cindy's world

Remember my kid with the early pearly whites and the cute smile?

The cute little teeth that we painstakingly brush twice a day and floss nightly to keep looking perfect? That we made sure to maintain as healthy and straight as possible by not having her on a pacifier and being bottle-free since well before age 1 (per her pediatrician recommendations), not giving her juice and especially no bottle to sleep?

Allie was downstairs yesterday morning before we’d left for work; Mr. W was there with her and Jayne had already arrived. I was upstairs and heard Allie start crying. When I came down a few minutes later, she wasn’t crying anymore but was still slightly whimpering as I held her, and I asked her, “What happened?” She told me she went boom, and pointed to where it happened, at the travertine tiles in the hallway between the living room and the kitchen. Mr. W explained that he had gone into the kitchen and Allie went running after him, and tripped over the metal ledge at the doorway of the baby gate. (I’ve often looked at that thing when Allie would hold on to the side of the frame and step carefully over the metal bar at the bottom, and I’d wondered how many kids and people trip on that.) Apparently she’d gone flying onto the travertine tile floor. She seemed fine at that point and moved on to eat some nectarine and grapes. She did take one bite out of the nectarine and start looking at it funny, pointing to where she’d bitten it, and the refused to bite again, so we cut it up into pieces for her and she ate it fine that way. She appeared to be sucking on her lower lip so I thought there may have been injury there, but didn’t see anything upon inspection.

Well, as soon as I’d finished with my noontime yoga yesterday, I checked my phone and read this text message from Jayne.

I’m not sure if [Mr. W] listened to the message I left shortly after you left the house. Allie broke her 2 front teeth when she fell this morning, which is so bizarre because I saw her fall and I never would have thought it would result in her teeth getting chipped! You probably want to contact a pediatric dentist and have her checked. I was so sad when I noticed it. At first it seemed like she had only bitten the middle part of her upper lip. 🙁

I was SO angry. It completely ruined my afternoon. I texted back, “This is the first I heard of it. She’s not bleeding? Do the teeth seem loose?”
Jayne responded, “No to both. I did try to wiggle them and they seem ok. I just can’t figure out how they broke when all there was was a little irritation on her lip and no bruise to her face. I didn’t even think she hit any part of her face or head when she tripped. She’s had falls that have seemed worse. I was so nervous at the park that she might fall and break more of the 2 teeth. She can tell something is different but doesn’t seem to be uncomfortable. But I’m wondering if they should be checked. Thank goodness they’re baby teeth!”

I took the advice and checked on Yelp for good pediatric dentists near our home. Two offices popped up with 5-star reviews exclusively (meaning 100% of the people reviewing gave them 5 stars). The one slightly farther had more reviews, therefore more 5-stars; 5 dentists work there, but were all males and Allie does better with women right now. The one closer had less reviews altho they were also all 5-star reviews, had only 1 dentist, but she’s female and has a pair of twin toddler girls of her own. From the photos on Yelp, her office looks amazing, like visiting an aquarium museum. When I read that she graduated summa cum laude from UCLA School of Dentistry (Go Bruins!), it was a no-brainer. I called and spoke to a very nice receptionist who gave us a next-day appointment and took our dental insurance info over the phone so that she could call them and check for coverage before we get in there.

When I got home, I asked Allie to show me her teeth. This is what’s left.

She looks like a Turok-Han vampire from the “Buffy” series. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Thankfully, Allie’s behavior was no different and the sharp new points of her front teeth don’t deter her from sucking her thumb as she falls asleep. I did feel them while nursing her to sleep, but they didn’t hurt. Just felt sharp points pressing against my skin. She’s in the process of self-weaning so it wasn’t bad. For the past 4 nights she would stop nursing early on the first side and refuse the second side, telling me she’s “done-done,” and I like this tapering off because it helps my body adjust, too.

