from the vein

Today I finally got Charli's bloodtest done. After her one year checkup, we were supposed to get a bloodtest to check lead levels and some other stuff, so we went right over to the lab to get it done. Unfortunately, they said we couldn't do it then, because it was too close to Thanksgiving and they wouldn't be able to get the blood to the place that does the analysis before the holiday, and after that the blood would be too old for the test. I knew that meant we were never going to get around to it, but what can you do? So we went home.

As expected, we never could quite make it back to the lab until recently, when it was almost time for Charli's 15 month checkup. Once I had relocated the lab test request form, I realized we actually could take Charli to the office close to us, which has a lab too, rather than going all the way across town to the one we were at before. Also, the lab was open on the weekend! How convenient! So we went last Saturday, after I called to make sure the lab was open and there was no line or anything. We got there, and were basically told that they don't do the lead test on Saturdays either, fresh blood required for test not good on weekend takes too long to submit come back on monday. Rargh. I had even mentioned the tests Charli was supposed to have to the person I spoke to on the phone, but she was just an answering service and couldn't really be expected to know the intracacies of all the tests. So we went home again.

Third time's the charm. Carolina had to come with me since Brian was at work, to hang out with Charli while I signed forms and got insurance cards xeroxed. They actually take the blood out of the vein, so I had to hold Charli in my lap (with pacifier and stuffed animal, too) while they dug around in her arm a bit. She was really great - she cried, but it was more of a low cry of pain than the terrified screaming she does at the doctor's office. I wonder if she would be better with the shots if they let me hold her for that, too, rather than stretching her out on the table?

Today is also the day of Charli's first "run up to Sam and hug her" incident. Sam was thrilled. :)

portland wrap

Well, we've made it back home. The drive back was a thousand times better than the drive out, but not at all what we had planned. Here comes a super long post...

On Sunday, we met for breakfast with my cousin Tanya, her husband Scott, and their daughter Maddy, who is 4 months older than Charli, at the Original Pancake House. Sam, Kim, and Brent have all been to the Original Pancake House before, and it was practically all they could talk about once we had scheduled the breakfast: "I can't WAIT to have a Yang family breakfast at the Original Pancake House! It's going to be AWESOME!" and stuff like that. We had to wait an hour for a large table like we had, but once we were seated, it was indeed quite awesome. The apple pancake was delicious (Charli loved it), and the omelettes were amazing - very different from the standard omelettes you get everywhere else. They are super fluffy and as big as your head (in addition to being delicious); I guess they bake them for part of the time, too. The wait staff were super friendly also, and really nice about getting us extra stuff for the kids. Even so, Charli was still fussy and not very keen on being at a restaurant, but what can you do.

After breakfast we came back to the hotel, and Kim and Brent left for their flight. Mom and Dad weren't leaving for a few more hours, so we hung around the hotel rooms for a while, hoping in vain that Charli would take a nap. She didn't, but she was super cute, so it was OK. She dressed up in my hat and Mom's belt, and learned to put chapstick on.

Once we'd given up on Charli's nap, we decided we might as well get outside, so we hunted up a playground and took Charli there. It was cute, and Charli had fun. It was right downtown by Powell's Bookstore, which was one of the places that Sam and I particularly wanted to go, but we didn't make it there. From the playground, we had to go straight to the airport to drop off Mom and Dad, and after that, Charli was finally ready for a nap.

While Charli napped, we tried to figure out what we were going to do on Monday. First we thought we would go to the Original Pancake House for breakfast again, but they are closed on Mondays. So Kim and Brent suggested another restaurant, Screen Door, for brunch, but they are closed on Mondays too. I also looked into the kids' museum in Portland - we could get in free with our membership to the one down here, but it's closed on Mondays. Don't go to Portland on a Monday - it's closed.

