It hasn’t affected her much during the day, just some cute runny-nose wiping stuff. But at night? You parents know. You non-parents don’t WANT to know. Round I of getting her to sleep involved a warm bath and some Baby Vicks Vapo-Rub. Not too bad. Round II required more strategic maneuvers—half an hour in the bathroom with the hot shower running to steam it up, and a hog-tied session with the nasal suction thingie. Still, all of this was surrounded by two hours solid of desperate, loud crying on her part. She just wants to breathe. Is that so much to ask? Now it’s 2:30 a.m. and I can’t sleep. Mind you, I haven’t really slept since two night sago, but some artificial stimulus of a parental nature has me unable to fall asleep.

I had to send Steve to the other room to sleep—he has to return to work tomorrow. Boo. We’ll miss having him around all day. That’s been super nice.

More later from the other side of this cold. Not looking forward to Round III, Round IV, etc., but glad I can help her get through it.

Enjoying a visit from Debi and Sam right now. Photos of that, plus Christmas morning, are here (click). Merry merry!

UPDATE! I have more to add:

So, on this visit, we did the aquarium, which Sam seemed to enjoy a lot. He is a fan of turtles and got up his nerve to pet some rays and sharks in the touch-pools. He aspires to be an oceanographer one day, so it was really up his alley. Violet, meanwhile, was enthralled watching all of the kids. She also seemed to enjoy the tanks this time—not a ton of enthusiasm, but she was interested. The only incident was when an adorable sea lion came over to the other side of the glass right in front of us to play, and Vibble freaked out—screamed, clutched at me, and began sobbing. Too dog-like, maybe. No matter how much I try to expose her to dogs in a gentle way, she fears them for the most part.

We also enjoyed a great day down at the beach by the pier with Sam and Violet. Vibble is very entertained by her big cousin.

For new year’s, Debi and Sam hung out with Violet here at No. 6 so Stevel and I could go out to dinner ALONE. This hasn’t really happened much in the last ten months, although it WILL be happening MORE. Anyway, we went to Akbar, of course, and enjoyed ourselves. We even got dessert (the Mango Surprise is BACK). When we got home, we all watched the ball drop on the East coast. As we debated whether to stay up until West-coast Midnight, we watched an episode of Hannah Montana, thanks to Sam. If you’ve never seen this show, it’s really something. Steve’s reaction? “Is this the end of civilization?”

Christmas was delightful. We spent Christmas Eve with the Kodjas and their other guests here in Santa Monica, trying some authentic Thai seafood. It was delicious, and I had never seen a big squid-head on a grill before. BUT NOW I HAVE. We played “Scene-It,” which I have to admit I always assumed was a dumb game, but it is actually great fun. Violet interacted with 8-month-old Joseph. He is a big, healthy kid with sweet pink cheeks. Mostly, they grabbed at each other’s faces. It was Mrs. Kodja’s birthday, which meant there was both a cookie-cake AND an ice cream cake. And champagne! Let’s just say I had to detox the next day, and not from the champagne. The Kodjas also brought us two pears the size of monkey heads for New Years.

Christmas morning we had visits from David, Jeremy, and Melissa. (Thus, additional photos shall be forthcoming.) We all enjoyed watching Violet experience her first Christmas. She did not seem to notice anything special going on and mostly, as we predicted, enjoyed playing in the discarded wrapping. David and I took a walk to get cake (well, I got cake, and David showed amazing restraint in ordering only a bottled water) and visit Sarah-Architect. Later, the Kadoshes (Eitan, Jacquelyn, and Charlie) came over for a nice, long, leisurely afternoon and evening of Rock Band, “Apples to Apples,” and junk food. Oh, man, GREAT DAY!

Happy new year to all.

Violet learned to clap her hands yesterday. She is very pleased with herself about it.

And now she smells like turd, so I have to go.

Just added: Some pics!

Some pics:

[1] [2] [3]

A newbie! Emily and Elizandro had their baby! Anita Salguero was born yesterday morning at 1:15, weight is 7.5 pounds, hair is BLONDE. Emmer is doing well. WELCOME, ANITA!!!