I keep thinking of things my dad said about my front teeth being knocked out in preschool. He’d said (in Mandarin) that my little teeth had recently all come in and were white and beautiful and I looked so cute when I smiled, and then they were knocked out, and he was and is still so mad.
In my situation, I was in preschool (my mom called it daycare), around 3 or 4 years old, and I was among a handful of kids who were on the playground “carousel” — a large metal disk platform with metal bars attached to the top of it at intervals so that the kids on the ground can spin the disk by pushing on the bars and the kids on the platform can hold on to the bars for support while the disk spun. We were taking turns being the spinner, and when it was my turn, I stepped off the disk with one hand, while the kid who was supposed to come on the platform for his turn suddenly decided to push the disk really hard and spin it again. I either fell against the metal bar or the bar hit me in the mouth, but I ended up losing both upper front teeth right there in the sand. I cried, of course, I remember how numb my lips felt afterwards, how swollen, and I remember the teacher on duty in the playground saying spitefully to me, “You deserve that. That’s what you get for running around.”
My mom’s memory picks up after that — she came to pick me up as usual after work, and when she called me, I turned around to greet her, and she saw my swollen mouth, half my face and clothing still crusted over with dried blood. She freaked out. The teacher turned and tossed over her shoulder, “Oh, she fell earlier.”
Both my parents were furious that they were never contacted by the daycare/preschool, and that I was never given any medical or any attention, not even to clean me up. They even went back to the playground over the weekend to try to find my teeth to see if a dentist could put them back in, but couldn’t find the teeth. I had a raging infection in my gums and lip for over a month, and didn’t have front teeth until my adult teeth grew in sometime between 2nd and 3rd grade.
I had front teeth for only a couple of years before I lost them for the next 5 or so years, so for me, it was just how things were; I didn’t feel like I was missing out on much, I wasn’t self-conscious, I just did my own thing. I never understood why my dad was still so upset, even to this day if it’s brought up.

I get it now. I keep thinking about how Allie will have a hard time biting into apples now, or eating her new favorite thing: sandwiches (she loves turkey, cheese & avocado on whole grain). How is she going to cut the noodles she loves in a bite? She can now drink through straws without having to open her mouth. 🙁 She has a photoshoot coming up in September, how’s she going to look in those photos, and every other photo until her permanent teeth come in? How will she be received by other kids when she starts school? Her smile looks “goofy” now, as her dad described.
Allie, however, much like I was, doesn’t appear to be very affected. She occasionally puts her fingers in her mouth to feel her new points, the tongue comes out as she prods the new jagged edges of her upper teeth, but nothing else is much different. Of course, we haven’t been giving her popsicles or sandwiches in the last day. I expect her to be temperature-sensitive for awhile.

Lots of people and/or their toddlers have been having teeth/gum injury issues in the past week, so at least Allie’s trendy.

It’s like a dream come true when Allie points across the grocery store aisle and correctly identifies “ana” (banana), “brocky” (broccoli), “apple,” “owen” (orange), etc. Even when I don’t think she can see my hands at work, she points and says, “Mama peel? Loka.” Even when it’s been weeks since she’d last seen or had loquat. Hoping this keeps up.

I’ve been doing little quickie gymless workouts in my jury room during lunchtime. They only take a 20-minute time investment (unless I add 8 flights of stairs in between sets, which I have done) so I can easily squeeze them in even if we’re in trial and work into lunch, or the judge orders us back early from lunch. Mr. W joined me once, giving up his lunch hour. He quit after 2 sets and left to file for divorce. Just kidding; he quit early so he could hit the shower before he had to get back to work, while I stayed and did a 3rd set since it was at my work location so I had more time. “That’s a hard workout,” he said as he left. That was this workout:
* 50 Jumping Jacks
* 20 Squats
* 20 Squat Jumps
* 20 Alternating Lunges (per leg)
* 15 Burpees
* 25 Pushups
* 30 Mountain Climbers
* 50 Crunches
* 60 second Plank Hold
It’s a good thing, too, because Allie seems to have started weaning herself from her last remaining nursing, the one at bedtime. For the last two nights in a row, she’s pulled off the first side fairly quickly and refused the second side. Stupid me started her on the same side again tonight, not expecting her to be done early again, so now my right breast is going to go 48 hours cold turkey. Anyway, my point is, once Allie is weaned, my freebie calorie expenditures are gone, so I’m gonna have to burn it the hard way.
Today I wasted all lunchtime looking for some subpoenaed documents that supposedly came into the courthouse for trial over a week ago, so I didn’t get my workout in. But I had more than my fair share of a surprise belated bday cake my coworkers got for me (Porto’s Bakery Parisian chocolate cake, mmm!), so I had to do something. I did this circuit after Allie went to bed:
* 50 Jumping Jacks
* 10 Paper Plate Pushups (I used 2 of Allie’s hardback books on carpet cuz I was too lazy to look for paper plates, so thanks, Hercules and Weird Creatures)
* 15 Squat Jumps
* 20 Triceps Dips
* 60 High Knees (30 per leg)
* 35 Plank Jacks
* 10 Burpees with Pushup at the Bottom
* 30 Side Lunges Reach w/Floor Tap at the Bottom (15 per side)
* 20 Superman Planks (10 per side)
With regard to that, my social networking friends enjoyed my status update, so I’m sharing it here, too.