Instead we decided to try Screen Door for dinner. It was very highly rated on Yelp, so we left as soon as Charli woke up from her nap, so we could try to get there before they opened. We didn't make it - we got there about 15 minutes after they opened, and it was full and the line was about 12 people deep, so we decided to go to our backup, The Observatory. It was a good thing we did, too. The Observatory was empty and spacious, and Charli was a complete disaster. She wouldn't eat with us, wouldn't sit in her chair, wouldn't sit in our laps... She just wanted to walk around holding some possession of hers and crying. Brian and I took turns eating dinner while the other tried to keep her from ruining everyone else's dinner (fortunately only 2 or 3 other tables). Sam said even so, she heard all the other tables talking about how they don't want kids... Once we'd finished our dinner (including the most delicious tomato soup ever) and gone back to the hotel, Charli was in a great mood again. I guess she just really wanted to run around.

Then we had a new experience. Since everyone else was gone, we only had the one hotel room, with Charli's crib in it. The previous night, we had adjoining rooms with my parents, and we put Charli to bed in one room and hung out in the adjoining room. This time, we had to put Charli down in the room while we stayed in it. We have never had to do this before - we have always been able to leave the room when we put Charli down, even if we have to go back in when we go to sleep. Putting Charli to bed and not leaving the room DOES NOT WORK. We tried blocking her from seeing anyone and only doing quiet things, like reading and typing and iPhone surfing, but that didn't work. Then I tried walking with her a little and putting her down again, and that didn't work. Then we let her run around a little bit more, hoping she would get tired, but she didn't. Then we tried putting her back in the crib and turning out most of the lights and putting the coat rack in between us and the crib, and that also didn't work. Sam gave up on reading and went to take a shower, so we decided we might as well go to bed (Charli drove us to sleep), turned out all the lights and hoped Charli would go to sleep. She didn't. So we tried the ultimate experiment and brought Charli to bed with us, for the first time since I don't even know when, like I always want to do. Well, I don't want to anymore. Charli bounced in bed and climbed on us and flopped around and turned upside down and kicked us in the face and turned right side up and kicked us in the ribs and hit us with her bear and her elbows and tickled us and stuck her fingers in our ears for about an hour. I considered many options: 1) try to smother her just until she passed out, not until she was dead; 2) put her crib in the bathroom; 3) go down to the front desk and ask if the room next to us was taken, and if not, beg to put the crib in there and swear that we won't use anything else in that room... I finally decided that we would put Charli up for adoption, and having made that decision, was able to get up, walk Charli around a little bit more, and put her in the crib, where she finally went to sleep around 1am.

Monday morning, we decided we would just leave. We packed up, had some hotel bagels, and left around 11. Charli fell asleep shortly, and we decided we would just drive until she woke up. We completely forgot to go to Powell's Bookstore. While we were driving, Brian actually thought to look ahead at the weather conditions, which was smart, because along I-5 there was an area where chains were required on all vehicles, which we would be hitting sometime very late at night. We decided to detour to 101 and come down the coast instead. No snow there!

We stopped in North Bend at 2pm for breakfast/lunch at the Pancake Mill, which turned out to be very much like the Original Pancake House, except open on Mondays. They had apple pancakes, and Dutch babies, and really nice wait staff... Charli really liked my creamed chicken crepes, and was better than she had been all weekend. I considered keeping her. Then we took her to a park in Coos Bay and let her run around until she was tired, which took til about 5pm, and then we took off again. She slept/napped for another 5 hours, we stopped at a McDonalds with an outdoor playground that was wet and cold and closed and let Charli run around the restaurant for an hour, and then we drove another 4 hours home, arriving around 4:30am. Our detour made it another 12 hour drive (excluding stops), but at least there was no difficult weather. And no barf.

This morning, Brian got up to let Carolina in and explain to her that it had been a very late night, and she could just hang out until Charli got up. Charli slept til 10, woke up happy, and has been good ever since. We're totally keeping her.

wedding

OK, Charli has successfully attended her first wedding! No last minute change in plans this time. Kim's friend, Shilpa, and her SO Ben (they got engaged in SF last Valentine's Day, I think) got married in a lovely modified (read: abbreviated) Hindu ceremony, during which Kim had all kinds of important duties:

Looking nice

Being decoratedThrowing rose petals

Brian and I only saw bits and pieces of it, because Charli was fussy and unwilling to sit still, so we spent a lot of time letting her run around and trying to keep her out of trouble. This unfortunately means fewer pictures got taken, and in this case, it means none of them are great. So here are some OK pictures of Charli in her wedding attending finery.