Photos

I am ALONE. In the HOUSE. ALONE. BY MYSELF. Stevel has taken the kid to the park for a bit. He told me to use this time wisely and to “be done” with whatever over-ambitious organization project I decide to take on by the time he gets back. I assured him neither of those things is likely. The feeling is so amazing, not because now I can finally take that bubble bath and eat bon-bons while watching decadent TV. Truth be told, I have that opportunity every day while she naps. But every day while she naps, I am suddenly on deadline. I have 45 minutes, or two hours, or whatever nap it is, to complete six loads of laundry, eat lunch, pay our bills, e-mail a student, call the plumber, take out the trash, the list goes on … a list of things that become ten times more complicated, ten times more time-consuming, when there is a Slimy Shadow along for the task. A Slimy Shadow whose primary goals are to (a) try and choke herself to death on any and all small objects she can find and (b) whine every second we are not making eye contact. It is much, MUCH easier to just sit on the floor and make eye contact with her than to try and get some small chore done. So anyway, where shall I start?! This is so exciting—should I make the beds? Clean up after the pets? BLOG?

I wish I could blog about all of the things actually going on with us right now, but this isn’t the place for that. We are exhausted.

Meanwhile, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving here at No. 6. David cooked a fabulous dinner, with Patricia’s help, and we had friends to share it with: Raji and Thippewhan; Christine; Jeff, Megan, and half-baked Winston Hill; The Selan Brothers, Junior and Junior Jr.; Jeremy Sr. and Melissa; ourselves, and David. Eitan also stopped by earlier in the day with Charlie Waffles. There was some Rock Band II, of course, and a little Little Big Planet. Lots of techie conversation. A few of us took Violet for a walk after dinner, very fun.

In other news, the day for which I have been waiting for YEARS has finally arrived! There was a Black Friday event at the Three-Bs (a horrible place of many horrors), and I was able to purchase a Dyson DC24 for 20-percent off! It is now the case that, should we ever arrive home to find that No. 6 has been ransacked by burglars, I will rush to the cleaning closet to see if My Baby is OK. Then I will perform CPR on my husband in front of his empty desk.

All right, yeah yeah, fine, I know what you really want.

Steve spent last weekend driving to Tucson and back—14 hours of driving. Then, this weekend, he got the hiccups Saturday afternoon. VERY BAD HICCUPS. And they did not go away. Finally, Sunday afternoon, I decided 24 hours of hiccups was dangerous, so we went to a walk-in place so he could see a doctor. He got a shot of something in the butt and a Valium. Came home and slept, and they finally went away. But the poor guy deserves a break, don’t you think?

I got worse after that post. Then I got well. A 24-hour bug. Violet got it too. Stevel got his own version of it. But we were all fine very soon.

I don’t have much to say right now. Perhaps at a later date. Meanwhile here are some new photos.

Photos from Jeremy and Liss taken while we all awaited the wonderful national results on Tuesday …

I think I have the flu. Someone shoot me. Or hug me. Or make me well?

The kid does have a crib in our room BTW. She just doesn’t want to sleep in it. But she does. Sometimes. Other times not so much, ’cause it’s hard for ME to sleep with a kid standing up in a crib screaming in my room. We’ll work it out. We have to, because it’s become dangerous for her to sleep in our bed. Last night she almost fell off the side; I caught her under the arms at the last second. And Steve reported that he woke up in the middle of the night just in time to see her crawling toward the foot of the bed; he scooped her up about a centimeter before the edge. Does it sound to you like WE are getting any sleep? She seems to be just restless in her sleep. She falls deeply asleep on one of us and then as soon as we lay her OH SO GENTLY YOU CANNOT IMAGINE HOW GENTLY into her crib BOOM! Screamin’. And yes, I have been trying the “self-soothing” (aka let-her-cry-herself-to-sleep) thing during the day with her naps. Sometimes it works. Other times after 45 minutes I have two choices: Pick her up or start drinking Drain-o to self-soothe MYSELF. My sense is that she is feeling some stress right now. Maybe I will make her an appointment with my psychotherapist. “Ga? Pbblbbt? And how did that make you feel?” I do have some highly recommended books about sleeping and babies. Maybe I should read them or something.

