Metering Lights

I wonder what percentage of people partially or completely ignore the bay bridge metering lights?
Again today the car ahead of me stopped where they were supposed to, and then just went. The light hadn't turned green.

It's possible that they thought it turned green, or they were looking at the wrong lane's light. But to me both of those things indicate somebody who probably shouldn't be driving. I feel much safer thinking that they just feel entitled. But then why bother stopping at all? I think it's because to everybody else it makes them look like they're not blowing off the light. A more subtle act of entitlement in that they know they're not entitled and don't want everybody else to see that they think they are.

If only a couple people do this, it probably doesn't matter to much. It's when a higher percentage of people start doing this that it can affect the system. And there's really no way of getting caught. At least not until it becomes a large enough issue that "they" start figuring out how to enforce it.

Shoplifting

The other day I was standing in line at a Pete's and a guy walked in. I noticed him with about half my attention because he asked me to move. He was looking at some pre-packaged pounds of coffee that he couldn't get to because the line wove around the coffee display.

He looked at one pound, grabbed 3 or 4 more, and walked out. I'm guessing that maybe only a couple people noticed. None of the employees noticed because they were busy taking orders for the morning rush.

I wonder what this guy was going to do with this coffee he stole? Is there a way for him to make some money with it? I didn't notice him detailed enough to notice if he seemed homeless to me or not.

Times are tough, I guess.

It Isn't Teething, It's An Ear Infection

After another difficult evening, I finally took Maddie to the dr this morning. She has an ear infection and still has a really yuckie cold. Lots of congestion, her nose is like a water fountain, and occasional coughs. Her mood was much better today though.

They told me that they think she's either kicking the ear infection herself, or it's just started because it's small. They wrote me the prescription for the antibiotics, but asked that I wait a day or two and assess if I should give them at all at that time. Basically she said if Maddie seems to get worst, or has another fever give her the drugs.

I appreciate not over prescribing antibiotics, but my draw is to immediately give her to drugs to be done with this once and for all. It's the whole "best for me" over "best for society" as a whole debate. She has had a pretty decent day today. Lots of smiles and fun, and only a little fussier than normal. So I'm going to wait and see.

I have mastered hanging her car seat on the chin up bar. It's a great place to nap because she's sitting upright and she slept like that last night too. She still cries and screams when I do anything that requires her to lay down (changing clothes, changing diapers). And her naps have been good like this.

It Has To Be Teething Time

If this isn't teething, I'm not sure I'll be able to handle the real deal.

Maddie is a mess. She's so unhappy and full of tears. She's so obviously miserable and my once magical comforting powers seem to have disappeared as of late. Last night she was up most of the night. She would try to sleep, and then start writhing and shouting or talking. I could just reach over and rub her tummy a little bit and she'd settle again for another 10 minutes or so. I feel her pain.

Her nose is running like a faucet and she has an infrequent cough. She's sneezing a lot, and every time she does a great big river comes out of her nose. Even in the several hours that she did sleep last night, her nose was making that noise of having stuff in it and having air move forward and back across it.

My poor baby. I pulled out some toys that were in the freezer and the wet washcloth that was in the fridge. The washcloth was a hit. It entertained her for maybe half an hour and she was definitely munching on it. I hope her teething is over soon. I can't stand to see her like this.

Routines

Tonight I had an interesting experience.

We've started to sleep train, just a little bit. I'm not doing scheduled nap times, though I did think about it. I tried it once and it just didn't seem to work well. I think I'm more of the put her down for a nap when she's showing signs of being tired school of thought. From what I've read though, that's apparently too late. Oh well. I'll make a change if I think it's not working for us. What I am doing is following a consistent routine before putting her down for naps.

My husband and I take turns being the primary parent, and today was his day. It doesn't mean that I'm not around or interacting with my daughter. But it does mean that I can go out and run errands alone, or go take a nap without having to make sure he'll watch Maddie. In the same way, when it's my turn, my honeypot can go take his "monkey training classes" or do whatever he'd like without having to wonder if he'll be watching Maddie then. (He often works on the house - yeah!)

Today my honeypot was putting Maddie down for a nap and he just walked over to her crib and put her in it. I asked him to do the routine that we had set up for her naps and he did actually do it. It's an interesting issue because on the one hand I saw how tired she was and I can believe that she would have just gone straight to sleep. But on the other hand, the entire point is to create a consistent routine and have consistent cue's for her so that she knows what's going on. I feel like especially in the early days of implementing this nap routine, it's not a good idea to deviate. But I also understand that maybe the routine isn't necessary. It's hard to know what effect not being completely consistent in something like this really is. I'm pretty sure that the nap routine isn't probably being consistently implemented by our Nanny during the days, but I really don't know that.