The ceremony was followed by a delicious dinner, again interrupted by much running around after Charli. I don't know what happened after that, because my wheels fell off and I had to come back to the hotel room and go to bed (and it was time for Charli to go to bed anyway). Mom and Brian came with me - we didn't even make it to the cutting of the cake. Sam and Dad and Kim and Brent did, though, and Kim and Brent even made it to all the fun dancing, and everyone thought the wedding was great.

And although you can't tell from this post, here are the actual focal points of the wedding, Shilpa and Ben. :) Kim's got some better pictures on her blog here.

Congratulations, Ben and Shilpa!

road trip - blarg!

This weekend, one of Kim's longtime friends is getting married in Portland, and Kim's in the wedding party and we (me, Brian, Sam, Mom, Dad) were all invited, so we decided to go. I have Monday off, so we thought we'd make a long weekend of it, and have a mini vacation. We also thought, Portland's just right up in Oregon, we'll drive! It's only 10 hours, we'll drive at night so Charli will sleep the whole way.

Ha! This was the most disastrous road trip I've ever had. We actually got underway almost on time - a little after 7pm. Nina brought Charli home at 6pm, we gave her a little bit of food and let her run around a bit while we finished packing the car, and we were off (with a minor delay when I remembered I hadn't printed out any maps and we didn't know where our hotel was).

So, 635 miles! Google said 10 hrs, which sounded pretty reasonable. And we were off. There were three major disasters to this roadtrip:

1) The weather. Didn't account for that. It was fine for a couple of hours at the beginning (which included all kinds of traffic), and fine for a couple of hours at the end, and for the rest of the time, if it wasn't raining, it was snowing. We actually went through 2 areas where chains were mandatory for trucks and cars with trailers (Brian and I completely forgot I-5 goes through mountains. But that won't happen again). Our 10 hour drive took about 12 hours.

2) Charli barfed. I mean, like, EVERYWHERE. This picture makes it look not so bad, but it's after many wet wipes and besides, pictures never look as bad as it looks live. We theorize I made her carsick by trying to build a little tent over her to block out all the passing headlights and such, but whatever it was, she was sleeping and every now and then she'd wake up and cry for a few seconds, and then go back to sleep (or back to quiet, anyway). Sam was in back with her, and after a few hours, she said "Charli stinks." So we pulled into a closed gas station to change her, and when the lights came on, that's when we realized that she had barfed all over, she was all wet, it was all over her bear and her carseat and her pajamas, and it was all red with black bits in it so of course I was freaking out until Sam and Brian explained that she'd been eating blackberries. So we had to hang out at the gas station for a while, changing Charli's pajamas and cleaning off what we could of her bear and the carseat. Thank god I brought a TON of wet wipes. This was around 1:30am, after which Charli didn't go back to sleep for a while. She didn't really sleep very well at all - she woke up too easily and then was too distracted to go back to sleep. She finally got really tired and slept for about the last hour of the drive.

3) Berries. We took a lot of berries with us - as in, a Costco sized thing of blueberries and a Costco sized thing of blackberries. The Costco things didn't fit in our little cooler, so we put them into a big ziploc bag. It was a LOT of berries. Then we ate some of them, and when I went to put them away, the bag hadn't been closed properly, and berries (and smooshed berry juice) spilled out ALL OVER THE BACK OF THE CAR. Probably about 1/2 the bag. Well, I said a 5 dollar word in front of Charli, and I maintain that I should be able to take money out of the swear jar for all the words that I wanted to say, and DESERVED to say, and didn't. That was probably around 4:30am. I spent the next long period of time looking for berries in our cargo and using up a ton more wet wipes.

Those were our three disasters. To offset them, we did have some extremely fortunate things as well. For starters, I got a set of brand new tires the day before we left. My previous set were completely bald, and given the weather that we drove through, the new tires were vital. I can't even imagine what could have happened to us if we went through all that on my old tires. Also, while I was upstairs printing out the maps and Brian and Sam were in the garage just waiting around, Brian just happened to throw our tire chains in the trunk, since they were there and he was there. So when we got to the place where they were stopping every single car on the road to make sure they were carrying chains, we got to go right through. I am regarding Brian in awe again right now, as I type this. Sam brought a good flashlight. This is extremely important if you're going to be digging around your luggage looking for smashed blackberries. We brought a TON of wet wipes. We could probably have the same disasters on the way home, and we wouldn't run out (except for cleaning up the mess after I killed myself). Although Charli didn't sleep well, she didn't fuss much either, which is saying a lot for a 12 hour ride.

