16 months

It freaks me out that if I was my mom, I’d have gone into labor with my second kid 3 days ago. *boggle*

Last Friday marked Katie’s 16th month! New and interesting things include:
- 4 teeth sprouted over the past month (two top molars, two bottom outer incisors);
- an increased attempt to parrot us — this weekend saw her saying “Nicky” (“dih-dee”) and “turtle” (“duhr-dle”);
- the official entrance into 18-month-old clothing (she’s TALL!);
- a switch of favorite foods, from cheese to yogurt, as well as a general increase in the amount of things she’ll nom;
- she can now identify her bellybutton and actually follows a surprising number of commands;
- she’s addicted to big-kid slides

She is truly 100% toddler. I adore her littler personality and one of my favorite things to do is to make her laugh like a maniac. :)

 

a bunch of pics under the cut

So you can get your Katie-fix (should you want it):
(lots of photos!)

 

at 16 months you learn how to fly

 

Project Sleep Fixy comes to an end, and our weekend in pictures

Project Sleep Fixy is officially over, in that I am not writing up her nights anymore. Katie is pretty much sleeping 8-9 hours straight now, which is INCREDIBLE. She was obviously absolutely ready for this “project” because she acclimated with very little fuss whatsoever.

To review, we started out with K waking up ever 2-4 hours to nurse (often more). We changed to the following schedule:
- nursing before going to her bedroom, in an attempt to make sure she fills up but also so she can learn to fall asleep on her own
- B (and later me) putting her in her crib awake and sitting in her room until she falls asleep
- before 3, B attending to her wakeups by replacing the paci and sitting in her room (not holding her if possible)

Pretty soon, she dropped all the wakeups before 3-4 am. Score!

In other news, our friend Ava came over and took pics of us in our jammies over the weekend. Check them out!

 

We’re traditional



We’re traditional

Originally uploaded by alibee09


My parent’s china cabinet; 100+ yr old dishes from my grandmother; our
formal crystal.

 

Project Sleep Fixy: night eleven (Daddy Night #6)

7:30 pm: K goes down per our now normal routine.

10:15 pm: K wakes up. B eventually susses out that the issue is a dirty diaper so we carry out Operation Change, and she repeatedly attempts to doze off during said Operation. However, once it’s time to put her down, she fights sleep like a champion sleep-fighter. I nurse her and while she starts to sleep, the minute I lay her in her crib she wakes up and cries again. Eventually B and I switch, and at about 11:20 he realizes the issue is teething pain and gives her ibuprofen. 15 minutes later she’s sleepin’.

6:45 am: K wakes up.

Woah! :D

 

Project Sleep Fixy: night ten (Daddy Night #5)

7:45 pm: Put K down to sleep. She fell asleep pretty quickly (which is becoming par for the course — I really like it!)

11:30 pm: K wakes. B went in to soothe her (she was screamcrying) and he fell asleep in there for two hours, oops.

4:30 am: K wakes, I nurse her and put her down again. She fell asleep about 5 minutes into nursing, which was sweet. :D

8 am: K wakes for the day!

 

Project Sleep Fixy: night nine (doesn’t count)

Since Katie was sick we pretty much threw this out the window for tonight, somewhat.

7:30 pm: I didn’t nurse her down and she literally conked out the minute I put her in bed.

10:40 pm: She woke up wailing and I nursed her and put her down.

2:30 am: She woke up again and I nursed her and put her down.

6:50 am: She woke me up by very politely calling “mama, mama, mama” from her room. She’s much improved today!

 

Sleeping!



Sleeping!

Originally uploaded by alibee09


K is spending a sick day with her padre.

 

Project Sleep Fixy: night eight (Daddy Night #4)

Katie woke up this morning with a fever of 101.9, which explains last night pretty well.

7:30 pm: I put her down but she didn’t go to sleep until 8:30 because the dogs barked and woke her up THREE TIMES.

10-12 pm: She woke up 6 times looking for paci-fication (HA! I am so witty!).

3:30 am: She woke up crying, and at this point I knew that she was not well, so I nursed her early and then put her back in her crib.

7:30 am: She woke up and came to bed with me. I nursed her and she fell asleep dozily on me. When we eventually got up about 45 minutes later, all she wanted to do was lie on me, moaning pitifully. It was cute but also very sad, and her cheeks were very flushed, which led me to actually taking her temperature to see just HOW warm she was. We dosed her with Tylenol and ultimately decided to keep her home for the day (with her Daddy!).

