Packing

Things I'll be taking with me on our Hawaii vacation this time around that I have never taken with me on previous trips:

• Five dresses. FIVE. I am not a dress person. Every time I buy a cute summer sundress in Hawaii I come back to LA and think, "This dress is tiny and strapless. I have no business walking around with a strapless bra on anymore." And the dress gets shuttled away to the back of the closet. But this time? All I can think is that if I only have to worry about putting on one garment each day, that's, like, two other garments that I don't need to worry about putting on. And so the dresses are coming out to play. I can wear a bathing suit underneath them, and if the suit is dirty, well, Hawaii is just going to have to deal with either visible bra straps or my unsupported bosoms.
• A carseat that has a telescoping handle and so doubles as a stroller. File this under "things I never knew existed and will use probably once."
• An iPad containing thirty episodes of "Yo Gabba Gabba" and also, for good measure, "Bubble Guppies."
• Just say that out loud. "Bubble Guppies."
• A bag filled with cheap, tacky crap, the sole purpose of which is to amuse a toddler for ten precious minutes at a time. Said cheap items include a booklet of Lisa Frank stickers, a yo-yo, a set of plastic car keys with Disney princesses on them, and Post-Its.
• A base tan, because my old philosophy of staying the hell out of the sun has been difficult to maintain this summer. 
• An attitude of grim determination as I ready myself for a five-hour plane flight, which I'm POSITIVE will be followed by ten days of sheer bliss as Scott, Sadie, Yayo, Yaya, Auntie Kate and I enjoy spending time together in paradise. 

See you in September, y'all.

At the Beach

Photo taken by my mother.

Sleep On It

For Scott's birthday we said to hell with it and drove up to Sunnyvale to make nuisances of ourselves. Sunnyvale is the home of one of my dearest friends from college; she lives there with her husband. By awesome coincidence one of our other best friends was also visiting with her boyfriend for the weekend, so the six of us got together for dinner on Saturday night and brunch Sunday morning.

Sadie held it together fairly well. I'd been worried about two things: the five hour car ride, and the sleeping arrangements. During the day her tolerance for riding around in her car seat is around 30 minutes. We strategized as well as possible, timing the beginning of the trip right around her nap time (with a swim lesson earlier that morning to tire her out) and then stocking the car with toys, a couple of new books and snacks. For sleeping we brought her pack and play, a portable crib that worked brilliantly when we took her to Vancouver over New Year's.

A lot changes in five months.

The car ride, unexpectedly enough, went smooth as silk both times. She napped on the first leg, then we'd stop for lunch and a leg stretch, and pop her back in for the second half. I sat in the back seat with her and kept her occupied by switching out books and toys, singing songs, and playing games.

Sleeping...that didn't turn out so well. She wanted nothing to do with the pack and play, and when she was put in it, she screamed nonstop. On Friday night it took about an hour to get her down to sleep -- mostly because we kept picking her up and trying to soothe her. At home we'd be more likely to let her cry it out, but when you're staying in a hotel the worry that you're driving other people crazy takes precedence.

What finally worked was allowing her to pass out in bed with us. She squirmed and fussed for awhile and eventually draped her upper body on my chest, face up. It looked incredibly uncomfortable, but she was deeply asleep in minutes and Scott was finally able to sneak her into her crib where she slept the rest of the night.

Saturday was even worse -- it took an hour to get her to sleep at our friends' house, and when we got home around 11pm she'd woken up and was furious that we were trying to get her back down into the crib again. We couldn't get her to sleep no matter how hard we tried. At last, around midnight, I begged Scott to come let her sleep in the bed with us since it had worked well the night before. (I love it when he's too exhausted to argue with me.)

So she slept in between us. At some point during the night, she managed to maneuver herself into a position from which she was able to kick us both directly in the face. I don't understand how she did this -- it was too dark to see. All I know is that in the morning we were both equally grumpy from having endured a night full of face kicks. Scott's theory is that she's a ninja.

So after all that she was tired and fussy and ready to go home by Sunday. (In the pre-baby days, we probably would have talked ourselves into staying another night, but this time it definitely wasn't an option.) She only napped for an hour on the car ride home and by bedtime she was the very definition of "overtired." She screamed bloody murder when we put her to bed, and then she slept for 14 hours with another 3 hour nap today.

Oh -- the other bed anecdote I forgot to mention? We discovered on Sunday morning that Sadie was allergic to the detergent on the hotel bedsheets. She woke up covered head to toe in a bright red rash. We treated it with an Epsom Salt bath and a shitload of Aquaphor ointment, and she's better today. SEE, COLLEGE FRIEND? I SAID IT WASN'T SCABIES.

Full Steam Ahead

My lack of updating is for actual good, valid reasons -- I'm working a lot these days, and it's keeping me incredibly busy, which is great for things like paying the mortgage but not good for logging important milestones in my child's life.

When Sadie was first born, my sister gave me a beautiful baby book. It was filled with pages that said things like, "On the day I was born, here were the top headlines in the newspaper!" and I always mean to go back and Google September 24th, 2009 and then write down all the important news stories, but then I realize I forgot to go to the market and Pepper's going crazy at my feet because she needs to be walked and I need to cook up a batch of baby food because we're down to nothing but three cubes of Wheaty Meaty Stew and instant oatmeal. And then I rationalize that Sadie, if she's interested in such a thing when she grows up, will also have the power of the internet at her fingertips, so really, it's not necessary for me to write it down and....aaaanyway, long story short, I was bad at filling in the baby book and I'm bad at posting updates.