Cindy asked, pressured, coerced, begged, bargained hubby to do at least one set of her circuit with her, and he refused to leave his iPad game. Just now I went outside after doing 2 sets to find him in the hammock nestled with his iPad, a cold glass of water with ice next to him. I was hot and thirsty, so I took a swig…of GIN! *spit* No working out AND a drink. I get no support around here.

I also tried mockery and badgering, too.
Me: Aren’t you concerned that if you completely stop exercising, soon people are going to wonder why I’m with the round guy?
Him: I’m not round.
Me: Fine. The oval guy.
Him: *unmoved*

The guy’s got a healthy self-esteem.

On the drive to work this morning, I told Mr. W that I had spoken to Rebecca last night. I told him I asked her “What happened to my embryos?”, and that she’d seen a whole bunch of eggs/embryos, saw embryos being discarded as they would or did lose viability, saw embryos being frozen, saw 2 women receiving embryos, one resulting in pregnancy and the other maybe not. I was about to launch into how my fertility doc lied to me, but before I could, Mr. W interrupted my story with, “The woman who got pregnant was you.”

…

Oh.

When I’d asked Rebecca my question, I had wanted to know what happened to my three donated embryos, but that was not what I’d asked. The Universe is pretty literal, and I had asked what happened to my embryos. That’s why she was shown what happened to the bunch of eggs that were initially harvested, as well. So the two women who received an embryo or embryos. One WAS me. The other was promised anonymity, as I knew she would be, when she agreed to receive my donated embryos.

“I don’t think it’s ethical for Dr. R to not tell you,” Mr. W said. “I think he HAS to tell you [if your donated embryos result in a birth].”

A common and frequent admonishment my judge tells witnesses as they prepare to testify is, “Listen carefully to the question(s) being asked, and answer THAT question. The questions are not an invitation to go rambling off and talk about what YOU want to talk about.” The universe listened to the question, and answered THAT question. I did not listen to my own question.

Dear Riley,

I asked Rebecca today simply, “What happened to my embryos?” No explanation nor background. She said it didn’t make any sense to her, but she saw that a bunch of them were either discarded or will be discarded because they can’t be kept viable longer than an x amount of time, like 3 years. (It didn’t make sense to me, either, until I later realized what she saw was the other 8 or so fertilized eggs that were indeed discarded by the fertility lab, when the most promising one was implanted to make Allie, and the other 3 best ones were frozen.) She said embryos were frozen. She said that embryos had gone to 2 women (which is the scenario I had originally expected), and that one resulted in a pregnancy and she may have given birth already, and Rebecca was getting a big question mark on the other woman, doesn’t think the other became a pregnancy. I was thrown because, you know, what the fertility doctor emailed me last month. I didn’t tell Rebecca anything, just asked her if there was any reason the fertility doc would lie to me about this, and she said that the parents asked for anonymity.