 

Project Sleep Fixy: nights six and seven (Daddy Nights #2 and #3)

Saturday night: K went down at 8pm fairly easily and as far as I know didn’t really even wake up until 3. Somehow I got hit over the head with a crazy fever and flu so when B asked if we could just bring her to bed an hour earlier than our normal plan I didn’t care. I nursed her and she fell back asleep until a decent hour. (Don’t ask for details here because I was in no shape to recall them.)

Sunday night: K went down at 8pm fairly easily, woke around midnight but self-soothed back to sleep, then woke at 2 and self-soothed until 2:40, at which point I made B go in there. He said she went down easily enough, then she woke up a bit after 4 and I brought her to bed with us (I’m still sick, and she’s being quite a good little sleeper in bed lately… except for kicking Ash in the head this morning).

It seems like she’s doing really well not nursing from 8-4, better than I expected. I think B is going to be “on call” for a few more days before I relieve him (partially because the sick lady needs her rest! Mwahaha).

 

Project Sleep Fixy: night five (Daddy Night #1)

8 pm: B puts K down after a LOT of nursing around bathtime. She goes down pretty easy.

1:50 am: K was uneasy before but didn’t wake up in earnest until now. B went in to her crying in her crib; she didn’t want to be held and gestured to her mouth. B gave her Tylenol, she let him rock her a little bit, then he put her in the crib and she eventually fell back asleep. (Total time ~45 min?)

6:50 am: Wakey! I nursed her in our bed but she didn’t want to go back to sleep so we got up.

Overall, last night was pretty amazing!

 

are we really doing this again?

Some guy started a fake Justin Currie account on FB to try to drum up fan support: good.
He wrote, “On top of this every person who joins this page is expected to get at least 5 people they know to buy Justins [sic] new record.”
I commented that such an argumentative post was surely not a good way to start out the fan page. I mean, don’t we want to be as positive as possible around new fans?
His response: “Theres no point beating around the bush Alison. Thats the whole point of this facebook page. Thanks for you support, I know you have been doing it for years as it stands. Cheers”
I said, “Meh, my point is honey >> vinegar”, and he responds: “You dont have a point. Nobody ever goes to www.delamitri.com anymore. This is time for the new breed to make it happen. The same with OV – Nothing ever happens there. Ever. Why be like this? You were the same when the dels uk site launched. Just support the theory behind it without having cheap shots at a nothing comment. ”

Oh, hai, Kevin all over again.

I love that somehow people think I’m competing with them for some sort of ultimate Del Amitri fan status. YES, THAT’S REALLY WHAT I CARE ABOUT. Not the fact that you make an artist look like a huge asshole by falsely representing him on Facebook and then being a complete dick.

(a screenshot of the lolz)

 

Project Sleep Fixy: night four

Being sick is really kicking my butt. Last night I was pretty out of it, so I had to ask B if my recollection of events was correct.

7 pm: I can tell this might not be a great night because K won’t let me put her down in the tub. We end up taking a bath together, which appeases her greatly.

8 pm: K goes to bed with B. She’s restless but takes about half an hour to sleep; B is worried that his leaving will wake her so he stays in there for about an hour.

1 am: B wakes me up by telling me that it seems like K is having a rough go (and indicating that he thinks nursing her will help). I am seriously delirious with sleep/ick, so I have no idea what’s going on but I stumble in and nurse her. I put her down and I actually fall asleep for a bit, but when I rouse to go out that cues a crying jag (indicating that she wasn’t actually sleeping). It takes until about 2:20 for me to be able to go to bed; she wakes up once crying out but self-soothes.

6 am: K wakes and I bring her to bed, she nurses and passes out.

8 am: B wakes us up to get K ready for the day.

So it seems like, to some extent, her sleeping is improving; it’s just slow-going. We are considering doing Daddy-only attendances this weekend (starting tonight) to see if that can break her dependence on the 1am nursing session to an extent.

 

Project Sleep Fixy: night three

7:50 pm: Explain to me the phenomenon of fathers who think it makes sense to amp their kids up right before bed? K is playing in her crib right now instead of sleeping. We will see how long this lasts… [Ultimately, it took an hour, and B and I switched off in the middle so I could go pay bills.]

10:30 pm: K is up, crying and yelling, for about 45 minutes. Brandon helps her calm down and go to sleep by showing her the twilight turtle in her crib.