We finally got to our hotel a little after 7am, where we have an adjoining room with my parents. Mom came right over and took Charli, and Brian, Sam and I took a 2 hour nap. Charli did not. Then I woke everyone up, and we tried to go out to breakfast at the hotel restaurant, which didn't go so well because that's where Charli finally tried to pass out, which necessitated my coming back early and putting her to bed.

Now Charli is napping, and Brian is cleaning "caked on filth muck" off the carseat bits. At least this hotel has free wireless, so you can all hear about our travails.

dancing queen

Charli still loves dancing to that noisy plastic piano, but now that she stands up so well, she dances differently. Check it out!



and this one:



For 5 minutes after this, Charli kept picking up her piano and moving it around, then playing it for a little bit, then picking it up and moving it around. She can barely carry it, but she moved it over and over again. Sam explained to me: Charli was practicing keeping her piano away from Bella. Apparently while Bella was over today, she wanted to play with the piano, or maybe just look at it, but Charli wasn't having any of it. Every time Bella wanted to touch the piano, Charli would move the piano to her other side, so she was between Bella and the piano. She hadn't figured out how to get a good grip on the piano yet, so she couldn't just carry it off (she's figured it out now). Bella isn't quite walking yet, so Charli was able to keep her stuff out of reach - but she is going to be in a real pickle when Bella figures out her feet!

Charli completely understands the word "bunny", and it makes her happy.



Charli also understands milk, book, upstairs, come here, eat (in German also!), and probably a host of other things that I don't give her credit for. She doesn't show any comprehension of the word "no", yet somehow I feel certain she actually DOES understand. She occasionally signs "milk" and "more", but this morning she was signing "more" and not apparently meaning "more", which is not so helpful. She very emphatically shakes her head when she doesn't want you to feed her something, but 2 seconds later she might be fine with eating it, so that's not very helpful either. As a matter of fact, it's distinctly unhelpful, since whatever you're trying to feed her at the time might go flying.

charli understood me!

Tonight as I was putting Charli to bed, she listened to me and completely understood. She was carrying her bunny and went to sit down and play with the doorstop. I said, "Are you ready for your milk?" and she got up and started walking over to me. I said, "Do you want your bunny?" and she stopped, turned around and looked for her bunny, and then walked back, picked it up, and turned to look at me again. I said, "Bring it with you," and she came over and followed me to the chair and we had milk. It was awesome!

Other Charli developments:
Charli really loves her bunny from Kelly and her Northwestern bear (I think that was from... Diltch?). She carries them around (usually one at a time, but occasionally together), wants to take them places, and sleeps with them.

Charli likes putting things on her head and around her neck. She has a favorite hat that she always tries to put on her head, but it's a little small so it just sits on top of her head, and then she tilts it off, laughs, and tries to put it on again. Unfortunately, this hat is not it, but it's bigger and stays on when she puts it on - which she does, so I don't mind. Here we're getting ready to go to the farmer's market, and she's put the carrier around her neck...

She's also very into putting her shoes on her hands and clapping them together.

Charli says "daddee" very clearly, but I'm not sure if she's really talking about Brian when she does it. However, she does run to him and bury her head in his chest and say "dadadadada" very sadly whenever I take something away from her, and she runs to me and says "mamamamama" very pathetically whenever Brian doesn't do what she wants.

I've been trying very halfheartedly to sign with Charli, and in response she's kind of halfheartedly gotten "more" and "milk". However, I just read another mom's blog, and her son is a couple of months older than Charli and can sign like 30 words, so I'm really going to try to step this up. I would love to feel like Charli is trying to communicate with us in some way other than visible frustration.