I was so, so angry. I felt violated that the fertility doctor lied to me. I felt that as the donor of the embryos, I had a right to know since he had offered me the DOBs if I wanted them. I felt like the recipient parents violated my embryo/child, because if they’re planning on carrying on with no one in the world but them knowing where the DNA came from, the child has a right to know a medical history in case he or a medical care provider needed family history info. I felt like Allie was being violated, because the reason for the DOB was to prevent accidental sibling inbreeding, since as patients of the same clinic, we’re very likely local to each other. Who do these recipient parents think they are? Don’t they owe me at least the courtesy of truth and/or a DOB, if I wanted it, for my giving them my CHILD?

After some time spent breaking down my thoughts and disturbing feelings of selfishness, it boiled down to this:

I really, really hope that in situations like this, and in this situation specifically, that it is my vehicle, their driver. I hope that the soul born into that family is the soul that was always meant for that family, but I just provided the vehicle because they needed a little help with the human form. I need it to be their son who came into their family, and not you. Because you are my Riley. MY Riley. I couldn’t get over it if I had accidentally given you away and displaced you into the wrong family. You let your sister through instead of coming through yourself this time; I’m fine with your (your and Allie’s) choice(s), I’m not okay with my accidental giving away of your choice.

To that, Rebecca said, “It’s all okay. I read a quote from Amma today that said ‘You are the Self, not the mind.’ In other words, be…don’t think…trust God. Riley is still floating around deciding where he will end up. At least that’s my visual.”

And suddenly, I was SO relieved. I don’t know why, because it’s the same effect. You’ll be born elsewhere to someone else if you decide to come down to this plane during my lifetime here. I guess I feel better knowing you’re not the donated embryo, because by not being that embryo, that means wherever you come out, it would be YOUR choice; I didn’t accidentally give you away.

And Rebecca said, “Nope…you didn’t.”

I feel an attachment to you, maybe from past lives shared. I know you. I feel you. I did in my early pregnancy, as well. You and Allie are so different; you’re peaceful, compassionate and a caretaker. Allie is spunky, fierce and independent. You patiently watch where she experimentally does. You provide help by sacrificing what you can; she takes but turns it into a (positive) payback contribution. You’re both good, but so yin and yang. She’ll give me a good run, some sharp challenges, some rebellions. You would’ve smiled and held me and said with confidence it’s all okay, and you would’ve been right. I still see you as the big brother, 3 years older than Allie, and I guess that was the original picture but that’s changed now, partly with your help. Again, a quiet sacrifice of sorts, stepping aside to let an eager soul come through in your place. “Plans change,” you are telling me now. “It’s okay. Nothing wrong with that. It’s not a sacrifice, just another way to get to the same place.”

I had wondered if the doctor was lying to me, because I had felt a kid out there. That was why I emailed last month. Rebecca told me to trust my instincts. I’m just relieved that’s not you, whatever that says about me. Dr. R likely didn’t like having to lie to me, and the email was curt. He for whatever reason “had” to defer to the recipient parents’ wishes over mine. He probably told himself he didn’t lie that MUCH, since one recipient really didn’t result in a pregnancy. Had he said simply that my embryos were donated to another couple and that it didn’t result in a pregnancy, it wouldn’t have been a lie but an omission about the other set of parents; but he said all 3 embryos were donated to 1 couple and didn’t result in a pregnancy.

I will miss you, as I already do, in this life. Unless…”Riley will be with you in some way if it’s meant to be. Trust the universe; it knows what it’s doing.” One of the last things Rebecca told me tonight. If I don’t see you Here, I’ll see you when I get back Home. Mama loves you, baby boy. Thanks for listening to me.