1:30 am: Up, nurse, goes back to sleep.

5 am: Up, comes to bed, nurses.

8 am: We wake! (Actually, I wake, B gets K mostly undressed before she rouses. This sickness is kicking our butts.)

 

Project Sleep Fixy: night two

8 pm: Nursed K after her bath but before she got dressed, in the bathroom so there was no chance of falling asleep. She let me lay her down in her crib as easily as she did last night and is on her way to sleep with nary a peep as I write this on my iPod. I find it trippy, to be honest! B and I decided that Fri/Sat/Sun night will be exclusive Daddy-attends-to-K nights; then I cab feel her needs are being met but can try to end some of this habitual waking. Oh, dangit, she’s sitting up now (I think she is checking on me to make sure she’s not alone… yup, she’s readjusting herself so she can peer out her crib rails).

10 pm: she had one wakeup at around 8:45 and then she started fussin again; B did doing paci-replacement surgery. I ultimately had to go in, and about this time I realized that tonight was going to be rough because I started feeling sick — and she had a crazy runny nose. Beeb has a cold! (I was sort of wondering about that last night because her hands were HOT but I didn’t know if she was warm from teething or sickness.)

1, 2, 3: She woke up every hour. I started to feel progressively worse, so I knew she was feeling pretty awful as well. I nursed her each time and she instantly went back to sleep when I put her down but she also moaned sickly :(

5: She came to bed with us and nursed and fell asleep after about a half hour of “I don’t feel good” fuss.

We ended up getting out of bed around 9 and her nose was completely encrusted with more snot than I’ve ever seen. So, while the going-down was good, the night was bad for a good reason. :(

 

Project Sleep Fixy: night one

8 pm: I nursed Katie before and after her bath, then put her down in her bed directly while sitting in her room. She seems to have fallen asleep with no crying! More updates as the night progresses.

8:45 pm: K wakes because she jammed herself in the corner of her crib, B replaces her paci and she finks right out.

11:30 pm: K wakes up. I know she’s been up at least once before this because I heard B go in there, but now he’s asleep. I try to hold her and pacify her with a paci but she smells me and keeps throwing it on the ground and rooting around in my sweatshirt. She nurses for about 10 minutes and sort of dozes. I put her down awake, and eventually walk out of the room. 15 minutes later I hear her rouse and then she manages to put herself down again (yay!!!).

3:00 am: K wakes up. I bring her into our room because I’m exhausted, but this was a terrible idea; the dogs are restless and making it impossible for her to sleep. After trying to doze (and a bit of nursing) I relent and bring her back into her room. I put her directly into her bed and lie down on the floor next to it with a pillow. She falls asleep, as do I; I eventually wake up and go back into my own room. I hear her fuss once but she puts herself down again (I may faint but I was too tired ;P).

Overall, she had a really horribly restless night, probably due to teething or a slight cold. However, she did some really good things during this stretch, so I look forward to working on it further.

 

a written description of our weekend shenanigans

Brandon planned a special birthday surprise for me, but the thing that he wanted to do wouldn’t coincide with my actual birthday (much earlier this month); instead, it was last night. So, we got our nerves in gear and arranged to have our friends Andrew and Kristin, who we love muchly, watch Katie overnight. (Kristin is not only terrific with Katie in general, but she’s also watched her before — when we went scuba diving in Hawaii, for example.) I was a pile of nerves about leaving my mommy-centric kiddo home, and this would be the first night of her life that I’ve been away from her (almost 16 months!!!). However, I wasn’t going to miss my birthday surprise, even though I didn’t know what it was. :)

Kristin came over, played with Katie for a while, and then I put her down for a nap, telling her that she was going to spend the night playing with Auntie Kristin but that I wanted to make sure that Mommy helped her get a good rest first. We then gave K/A last-minute instructions (“Eat anything you want”) and left while Katie was still sleeping (cue: guilt).

We drove to the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco, where we were staying. Brandon won a night there in a raffle after donating money to an AIDS bike-a-thon at work, and he decided that this was the night we would use it. :) I’ve rarely stayed in hotels in San Francisco for obvious reasons (like, I’ve always lived near there — the one time I did stay in one was when Murray and I came out for American Psychiatric Association conference) but I do know from my limited experience that holy cow, are those rooms sizable for a city hotel. They’re also VERY cush! They left me chocolates in the room wishing me a happy birthday, which made me smiley.