Charli only likes books with pictures. This is apparent based on these pictures, in which you can see Charli snuggling down to read with Sam, and then realizing she's been completely gypped.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly to me, Charli has gotten totally affectionate. When I come to pick her up at the sharecare, or I come downstairs after she hasn't seen me for a while, I kneel down on the floor and say "Charli! Come give mommy a hug!" and Charli runs up to me and gives me a big snuggle! It's awesome! And when I put her to bed, I used to give her her bottle and rock her a little bit, and she always used to struggle and try to get down until I'd take her over to her crib, and then she'd reach for her crib until I put her down (at which point she'd go to bed very well, so I can't really complain). Now, she loves to snuggle with me. We have the bottle, rock in the chair for a little bit, brush her teeth, rock in the chair a little more, maybe sing a lullaby or read a book or not, and she snuggles me the whole time. A few times we've even fallen asleep together, which she NEVER does anymore. Then I stand up to put her in the crib, she gives me a last squeeze, I put her down and she doesn't make a peep when I leave. This has been going on for a few weeks now. I could stay down there all night. It's only duty that makes me leave - the doctor and all the sleep books and articles say that your child needs to be able to put herself to sleep without you ("and believe me, you'll be happy later!"), and I can see the reasoning behind that and agree with it. If I didn't think Charli actually sleeps better in her own room, though, I would throw all caution to the wind, and go to sleep with Charli every night in our bed.

injury prone weekend

Charli's been having a tough weekend.

Yesterday morning, after sleeping REALLY late (til 9:30! that's 2 hours later than usual!), she got up in a terrific mood. We were hanging out in her room, and Brian went upstairs to start getting her breakfast ready, and I was picking out her clothes for the day, and Charli was wandering around, as she is wont to do. Well, she wandered up the stairs a little ways, I guess, and remember what I said about her wanting to come down stairs facing forwards? I can't say exactly what happened, but I'm assuming she went up a couple of stairs, and turned around and tried to come down. I can't see the stairs from inside Charli's room, but they end right next to her door. All I saw was Charli upside down on her head and rolling onto her back. It was totally quiet, as if she'd just executed a very smooth forward roll, which is why I think she was only two steps up - no bumps or thumps. A moment later it got noisy... It was so smooth I don't think she could have hurt herself, but it definitely scared her. Maybe she'll stop doing it. Is that too much to hope?

After that, she had a terrific day. 2 extra hours of sleep in the morning make Charli an angel all day long, even with only a very short nap. We went to the farmer's market in the morning, then we looked at some houses on sale just for the fun of it, stopped at the Bernal Heights playground because it was right there... Charli was great, even though we hadn't brought her a snack or anything to drink (yes, we suck, we didn't think we were going to make all those stops). Then we came home and gave her some lunch and she took a VERY short nap but was still in a great mood, so we tried to go out to early dinner at Zuni, but we weren't early enough, so we tried somewhere else, and we weren't early enough for there either, so we ended up getting takeout gyros at Hayes & Kebab, and stopping for comic books on the way home! It was a beautiful evening. (Aside: You know, I've never met a gyro I didn't like... until last night. I always thought gyros were sort of like hummus, hot chocolate, cookies, etc. Even the bad ones are pretty good. But my gyro last night was dry, hard, tasteless, and gristly. I TRIED to eat it, but only made it through about half. It was terrible. The greek salad was fine, though, and the bread they give out is pretty tasty.)



This morning Charli got up at her normal time, and was very fussy. We were sitting in front of her mirror, and she stood up, tripped over my leg, fell down and bashed her head on the mirror. Wow, did she not like that. It was probably her most traumatic moment (other than shots) since I let her fall off the bed back in July (by my judgement of trauma, anyway. There have certainly been other times when she's cried as loud and/or as long, but since I don't know why she's doing it, or think it's trivial, it doesn't rate high on my trauma meter. Maybe all those things are equally traumatic at this point, and that's why babies cry so much).

After Charli ate her breakfast not well at all, we went to Mission Beach Cafe where she ate not well at all again. But she had great fun walking home, and is starting to enjoy playing chase.



Now she's in the middle of a really long nap, which affords me a lot of time to make blog posts. :)

charli said

"doggie" today. At a doggie. With encouragement, of course, but still.