It must be terribly frustrating to know so much, and be able to express so little, and to feel so adamant about what you want. Even though Allie’s vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds, her emotions are still way ahead of what she’s able to satisfy on her own. This morning I came downstairs to a bawling Allie. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Cereal,” she sobbed, barely coherent. “Cereal.”
Mr. W said, “She asked for cereal, I GAVE her cereal. She won’t eat it now. She ran away from it.”
“Cereal!” Allie cried.
“Here, cereal,” Mr. W offered. Allie turned away from it, cried again, doubled over in apparent distress. “I don’t understand what she wants,” he said, annoyed.
“She wants to feed herself,” I explained.
He offered her the bowl and spoon, she took it, put a spoonful of raisin and bran flakes in her mouth. I put her in her high chair, and she pointed at her new stuffed Winnie the Pooh bear that the stepkidlet had bought for her yesterday (departure gift; the stepkidlet has left for Europe for the summer). Mr. W picked up Pooh and placed him on the corner of the table closest to Allie but out of reach, saying, “Here, Winnie the Pooh is going to sit right here and watch Allie eat.” Allie dropped the cereal spoon, crying again in distress. So after I put on her bib, clicked in her tray, put the bowl on the tray, put the spoon back, I put Pooh Bear on the edge of the tray next to her and she immediately stopped crying and started eating again. Small demands, but she wants them SO, SO badly.

She definitely understands way more than she’s able to express, and until that catches up, I’ve read that this frustration is normal. Poor thing.

Over the weekend, Mr. W and Allie were looking at photos together. I heard him say, “See the waterfall?”
Allie’s reply: “Boom.”
I explained to Mr. W that her word for “fall,” as in “fall down,” is “boom.” If she tripped and we asked what happened, she’d point to the accident site and say, “Allie boom.” Or if we tell her, “Be careful, don’t climb [on the furniture],” “Sit down when you’re on the couch,” she’d reply with, “Boom.” That means, “I understand, I’m to be careful so that I don’t fall.” So of course, now Allie is saying, “Wa-wa boom.” We’ll have to remember that that’s her word for “waterfall.”

When we got home from work yesterday, Jayne asked me, “So was that stir-fried vermicelli with pumpkin today?”, referring to the new food item we’d packed for Allie’s lunch.
It was Chinese stir-fried glass-noodles (or rice noodles), but to make things more understandable, that’s what I’d called it on Allie’s food log.
“Yeah,” I told her. “My parents made it yesterday. She eats anything my parents make.” (We’d visited my parents on Sunday afternoon and my mom had made it for lunch, and we’d packed some for home.)
Allie, overhearing, said, “Gong-gong. Po-po.”
It took me a second to realize Allie knew we were talking about her grandpa (gong-gong) and grandma (po-po), even tho we’d never referred to them as anything but “my parents.” She also knew the dish as “noodles,” not as “vermicelli,” so I have no idea how Allie understood what we were talking about. I was impressed.

I made a quinoa “fried rice” with chopped carrots, peas, corn and turkey last night. Allie wanted to look in the pot (“up up puh puh puh” with her arms raised at me, and pointing at the pot on the stove) and I thought she’d see the finished product and say, “Rice,” since to me, it’s now a product called “fried rice.” But instead, peering in she said, “Corn! Peas!” Funny, seeing things as sharp, separate components in the limited experience of a child. I guess this is why kids pick out bits and pieces of a food (like pizza) they’ll eat or not eat instead of just taking in the whole.

This isn’t the first time she’d said this, but this is the first time I realized this is Allie’s first full sentence.
“I’m done.”
🙂

Q: How many generations does it take to produce the above?
A: Three. (rest mouse pointer on photo for caption, as with all my photos)

Over the weekend, I wanted to take a side-view shot of me doing an elephant trunk yoga pose (I’ve never seen myself do it, and if I looked over at a mirror, I’d fall), so I set up my Samsung Galaxy S3 cell phone by propping it against one of Allie’s toys and setting the timer.