These days are going by so fast, I'm just trying to stop every once in awhile to remind myself that my baby is becoming less of a baby and more of a kid. At last night's anniversary dinner for my grandparents' 50th, my mother looked at Sadie and said, "You can see...she's really becoming more of a little girl." And I was like, "Heh, yeah, that's what a grandmother would say," but then I did a double-take and when I looked for the second time, I could see: yes, she IS becoming a little girl. The baby features are already starting to go -- her cheeks no longer look like she's hoarding golf balls, her hands aren't as fat and dimpled, her hair has grown out.

Last week, Scott and I took her up to Seattle and Vachon Island for a vacation. And by "vacation," I mean that Scott got to listen to me bitch about how vacations are supposed to be relaxing while this was no such thing, and for that I'm sorry, honey.  But really -- I was rushing to meet work deadlines up to the night that we left, packing was a frenzy, in the middle of it we had to go return my leased Volvo to the dealership, and all that was before we even left. Once we arrived in Washington we contended with rain, many hours of travel, and a baby who went through one of the worst teething phases of her life to date. She actually went on a food strike for four straight days, refusing to consume anything but bottles and occasionally some yogurt, and let me tell you, a teething, hungry baby whose gums hurt too much to eat and who is also in an unfamiliar environment, constantly being thrust into the arms of people she doesn't know or  forced to sit in a carseat for hours on end, is NOT a happy baby.

So it was a bit stressful, but I'm also making it sound a lot worse than it was. We stayed in a hundred year old inn on gorgeous Vashon, our quarters adjoining the establishment's well-respected restaurant. That meant live music and conversation being piped into our rooms every evening, which I loved. Scott's sister stayed with us, holding out the fort at night, allowing us to attend our friends' wedding (the reason we were in Washington to begin with) baby-free and to feel privately smug towards all the people who'd brought their kids with them for a nighttime wedding.

From Vachon we took the ferry across the Sound to Seattle, where we stayed with my aunt, uncle and niece. They're incredibly cool about houseguests, making us feel welcome the entire time. Even so, I felt bad walking in the door with a crying, drooling, hunger-striking infant. "We swear she's usually not like this!" has become our constant cry every time Sadie goes through a teething period. All things considered, the plane flights to and from Seattle were remarkably unremarkable. Minimal fussing, she napped briefly both times, and all I can say is, thank heaven for the emergency instruction card because it kept her entertained for most of the flight.

Now that the teething has passed, Sadie's gone back to her usual happy self. Today I took her over to my parents' and she was the happiest baby you've ever seen, giggling at all of us and showering us with kisses. And why wouldn't she be happy? She's got all the love she can handle, from aunts and uncles to grandparents and great-grandparents -- all within the span of a few days. If this keeps up, she's going to start getting a big head.

Wedding Bells and Lobster Rolls

Sadie at wedding

We've been out of town for the past week, traveling first down to Fallbrook for my sister's wedding, then up to the Bay Area to visit all of our friends and family. It was a great but exhausting trip, as evidenced by the fact that the baby has been sleeping with very few breaks from the time we got home yesterday evening, up until now. As I write this post, she's been asleep for 2 hours. Of course, now that I'm in the middle of a project I predict she'll wake up about two minutes from now.

I'll post again with more details, but for now the broad overview of the trip: it presented a ton of challenges, and we managed to conquer almost all of them. How, for instance, do you sleep in the same room as a baby who is used to having a room all to herself since she was 4 weeks old? Answer: you stick her in the closet. Or, if a closet is not available, you rig up a makeshift wall by thumb-tacking three sheets to the ceiling and draping them over the crib. (Then you proceed to stress about the baby having enough air to breathe at night.) In the first case it worked like a charm; in the latter case, not as great, and she woke up a bunch of times during the night. But it could have been much worse.

In all other ways, she behaved like an angel, considering she was besieged by new faces every single day, all getting up in her grill to go, "Oooooooh!" On a couple of occasions she did get spooked by this, but for the most part she handled the barrage of new information with good humor and curiosity. She charmed my old college friends, reunited with her aunt, met her great-grandfather, and attended a wedding reception where she was unfazed by the loud thumping baseline of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance."

Car travel was made easier by our recent upgrade from the Snugride infant seat to a larger convertible carseat. We went with the Graco MyRide, which Scott insists has the best ratings and wasn't super expensive, either. Sadie definitely prefers not having her feet poking out over the edge of her carseat, and not having her head flopping from side to side helps, too.

In development news (I love posting the new things she's doing), Sadie now reaches her arms out towards you when she wants to be picked up. She yells at you when you leave the room, and leans into you when you hold her. I'm teaching her how to kiss -- that is, I'm covering her face in kisses while saying, "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!" I'm not sure if she's learning anything new from it, but she definitely thinks I'm crazy. Still no rolling over, but I'm learning to appreciate her immobility while it lasts.