We had eaten breakfast late that morning and failed on lunch altogether, so we were both hungry around now (4ish). We wandered around Chinatown until we eventually made our way to North Beach and O’Reilly’s Irish Pub, where Brandon had reservations for us at 5 (so we were about half an hour early). We were trying to be leisurely in order to make sure we had room at the end of the meal for bread pudding (OMG I love bread pudding), so we ordered the smoked salmon with Irish bread, which was very delicious. A Guinness was savored. Eventually, we ordered our meals — I stole B’s thunder by having the shepherd’s pie (he LOVES shepherd’s pie and always laments when we go to a restaurant that does shepherd’s pie with beef, which is in actuality a type of COTTAGE pie) and he enjoyed the lamb stew. The shepherd’s pie was very cheesy and delicious (the lamb was incredibly tender), but there was no way I would be able to finish it, much less have bread pudding on top. So, I had that wrapped up, and we ordered the bread pudding — it was great.

We walked back and stopped at the Victoria Pastry Company, to purchase things to snack on late at night/for breakfast, when B realized he’d left his credit card at the restaurant. We picked it up and headed back to the hotel. We had about 15 minutes before he received a call and told me that we needed to head to BART (I knew we were going to the East Bay for whatever it was next — it was at Oracle Arena, so I truly had NO IDEA what the heck we were seeing). So we get outside to find… a LIMO waiting for us. It was AMAZING. They had champagne and sparkling cider and it was SO super cush to go to the show that way.

When we got to Oracle Arena I could see no signage telling me what the show was. So, we walked up the hill towards the entrance and I see two words:

EDDIE IZZARD

I almost died on the spot. I started jumping up and down in excitement and joy. I mean, WOAH, I never thought in my life I’d get to see him — I hadn’t even known he was coming to the Bay Area — and B completely surprised me! We went inside and our seats were AMAZING, almost on the floor. He had his twitter feed showing on a big screen before the show and during intermission, which was great, because people were saying a lot of amazing things (peppered in between people who weren’t there saying hi or lamenting their absence, or people who’d seen the show trying to do “in” jokes, which was annoying as crap). I had a couple of tweets show up:

@eddieizzard I am so excited to be seeing you — my hub surprised me so I had no idea who we were seeing until just now. Best birthday EVER!
@eddieizzard If someone tweeted “drop your pants if you love Eddie” I think this place would be full of pale bottoms.

Then the show started, and it was about some of my favorite things ever: science, the beginning of religion, religion in general, and history. It was FANTASTIC. I was laughing hysterically (in general I do not laugh at shows/movies/comedy). He talked about Wikipedia a lot, which both amused me (when he said that it’s so very often incorrect) and irritated me (I hate Wikipedia), which lead me to the following tweet that was on the screen during intermission:

@eddieizzard is hilarious; this show is making me v. happy. However, Wikipedia is still full of shit and should never be used as a reference

During the second half of the show, a woman in our row was exceedingly drunk, to the point that she was getting up and yelling. The guy in front of her tried to calm her down, so she started yelling at him, and since he couldn’t get out because he was in the middle of the row, I went and got some security — at which point she started throwing crap at me. It was… special. Anyway, the rest of the show was great, and I’m still on Cloud 9 that Brandon managed to pull that off. :)

We got out to the limo and out of the arena super quick, thus missing all the traffic, and got back to the hotel to find that they’d sprinkled rose petals on the bed. Hee.

I slept almost through the night for the first time since K was around 3 months old. It was surreal. (During dinner and the show, Kristin had been sms’ing us to tell us how things were going, and sent us a photo to show that K was surviving just fine — in fact, she hardly cried at all!) I did, however, forget my pump, which led to Unfortunate Results the next morning (ow). That was part of the impetus for us to get home before noon (also, I missed my beeb!). We ate our delicious pastries for breakfast and came home to giant hugs from a baby who apparently only woke up once (for an hour) for her caregivers. Andrew and Kristin had a harder time with the bed-hogging dogs than they did with Katie!

So, overall, my birthday surprise was AMAZING, as is my incredible husband. I do not expect a Valentine’s Day present. :D

 

Rose petals, ooh la la!



Rose petals, ooh la la!

Originally uploaded by alibee09


 

Official-like Ritz photo



Official-like Ritz photo

Originally uploaded by alibee09