The lighting was dim and the flash on my phone wouldn’t work because I was really low on battery. I considered changing the Scene Mode on the Android phone to “Dim Lighting” so it’d extend the exposure to make things brighter. All of a sudden, I thought, “Hey, I can take this photo on the iPad Mini. Duh! And I don’t even need a prop because the case props the iPad up on its own.” So for the first time, I touched the iPad’s camera icon and prepared to set up the shot. I touched the slider to make the camera forward-facing, then I looked for the option to set the timer. Since iPad has no “Menu” button like Android has, I could not figure out how to bring up the Options menu. There are no buttons on the camera screen to do anything but take the photo, choose video or photo, and to turn forward-facing or backward-facing. I exited the camera app and went into basic Settings to see if, like other things, options for the apps are actually hidden in basic Settings and not in the app itself. Nope, no options for doing anything with the camera at all. WTF.
I went on the social networking site and asked for tips. Someone said their iPhone has an “Options” button on the camera, but that it only had the options of panorama, gridlines, and HD. Another friend told me there ARE no options for the camera; I’d have to look for an App in the iTunes Store and download a separate camera app to do what I want. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I consider this BASIC. How can Apple be “such a superior product” and not even have basic crap like a timer function and different settings on its built-in camera? My Galaxy S3 phone has, built-in, 5 shooting modes (single shot, share shot, buddy photo share, beauty, smile shot, not that I’ve even tried any of those), 3 effects modes (black & white, sepia, photo negative), and 10 scene modes (portrait, landscape, sports, party/indoor, beach/snow, sunset, dawn, fall color, text, and candlelight). If none of those make you happy, you can also manually set the exposure value, white balance, ISO, metering, focus mode (auto or macro), resolution, and you can also turn on/off various other options like flash, timer, auto contrast, guidelines, anti-shake, image) Of course you can also choose where you want the photo to be stored, such as in the phone or in a separate SD card, which is an option no Apple device will give no matter what app is used, because Apple products do not want you to access the internal hardware so they do not allow for memory to be added by an SD card. It’s also, I’m sure, a way to sell iDevices with progressively larger internal memory options and charge people more.

I was not going to pay money to bring this remedial camera up to par on the iPad Mini, so I guess that’ll be yet another function I will not use the iPad for. You’d think that with such a bare bones system being sold, Apple would charge a lot less for iDevices, but nope. I don’t think I’m asking for a lot, here. I’m not asking for as many options as the Galaxy S3 has, I just want a few simple options, such as either manual adjustment of exposure time, or an “indoor” mode since the iPad does not have a flash, and a timer. Basic, basic. I’m not telling it to do what a DSLR camera does. (BTW, the last time I used my DSLR, I took this shot of the Supermoon on June 22. A few of my DSLR-savvy friends had to deal with my whining about settings, and Mr. W had to crop the shot for me, but ultimately, I guess I’m happy with it. Just for fun, here it is: 200mm lens, F/11, 1/250 secs, ISO at 250

I was confused why my settings were so different from my friends’ settings on their Supermoon shots, especially the ISO. That’s what I get for being SO rusty I had to brush cobwebs off the DSLR when I pulled it out, and I had needed a quick tutorial on setting up the tripod from Mr. W.)

On the drive to work, I asked Mr. W, “Okay, I do NOT understand why so many people like Apple. The more I learn, the more I don’t understand this. Can you explain this to me?”
He pointed out a few things, such as:
* Apple hardware is very stable and reliable
* Apple community is better than Android because it’s less fragmented. I asked what he meant by “fragmented,” and he said because so many devices by different manufacturers use Android, there is inconsistent tech support, different OS updates being used/available to different devices at different times, and too many third-party app developers.
He admitted that the Samsung Galaxy hardware is in fact, “very good,” but that it doesn’t change the fact that the Android apps available in the open-source environment are hit-or-miss on quality. He said Apple controls their developers and apps, so they will not allow for a release of an inferior quality app, and if one slips by, Apple will see to it that it’s “taken care of” ASAP. I said that it sounds like Apple is a control-freak company, and he agreed and said that’s what makes them so good — tight hold on quality control, to run their system as they wanted.

Our conversation brought up the possibility in my head that I may not be as much an Android fan as a Samsung Galaxy fan, because my first smartphone was an LG Ally (which I drowned in the lake by using my kayak as a stand-up paddle and doing a little dance with my feet on the outer edges of the kayak), and I was NOT impressed by that Android phone at all. Hmmm.