Halloween involved dressing Vibble up in her cow costume, which I admit was wholly for my benefit. We took her to the carnival at the Santa Monica Airport, where we walked around for half an hour so she could see all the kids having fun (she likes to watch kids). Then we went to Swingers. She was so adorably cute she got a lot of attention everywhere we went. Stevel wants this to be her Thanksgiving costume and Christmas/Chanukkah costume too, ’cause why not. But I think she may outgrow it. I just want her to outgrow her sleeping issues. Going on one month now, and if she continues to refuse to be put down in her bed without screaming WHILE ASLEEP, and if she doesn’t stop using the time in our bed all night to pull my hair and punch me WHILE ASLEEP, so that when we all wake up, Stevel and I look like zombies, while she is perfectly chipper, then _I_ am going to start sleeping in HER bed, got that, Vibble?

This past weekend saw us road-tripping to Tucson, where we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express. While Stevel and his sister Becky did some treks around Tucson, car-less Vibble and I ate at the IHOP—the International House of Pancakes—next to the hotel. A lot.

The thing about Vibble is that she draws attention, and I meet so many people now. They just come up to us and start conversing. Any excuse to get close to her. So the first day we go in there, and there’s a restaurant full of pre-teen male gingers wearing scout uniforms and eating pancakes. As they filed out, one of the leaders knelt to say hi to Violet … 20 minutes later, I had learned the troop of 50 boys was from Scotland, here to see the Grand Canyon and other Southwest sites. The leader explained that due to the heat that day I had been cheated out of seeing his troop in their kilts, which they typically wear.

The next meal, we sat at a table with a glass wall on one side. On the other side of the wall was a little girl—maybe 7—eating with two men. Little kids make Violet go GIDDY. So there was much smiling and laughing and face-making until the threesome left, and we waved goodbye through the glass … but they went up their row of seats and made a U-turn to come talk to us. Well, ONE of them spoke to us. He said, “My niece wants to know how old the baby is.” Turns out Uncle is the only one who speaks English, and not Dutch. Through him, Vibble and I had fun making the acquaintance of young Ninka. (And yes, Abigail, that makes two Dutch references on this blog in just a few months!)

I also met a couple from Michigan, and while that’s not international, we talked a long time, and Violet tried real hard to take the guy’s Rolex.

In other news, Becky has come back with us to L.A. for a while, and Violet is finally cutting her first tooth at almost nine months. And now, your moment of Zen.

We just got back from a very California morning activity. We went to the Co-op to buy $5 organic eggs, and we did it on a bike, which we rode in the bike LANE. On our way we passed this. Vibble was into the ride, although she wasn’t a fan of the helmet. I can’t blame her. It’s a lot of helmet for such a little noggin. Also, she looks like a fireman. She’s out cold now—the ride wore her out.

We bought the eggs because her doctor gave us a semi-lecture on account of our not following his chart for what she should be eating at each stage. He says she is supposed to be getting strained meat and egg yolks at this point. That advice disagrees with a lot of what I’ve read and been told, but he says his chart represents the latest recommendations in the pediatric community. I would feel more confident in the truth of that statement were the chart not clearly created with a TYPEWRITER. I think I’ve mentioned how much we like our aged pediatrician. He’s a sweet man, even if he clearly has never used a computer. Anyway, we’ll try some eggs today.

We’re recovering from a lot of travel in the last month. The travel, along with Vibb’s new phases, has us a bit worn out. But it’s all wonderful stuff. Violet is now 17 pounds, a very efficient crawler with the cutest bum-wiggle you ever saw. She is ambitious, crawling further and further and pulling herself up on any and every surface. She is still a little off with the sleeping, but we can’t blame her—between teething and our flying her at unthinkable hours to places two time zones away, she is understandably confused. Anyway, she needs a lot more minding and is irresistible—she wants to play and interact and snuggle all the time, and so do we.

