperative and handled the 45-minute waiting room wait, and subsequent exam room wait, like a good-natured pro. Other adults kept smiling at her and pointing her out. One grandpa, there with his 1st-grader granddaughter, paid a lot of attention to Allie and said things to his granddaughter like, “Look at the baby! Wanna go say hi to the baby? Hey, buddy! Hi! Look, he’s smiling! He’s got teeth!” Allie, BTW, was wearing a shirt with large pink, yellow and orange flowers and orange cuffed capris with a decal of a smiling GIRL monkey (cuz it had a matching orange flower behind its ear) on her butt.

The doctor was pretty impressed with her. He said she was healthy, at a great height and weight, and quite a bit ahead on motor development and cognitive skills. He said the minimum they’re looking for at 9 months is a baby who sits up well by him/herself, and maybe showing interest in starting to crawl. Allie had pulled herself up in the exam room and was cruising around the perimeter of the room from chair to chair. The doctor was happy that she was even responding to simple commands, such as “no” (the other day, she held onto a rock for 15 minutes that we wouldn’t let her eat, and she remembered not to put it in her mouth again), “give that to mommy,” “say aaah,” “wave bye-bye,” “shake shake shake!” (for toys that make sound when shaken), “clap clap clap!” and “dance dance dance!” She’ll also respond to simple questions by pointing or looking around or using some other body language, such as “Where’s daddy?,” “Where are your balloons?,” “Wanna eat? Wanna nom nom nom?,” “Wanna come out?,” “Where’s Dodo?” She’ll also control our attention by pointing at something she wants us to see and give her a word for, such as birds, dog, hammock, fan, light. Allie still loves the mimicking game, and it no longer matters who mimics whom, it all makes her laugh. And of course, the usual singing, peek-a-boo from around the corner or behind furniture, “Where’s Allie/mommy/daddy” from behind a cloth. She seems to love music and will stop whatever she’s doing, pull herself up, and bop up and down and sing along, wiggling her hips back and forth. The other day she was tired of the piano keyboard and was trying to climb up onto the piano. I put my arms around her and played “Mary Had a Little Lamb” (which her daddy sings to her changing the words to “Allie had a little lamb”) with a boogie beat and she instantly stopped climbing and started dancing. It’s a really fun age.

Oh, she just started eating baby puffs altho she spends more time turning them over and examining them than actually eating them, and she also just learned to sip through a straw. We’d always fed her water at restaurants by plugging up the top end of the straw and letting her suck out the bottom end, but now she can do it herself from the top of the straw. The first few days of her trying this, she’d choke and cough from the water going back too far, but now she knows to stop it with her tongue.

“Scuse me, nurse…I believe I was next. Long wait, you say?”

“That’s cool, I’ll just sit here and do my calisthenics.”

“Gotta make sure we limber up for the can-can!”

“I’m gonna qualify for the baby olympics next year.”

Don’t let these photos fool you…after this she wandered all over the waiting room cruising with a hand on the chairs, banging on the tables while watching people, asking to be brought over to the plants so she could touch the leaves.

A couple of weekends ago, Allie and I went to a coworker’s son’s co-ed baby shower in San Clemente. Mr. W didn’t go, because he had to be on a liquid restriction for a medical procedure the next day, and he said he didn’t want to be around food that he couldn’t have. Mr. W participated to the extent that he picked out (and dressed Allie in) his favorite black-and-white polka-dot dress, perfect for the warm summer weather, he said, and while Allie and I went alone, Mr. W went to get a massage instead.

Soon after Allie and I got on the freeway, the entire strip was congested in stop-and-go traffic thanks to a 4-car accident and 4-5 California Highway Patrol cops surrounding the involved cars. Even though all the cars were pulled off the freeway already, all the gawkers big-time slowed the drive. Pretty early on in this mess, Allie started uncharacteristic fussing and whimpering in the backseat. “It’s okay, baby, we’ll get through this soon, you’re okay, you’re okay,” I’d kept saying to her, checking on her often from the rear view mirror, which reflects back from the baby mirror I’d put on the backseat so that I could see Allie’s rear-facing carseat. The freeway cleared for maaaaybe half a mile, then congested again thanks to an exit-ramp closure on the exact exit we were supposed to get off on. I had the traffic layer up on phone’s GPS, and all I could see was a giant streak of red for the duration of the trip. It looked like my map app was bleeding. Oh my gawd, this is the worst drive, ever, I thought more than once.

I decided to get off an exit early, get away from the congestion, and just take the surface streets to the party. My car’s nav couldn’t keep up and therefore didn’t redraw the directions in time, so I made a guess and turned after I exited. Of course I turned the wrong way. And since this was beachside streets, and near Pacific Coast Highway, and one-way split streets, and an intersection of freeways, the nav kept drawing and redrawing me in loops and circles no matter WHAT I did. Allie was screaming and crying through this. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, this is officially The Worst Drive Ever! Mommy’s so sorry!” I apologized repeatedly to the approaching-hysteria Allie.