Generally, in theory, I still lean toward Android’s way of doing things. It’s like a communist government vs. a capitalistic free market government. I like and am comfortable with the concept that people can put stuff out there for consumers, and if consumers don’t like it, they can vote with their wallets. Besides, I have no problem doing a little homework reading reviews. The Apple way just feels like the corporation has too much control, in the same way “rumor” has it that we’ve had the technology for electric or hydrogen or other environmentally-friendly cars for a long time, but the big gasoline industry had been knocking out their competition with their fat wallets and influence.

My birthday today was, for the most part, like any other day. I wouldn’t have even acknowledged it except that others were kind enough to send me birthday greetings and wishes online and via text messaging, and my judge and former court reporter gave me cards and a gift on Friday. I had not even realized my birthday was already upon us except for my friends’ reminders, and I didn’t even know how old I was turning. The stepkidlet actually had to do the math on her calculator last night. All I remember was that I gave birth when I was 35 so since Allie is 1.5 years old…and that was as far as I’d gotten.

Speaking of my judge’s card… on Friday after lunch, I returned to my desk to see the card envelope sitting there with my name on it. Since we were busy picking a jury for a criminal trial, it was almost an hour later before I was able to get to the card. I opened the envelope and pulled out a glittery Snoopy card, then opened it slowly as cut-outs of presents and ribbons popped up on the inside of the card. I opened it further to appreciate the 3-D effects, and suddenly it burst into song, VERY LOUDLY. I freaked out and clamped the card shut, afraid to look up. My judge upholds a very professional, formal tone in his courtroom, and here I was in front of multiple attorneys, a criminal defendant, approximately 35 prospective jurors, and an audience full of spectators. I looked at the card envelope again. Nope, he definitely did not leave a post-it note on the envelope warning me not to open the card while we’re in session. Looking around, it didn’t seem like anyone had reacted to the few notes that came screaming out of the card. Even so, my heart was pounding. Thanks for giving me a heart attack for my birthday, judge.

This morning, Mr. W juiced some fruit (apple, papaya, pear, grape, cantaloupe, lemon) and veggies (romaine lettuce, kale, beet, broccoli, ginger, spinach, cucumber) in his new juicer and we had that as a pre-breakfast treat, then I made Allie some healthy mini pancakes (1 ripe banana, 2 eggs, 1/4 cup oatmeal, that’s it) and fed her breakfast. The morning was hot so we pretty much stayed inside, although we did let her play in the backyard for a bit. My parents came over during Allie’s nap, and when Allie woke up, the 5 of us went to Rose Canyon Cantina for an early dinner. Allie wolfed down her Mexican food (shrimp ceviche, bits of my mom’s chicken enchilada, some of my red Spanish rice, black beans, grilled fish, and spinach enchilada, some of of Mr. W’s refried beans and green Mexican rice) but was uncooperative for photos. There’s one in which she looks like she’s plotting my demise. My social networking friends theorize that she’s just crabby from being out in near triple-digit temperatures.

After dinner, we stopped by a man-made lake that had a nice walking path and park-like setting all the way around it so Allie could run around. Her mood was much better at the park.

My parents are overly protective and paranoid about Allie’s safety, but would let her do stuff like pick up duck poop. :/ Baby wipes come in handy for times like this.

I’ve never seen her so sweaty that her hair stringed up almost like she’d just gotten out of a bath, until today. She did say “hot” as soon as we stepped out of the air-conditioned restaurant (even tho we ate on a shaded patio), but didn’t have a complaint after that. She drank a ton of water, though, and we had to stop by a Little Caesar’s Pizza to buy a couple of cold bottled waters (which she chugged) to refill her sippy cup before we headed home.

All day long, we were working on her to get her to say “Happy birthday, mama.” In the below video, my mom was supposedly recording Allie on her iPhone, but turned out she didn’t get any of it. My dad luckily was standing by video-recording on his camera.

At the end of day, when I was nursing her before bed, she was dozing off when I pulled her away to switch sides. She sat up drowsily with a sigh, looked up at me with sleepy eyes, and said, “Happy mama.” Then she smiled sweetly and proudly, like we shared a private joke. I smiled and kissed her on her cheek. It’s not the full “happy birthday,” but it’s shrewdly accurate as an observation.