Little by little, she is making sounds not just on her own, but on cue. For a few weeks, she has been happy to repeat back a little lip-smacking sound. Last week she began to repeat back one of her favorite sounds to make on her own, “Ha! … Ha! … Ha!” Today for the first time, she mirrored my “Buh. Buh.” Still working on “Da. Da.” On her own, she makes “Mmm” sounds and others—she loves to sing. But definitely the most common sound to come out of her mouth is the “Ha! … Ha!”

So, the travel: This past weekend saw us on a whirlwind trip to the D.C. area for the wedding of Emily Freeland and Elizandro Salguero. It was a super-sweet event, and I was in heaven to be spending time with my college roomies and friends. They all look terrific and seem happy with their lives—careers, families, etc. We stayed in Laurel with the Modis, Jitu, Reshma, their two kids (Shivani and Sohan), and Jitu’s parents. They watched Violet during the wedding, and for Violet’s and my longest time being apart, it went pretty well. We were eager for our reunion at the end of the night, but for her part, she reportedly had a GREAT time (she just loves slightly bigger kids with their running around and animated talking). For my part, I can’t imagine better peace of mind than having left your kid with a house full of doctors who have raised or are raising healthy, happy kids.

The wedding was preceded by a baby shower for the bride and groom. Their family will be complete come December. A highlight of the day for me was helping Emily and her new stepdaughter, Jazlynn, get ready for the big event. How beautiful they both looked! The wedding itself was a fun evening of DELICIOUS Italian food, Latin and American music, and friends. The couple had already had a private ceremony, so after introductions of family members, the rest of the night was all-party. Emily AMAZED me with her third-trimester stamina. Oh, man. Super Bride.

Enough talk. Check out the photos!

The benefits of having photographer friends!

Violet attended her first party in the Hollywood Hills. She was a lovely guest until she projectile-vomited all over Rick’s new house. She felt just fine afterwards. Actually, she felt just fine beforehand. It’s Stevel who doesn’t feel fine. The doctor says he has a virus.

I got a fun new camera for my birthday from Stevel. So here are some photos!

Today we say goodbye to Kelly. We’ve had a fun visit. We shopped and shopped and watched “Gone with the Wind.”

Also today, I am 33.

There’s a lot to catch you up on, so very quickly …

[1]

We had a wonderful trip to Oregon recently, where we enjoyed the crisp, pre-fall mornings and hot afternoons in Corvallis and were treated to the company of Steve’s family and our friends the Kissers and Kate in Portland. You can check out
photos here.

[2]

No sooner were we back at No. 6 than we headed out to Palm Springs for a relaxing overnight. Steve’s sister Debi (from Corvallis) had a conference there, and it’s just two hours from Santa Monica and such a fun getaway. Debi said, “We’re going to get together every weekend now, right?” I do wish. What a good time.

[3]

I’m teaching my one class at Otis, and I have an enjoyable group of students this semester. Engaged, positive, on-board, and all at 3:45 in the afternoon. So it’s going well. I teach one day a week, and Stevel comes home from work early to stay with Vibble.

[4]

Speaking of Vibble, ALL BETS ARE OFF. I don’t know if it’s the teething or some kind of seven-month-mark phase or her true personality coming out or what, but she is a bit moody, and anything resembling a schedule or consistent demeanor … well, I just can’t predict her. She is still the world’s smiliest baby, still LOVES people everywhere we go. But she cries quite a bit more now, crawls around crying a lot. Pulls herself to standing and stands there and cries. Cries a lot at night in her sleep (or wakes up and cries). Sometimes she cries because she is being restrained. Sometimes, because no one is holding her. Sometimes because I have left the room. Others, because I have ENTERED the room. Cries because she is hungry, cries because we have put her in her high chair and suited her up with a bib. Cries—SHRIEKS—because we are trying to change her diaper and would like her to remain on her back on the changing table for five seconds. Cries about twenty times a day because she has fallen backwards and bumped her little head.