The Stillness

When my daughter was first born and younger, she would only take "cat naps" during the day (naps lasting minutes up to 20 minutes), if she would sleep at all. I believe she was around 3 months old when she migrated into sleeping longer blocks of time during the day. She's always been a great night sleeper (except for all the wakups!). And it was around the same time that she dropped down to only requesting one night feeding. It was perfect for me, because I returned to work around that same time.

After she started sleeping longer blocks during the day, it took me a while to figure out that I could actually get something done and I didn't need to just sit somewhere and wait for her to wake up. I was very sleep deprived in the early days, and I would just watch the stillness and the world around me and enjoy the break.

Now that I have these 1 hour blocks or so, I get stuff done. Laundry, dishes, picking up. You know, the normal household stuff. Well, just now Maddie shouted in her sleep (she does this - it's really weird - probably worthy of another post). It's like she's having a bad dream or something because she's completely asleep when I go look at her. Anyway, she just had a couple shouts and she's still asleep. But I was thinking that she would wake up - even though she's probably got another 40 minutes or so. So I sat down and waited. Just like I used to when she only slept for minutes at a time. And I noticed the stillness again. The sounds of the traffic passing our house, the sound of the rain, the brilliance of the sun streaming through the windows, the loud hum of our refrigerator that's probably going to die soon. It's an interesting perspective on the world.

Car Window #5 Broken

I headed to my car to drive into work at the dark hour of about 6am. I unlocked the driver door and my attention was caught by my fastrack laying on the driver's seat. Surely I would have noticed sitting on that when I drove home from work yesterday? I'm usually really good at putting that back hidden away in the console. When I went to put it away, I noticed the cover to the console is missing - as is the parking meter change I kept in there. Oh crap, the stereo is gone too. How'd they get in here? Oh, the back window is smashed out. Bummer. This time it happened about half a block from our home.

When I lived in the Mission of SF I had my car window smashed out 3 times. It might have been 4. I lose track. It was a different car then. And most of the time folks had the courtesy of smashing the triangle window which is much cheaper to fix than a rolling window. Only one of those included a stereo being taken because I never replaced it in that car. Once or twice my car was actually unlocked because I stopped locking it. I didn't keep anything in it and one of the locks would sit higher than the others when it was locked. I figured that maybe somebody thought it was unlocked and then got irritated when it wasn't and smash the window. There were a fair amount of homeless folks that lived on Cesar Chavez, which is where I usually was able to park my car.

The last time I had my car window smashed out while I was parked on the street at MacArthur BART station while dating my honey pot. All the cars parked along that street had their window smashed out, so it wasn't specific to the car. Though it was still annoying. Again, no stereo.

Do you think they had any remorse when they noticed the baby car seat sitting under all the glass this time? Atleast they didn't steal that. (F**kers!)

Maddie's First Plane Trip!

We just got back last night from CO. We were there a little shy of a week and it was Maddie's first plane trip. The trip went remarkably well except for one main rough spot.

On the flight there Maddie slept on the empty plane seat for some of the flight and just played with us for the rest of the time. She didn't make any negative noise. (She's still a chatter box!) On the flight back she had a couple small rough periods lasting maybe a minute or two, but otherwise had excellent behavior. Her Dad was even able to get her to lie down and take a nap on his lap. Impressive!

The only real rough spot we had was the fact that except for that extra short nap on the plane there, she didn't sleep the first day. Then she was so over tired that she was weirdly cranky even into the next day. She would scream when you would just lay her on her back (which makes it difficult to change her clothes or her diaper). So I finally reached a point, after saying several times - "I've never seen her like this" where I forced her to nap. I did the same 5 minute check in thing I had done before and she eventually went down. It was painful because it wasn't just a couple minutes of unhappy behavior. I'm sure it was much more difficult being in a new place with new smells. But she did great and once she started sleeping again, she was again the fantastic happy baby that we all love. (We love the cranky one too - we just prefer the fantastic happy one!)

Today when I put her down for her nap, she went down with no protests and fell asleep right away. It was nice. I took this time to write this post and to write out her nap winddown routine. I'm going to work with our Nanny to get her napping better with her too because she usually doesn't sleep too much with her.

Madelyn is Eating Solid Foods

We start feeding Maddie solid foods at the end of December. The 28th, I believe.