After wasting 10+ minutes going in circles and being completely confused by the car navigation system’s constant redrawing of yet more loops and endless circles every time I turned (“Oh my gawd, you’re effing me. You have GOT to be effing me! Mommy’s so sorry, baby, this is the Worst Drive Ever! Please stop crying!”), I gave up and went back on the freeway at the exact point I’d gotten off. Allie quieted for a moment, but soon started crying and whimpering in the saddest way. Talking to her didn’t help, giving her her teething giraffe Sophie didn’t help. The crying turned into screams. I wasn’t used to this — this isn’t like her. Of course, most drives, I’m in the backseat entertaining her while Mr. W drove, so this is different for her, too.

Inch by slow agonizing inch in heavy traffic, I had to drive past the closed-due-to-construction exit that I was supposed to get off on, get off on the next exit a few miles away, turn around, and get back on the freeway the other way to get off on the correct exit going the opposite direction, all with my daughter freaking out in the back. After I exited, I was looking at the rear view mirror at her when suddenly, I saw a giant column of milk pour out of her mouth. As I watched, a second column spilled out, this time lasting even longer. Oh my God, oh my God, I thought to myself as I immediately pulled into the closest plaza and parked. Allie was quiet now, and looked glazed but calm. I plowed into the backseat, apologizing frantically for subjecting Allie to what is now historically THE WORST DRIVE, EVER-ever, grabbed a t-shirt I happened to have in the backseat and started mopping at her. She and Sophie were both covered and sitting in a pool of chunky half-digested breastmilk. I went through a mental panic trying to decide what to do. She needed to be bathed, she needed to be changed, she needed to be comforted, and she’s now probably hungry. But if I took her out here, I won’t be able to get her back in and we’d be stranded. We’re half a mile from my coworker’s house. Should I keep going? what kind of mother would I be if I took my sick baby to a party covered in vomit? I should just go home. But that would mean turning right around, and putting Allie through another drive through traffic when she’s already so unhappy. Should I take her to a hospital? What if she’s actually really SICK? She’d never vomited before like this.

I had called Mr. W repeatedly but of course he didn’t pick up his phone. I’d also called my coworker and she didn’t pick up, either. I looked at Allie. Allie looked at me. The phone rang. I picked it up and my coworker said, “Hi! Where are you?” I blubbered and poured my story in all its panicky glory into the phone. “No, no, don’t go home. Bring her here. We’ll clean her up and give her a break from the car.” That sounded good, so I left Allie and got back in the front seat. The poor girl started WAILING, her lower chin shaking, as if she couldn’t understand how I could abandon her in her time of need like this.

As soon as I got her to my coworker’s house, she was fine. My coworker was outside to direct us into her driveway (where she’d saved a spot for us to park), some other coworkers and retired coworkers excited to see Allie came out to greet us, and all I could do was apologize and then rush the baby into the master bathroom. My WONDERFUL coworker and I undressed Allie down to her diaper, and I cleaned Allie up while my coworker hand-washed Allie’s little dress and removed components of vomit-soaked carseat, threw those in the washing machine and put the carseat itself outside to dry. Digging through the diaper bag, I was dismayed to find that the only extra emergency clothes was a long-sleeved sleep-and-play with feet that likely was too small for her, and it was a 90-degree day. That, and a beanie cap. =P Luckily, it was warm in the house so we just left Allie as-is and she was instantly in a GREAT mood once she was no longer sticky. I fed her some pureed zucchini & rice, and papaya that I’d brought. She ate well, then played well in the living room among all the strangers, crawling around and pointing at balloons, chewing on party favors, talking to people, all while wearing a diaper, her bib, and her little canvas sneakers.

Allie sat quietly on the drive home (which took less than half the time I’d spent to get to the party, now that the freeways were clear), looking out the window, playing here and there with her toys in the car, and fell asleep the last 5 minutes of the drive, and still slept through the night. We theorized that Allie got carsick probably just from the combination of heat, being alone back there, being in my little sports car instead of her daddy’s car that she’s used to, and dealing with all the stop-and-gos and turns and u-turns that I was making.

I learned something that day. The lesson is to ALWAYS LISTEN TO KYDEN. You’d think I would’ve learned from his experience, especially when looking in the comments, it appears I’d predicted this day would come way back in February, but nooo. Speaking of failing to learn from experience, Allie’s diaper bag still contains no updated clothes, now that I think about it.

***
Addendum, 11pm.
While discussing the above event with Flip Flop Girl (Kyden’s mommy) online just now:

me: I usually go super-calm during a disaster-type situation as my brain automatically goes into task-mode, damage-control, etc., but now I know that when it comes to my baby, my brain turns to instant oatmeal.
flip flop girl: that’s really surprising
i would think that BECAUSE it’s your baby that you’d have to be the strong, calm one in that situation
me: It surprised and dismayed me, too. Now I know I need a trunk monkey who would come out during those times and slap me.
flip flop girl: hahaha
or better yet
he can take care of everything for you
that’s much better than getting slapped, right?
me: oh, I guess while I’m wishing for things, I may as well wish for that, instead.