But then she will be happy as can be for hours with no complaints. I don’t know how to make this happen on purpose. I just enjoy it when it comes. The rest of the time, I go down the list. Teething pain? We have MANY solutions to help with this, from a frozen washcloth to Orajel to Tylenol. Hungry? Bananas? Cereal? (If I could just stop her from snorting them all up her nose.) Sleepy? She still calms to the swaddle. Want to crawl? Want to cruise? Change of scene? Need a little Baby-Einstein-in-your-swing time? (Amazing how miraculously this sometimes works; the reaction on her face reminds me of when I’m really stressed out and step into a hot bath.) Most often, the only thing she wants is to be in my arms. “Hold me, Mom.” OK. We live in 15-to-20-minute chunks. Change it up often, that’s the Vibble ideal. But a schedule? Not so much. I mean, some days she does her “usual” thing, but other days, it’s up in the air when she will sleep, for how long, how much she will eat, etc. Fortunately, she still does the whole night-sleeping thing for the most part.

Meanwhile, the crawling is quite accomplished. She is compelled to pull herself up now on anything she can reach. This involves a lot of falling down. A LOT. And also a lot of crying while standing, presumably because she’s not sure how to get down without falling?

Summary: She is more enjoyable than ever … and more work than I imagined. Hm. Also, her cheeks are tasty. I eat them frequently.

[5]

Kelly is here! Hooray!!!!!

Been pretty occupied, mostly hanging out with the kid. But here’s a quick Vibble Fix for you.

My brother-in-law, Brian, is off to Iraq as I type this. It’s going to be a tough year for their little family, all being apart. We wish them all well, and especially send positive thoughts with Brian. As part of the 82nd Airborne, he was in the first group to go over to Afghanistan more than six years ago. He’s since moved over to the National Guard and been promoted in rank, and we’re all very proud of him. His attitude about going is this: “If I can go over there and relieve people who have been there three and four and five times already, I’m glad to be able to do it.”

Things to do when you’re seven months old while Mom takes a hot bath:

[1] Spend five minutes playing with the toys Mom left for you on the floor
[2] Spy Mom in the bathtub
[3] Visibly think very hard about how to get to Mom in the bathtub … very far away
[4] Spy Mom’s clothes on the floor. Roll to Mom’s clothes and lick her shirt.
[5] Realize you have learned in the past few weeks how to sort of crawl
[6] Commence crawling
[7] Pause to lick the rug
[8] Restart crawling
[9] Cross threshold into bathroom
[10] Pause to lick bathroom floor
[11] Commence crawling
[12] Reach bathtub
[13] Squeal with glee and pride
[14] Roll over and wad up fuzzy bath rug
[15] Lick fuzzy bath rug until Mom gets the message and finishes her bath to pick you up

A few comments …

Yes, I know: A decadently hot bath! On a Friday morning. With a baby in the house. People, I don’t know what kind of shit-shoveler I was in my past life, but I am being rewarded for it. I must be. Nothing I have ever done in this life points to my deserving such an awesome, delightful, easy baby. (Yeah, teething blows, but it’s worse for her than for me, so I can’t complain about my being inconvenienced by it.) Right now she is watching Baby Beethoven in her swing. She loves Baby Beethoven. It is about 30 minutes long and can be set to repeat. Every time in the loop the credits come on, she fusses and cries. She calms back down when it starts up again. Eventually she takes a nap.

Regarding the licking of floors. I’ve just given up on that one. She licks the rug several times a day. She licks the hardwood. While I water the plants, she licks the courtyard. The guy who cleans our carpets every few months uses a disinfectant, but it only takes a day for the World’s Grossest Cats to cover 80 percent of that carpet with vomit, hair, cat litter, and who-knows-what. Vibble, may your immune system develop beyond scientific comprehension.

She’s now eating jars of food and plenty of baby cereal, along with her human-dairy diet. Changing her diapers is a different kind of task now. Let’s just say I’m not buying any more jar-carrots. Poop should never, ever be that color.