She really likes eating. I guess I was expecting it to be challenging to get a baby to eat. But not with her. She's very excited to eat. And I'm impressed with how much she eats in a sitting.

So far she's eaten sweet potato, pear, rice cereal, avocado and squash.

In this picture we were eating rice cereal.

Sleep Training?

It used to be that Maddie would show signs of tiredness and we would wind down some and then put her down mostly awake.

Recently, she's started resisting sleep. She cries if we put her down to sleep and sounds like we're torturing her. So of course we pick her back up and either give up if it's a nap or try again later. Also, she usually doesn't sleep much with her Nanny during the day which means she can be very fussy in the few hours each night that I get to see her. This is not ideal.

I've been reading quite a bit about sleep and about how about this age they get separation anxiety and still don't have object permanence. So they don't want to be away from you (in their crib before they fall asleep) and they don't actually know that you haven't disappeared when they can't see you. It's kind of weird reality to exist in if you think about it. One of the other things I've run across is how bad it is for kids to not really sleep enough. It affects all sorts of things, not to mention that they're kind of fussy and short fused.

A couple days ago I put Maddie down for a nap and she was clearly tired. She cried and was so upset. I tried to comfort her without picking her up and then I did pick her up and tried winding her down again. That was terrible and didn't work at all. It just made her cry more when I did put her down. My honey pot was around and he didn't like that she was upset and picked her up and basically did the same things. Then he had a class to go to and left me with her after it being an hour or so of this terrible situation. So I decided to try some of the stuff I've read in this pretty decent sleep book.

I wound her down again, explaining what we were doing. Then I put her in her crib and left the room knowing that I would check in every 5 minutes. That was a pretty terrible 5 minutes. I went to check in with her and left again and she was asleep one minute later. 6 minutes total.

Today, we also had some rough naps. I guess rough is relative when I have an associate that said their baby cried for 90 minutes the first time. I've started doing some of the things in there which basically equate to sleep training. I've only done it for naps. Basically I wind her down and then put her in her crib and just let her cry. I check in every 5 minutes. The first time I did this she sounded so upset for several minutes, but she did go to sleep within 6 minutes.

We've Been Skunked. Twice.

In the past week or two Stella has had some interactions with skunks. The first time it was bad, but I rubbed her down with some anti skunk stuff and called it good. I think she got farther away before she got sprayed.

This time she got nailed. She was dripping wet all through her chest. Of course this happens in the middle of the night. Last night, I had these weird dreams about burnt food and garbage.

Last time I got this skunk smell remover and used a wash cloth and did the best that I could. She still stunk, but not as bad as she had before. I assumed it would wear off over time.

This time, it was so bad. I did what the bottle said to do. I got her super saturated with that stuff, let it dry (sort of) and then rinsed her off. She was not happy about that at all. I don't think I've ever seen her wet, this wet, in the 9 years that I've had her. She was crying and screaming. It sounded like we were torturing her. And to her, we probably were.

I wish she was smart enough to realize that if she tangos with skunks, she might get a bath. But I'm guessing it was too far after her getting sprayed to make that bath association.

Check out how small she is all wet. She's like a completely different cat.

Grow Grow Grow

Maddie is growing up so fast!
She can roll over with some prompting. She can strongly stand on her feet. And in the past week or so she's gotten so that she can hold on to things (us, her locked stroller) and keep herself standing up. It's pretty amazing.

Her chicken wing has come back, this time she does it with her arm straight. So she ends up beating on whatever is in front of her with her flopping left arm. Usually she does this when she's drinking from her bottle. I haven't seen her do it with her left arm yet.

She still has a single night feeding, which we will begin weaning her from when we get back from our CO trip next week. Assuming that goes ok, we're going to start the process of moving her out of our bed and into her own crib in our room. I'm hoping that these changes go well and aren't too traumatic for her and/or us.

We started solid foods last week. So far she's eaten sweet potato, pear, avocado and rice cereal. She seems to be enjoying it.

She's such a happy baby. I would hate to spoil that. She smiles often and goes to sleep and takes naps relatively painlessly. She's getting so much smarter and she seems to understand so much more. And it takes quite a bit more effort to entertain her than it used to.

She babbles so much. I think she's really taken it up a notch in the past week or so. She's always been kind of vocal. I suppose some of that has to do with all of us talking to her all the time.

I think we really have done a good job with her, and that we got very lucky with our Nanny. I think that it's the combination of our good care that has gotten her to where she is now. Thank you Clelia!