Yesterday we spent a fun evening with the Hills, formerly of West Side L.A., thereafter formerly of Vancouver, and now of Irvine, Calif. We went for shabu shabu and watched Violet do her thing back here at No. 6. We’re glad to have them nearby and look so forward to the arrival of a wee friend for Vibb soon.

Here is your Vibble fix. Steve has been getting some crawling video, so watch for that soon.

We have been so busy I can’t even TELL you. We returned from West Virginia to find that the kid had outgrown all of her clothes. This meant every closet and shelf in No. 6 had to be reorganized, a days-long job. We also found that the kid was compelled to work on her crawling at all times, making the organization overhaul a weeks-long process, instead. She must now be watched much more closely, both because she moves faster than we think she will and because she frequently wipes out and must be consoled. She’s still not crawling, but she finally figured out how to move forward some with a knee-scoot (she was stuck in reverse for weeks). She also does still revert to her on-the-back tripod maneuver, using her head and feet to push herself around, kind of like a squid, from time to time. But for the most part now she wants to be on her hands and knees as much as possible. This makes the following things unacceptable:

- being strapped into a stroller
- being strapped into a car seat
- sleeping without sometimes, IN HER SLEEP, rising to her hands and knees and then collapsing again
- remaining on her back on the changing table, making changing her a lot like trying to get into a moving car
- leaving the changing table without having stuck all four appendages in her own poop

She has also been working on her shriek volume. Yes, we are now “that family” in any restaurant. It’s a real problem for us, since we don’t make food in our house. We are soon going to starve, Violet, and it’s your fault. Actually, what we do right now is eat in shifts, or we do our best to keep her happy until the food comes, and then I swaddle her and eat with her on my lap—the swaddle is the only way to keep her from obsessively trying to grab my fork and food, and on-my-lap is the only place she seems to want to be quiet.

SHE is NOT going to starve, though. She’s happily taken to her gruel and is also eating jarred peas. We started with an attempt at jarred pears, but after she three times made the face you can’t help making when you do a shot of Jack at 8 o’clock in the morning—you know the one—we agreed to stop torturing her with pears.

Right now she’s sitting in her high chair at my desk, doing her “work.” This work involves sliding her toys one by one over the side of the desk until there is one toy left, which she bangs repeatedly with her super-muscle arms until I refill her inbox. If I do not, she grabs the mouse and tries to consume it. She tries to consume everything—her toys, electronics, my face—and is clearly working on the muscles she will need to eat more solid food and to talk. She already understands a little bit of what we say, I think, in an abstract way.

Vibble is a real people person. Everywhere we go, she charms cashiers and wait staff, strangers in line and bus drivers. Everyone. We kind of hold up the works while people lean into the stroller and talk like idiots. Vi eases into her big gorgeous grin, and the idiocy increases in intensity. It’s really something to see. When we got back from West Virginia, Stevel and I took her to the aquarium in Long Beach. We’d seen her enjoy the fish store around the corner and wanted to know if she would like the giant tanks. She seemed to enjoy it thoroughly, but in the end, she was much less into the tanks than the people—especially the kids. As Steve said, we could have just taken her to the grocery store.

In summary, six months is amazing. We’re having more fun with her than I even knew was possible. She’s a riot, extremely cute ALL THE TIME, and sweet sweet sweet.

Here are links to …
- a few new recent photos
- a little video of the first truly successful cereal meal

So that’s the Violet update. We had a great visit in West Virginia with so many wonderful friends and family joining us, including Bridget and Dave; Cindy and Matt; Tracey and her two kids; Kristen Russo; Emily, Elizandro and Jazlynn; my sister and her crew; my mom, Mike, and my grandparents; my dad and Pauline; and Mike’s sister Jane and her son and granddaughter. It was a real getaway in the woods, but with plenty of adventures in the local fun. We also got the chance to see Jitu and Reshma and their two kids on our way from the airport to the woods. Here are links to …
- photos from the trip
- a video of my niece Dani
- a video of my niece Erica

Now we are off (tomorrow) to Corvallis, Oregon, to spend some time with family and friends of Steve’s.