Daya

It may be Lauren's first word. Not "aBOOah!" which she's been shouting for a few months now but which can mean anything she wants. On Monday she said "Daya" while looking at Ryan. A few times since then she has been babbling "dah dah dah" or "dee dee dee" but no "Daya" again, and no "Da Dee" together.

On Friday she'll be 8 months old. She weighs approx. 23 pounds, 11 oz (weight the weekend before last but while wearing clothes & diaper) and is about 28 1/2 inches long. Her doctor didn't want to measure her today but just consulted her chart and said that she is about the average of what a 12 month old would be, so that's her height. I have tried to measure her myself with a tape measure, but the wiggle factor interferes.

Lauren knows some of her colors, and can point to red, yellow, green, and blue BUT the items from which she is choosing have to be more or less equal, other than color. For example if you ask her to pick yellow, and show her a boring yellow shirt and a red shiny toy, she will go for the shiny object no matter the color. But if you show her legos that are all the same, she can pick out the right color. I said she knows some of her colors. Ask her for "sage" or "mauve" and she cannot tell them.

She is crawling a lot these days, backwards and sideways. She rolls over, sits up and still loves her bathtime. In fact, when she tried to crawl forward, she does this by trying to "swim" forward. She lies flat on her stomach and flaps her arms like she can move the air to go straight ahead. It's really funny to watch. It works for her in the bathtub, so she's trying to make it happen on land.

One place is which she's not "advanced" is in hair growing. She still has only an inch or two of light duck fuzz on her head, necessitating wearing hat. She likes to pull hats off, and a few weeks ago we lost a hat at the park that way. A really nice yellow lined velour bucket hat that looked adorable and was one of a kind made my some lady who sells at farmers' market. Wah! Oh well, I'm sure this is the first of many pretty things she will lose in her lifetime if she takes after Mommy.

Bad Car Karma, part 3 (the horror continues)

That picture pretty much sums up what the car's been up to lately.

On Wednesday on the way down to San Diego in the BMW, a large white truck loaded with crap passed us on the right driving recklessly. As it did so, a baby seat went flying out of the back (no, no baby in it!) and bounced up and under our car, knocking off part of the front bumper, the front license plate, and taking out the auxillary fan. We pulled over right away but couldn't get the license info from the truck. Ryan was driving and was understandably shaken. Good thing, he didn't veer into the cars on either side of us, and kept his cool. What an ass some guy was to have his truck so craptastically loaded and to cut us off like that. Luckily our car was driveable and my dad and Peter fixed it for us (yet again) but sheesh, we cannot catch a break with this car!

overheard in West LA outside bookstore:

Man to woman: "So what am I supposed to say to them? My son wanted to wear a condom and your daughter didn't?!"

anyone know how...

to get pink liquid amoxicyllin stains out of baby clothes?

oh and lauren has her first ever diaper rash. :( also probably from the medicine. good thing i received about 5 tubes of diaper rash medicine as shower gifts! and was hoping never to have to use any of them. oh well. it's relatively minor, but she didn't like it when i was changing her, and made the ODDEST little laugh/cough/cry noise. i thought she had hiccups. but no, she was reacting with wild sadness to the diaper rash pain when she was being wiped. poor little girl.

overwhelming

today is one of those days where i am feeling overwhelmed. i am into this project at work which is requiring a ton of focus and quiet uninterupted time to take apart some CSS code and rework it. it's a long boring technical story, but the gist of it is that i inherited a giantic website which the person created 3 years ago (and it still has not been launched!) in dreamweaver using fireworks rollover buttons which no longer work today if viewed on a mac in safari. so i have to recreate the whole nav structure and since my boss liked the look of the old one, i'm trying to keep it the same color, font, style, etc. and also make sure it's compatible in all browsers. it's a huge site with hundreds of files--granted, some of them are image files and web photo albums, etc., but still it's a lot to keep track of and a lot of places where weird little errors crop up. so there you have it, folks, that's my day job. or should i say, my middle of the night or whenever i can squeeze in time, job.

and you know, working at home to answer emails, work with a database and coordinate events (the other former part of my job until it went to just the technical stuff) was a breeze, fairly easy to do in between baby things and dog walking and all of the rest. but i cannot seem to get into this stuff. i walk around all the time with that feeling like when you have to write a term paper in 2 hours. and there is no one at work that can help me, no one knows how to do these things, and in fact the person who created the web site was unaware of things like browser compatibility and the need to minimize image files for ADA compliance. There are tons of huge sized images that need to be optimized, and bad file naming structures, etc. my friend H. is going to help me with some of it this weekend but he is doing it to be nice, he doesn't work with me or get paid to do it.

Anyway, it's overwhelming and it makes my head hurt and the worst part is that my inability to finish this stuff is my own fault. i have a wonderful supportive boss who will give me whatever software, hardware, etc. that i need. i have figured out more complicated things on my own before, i can teachd myself this CSS stuff if given enough time. what i lack is the mental focus, the alert state of mind and the distraction-free place to do everything.

Technical note; read this guy's blog entry for the Fireworks rollover buttons problem i was talking about. he used to work for Macromedia and he's the guy who created the program's feature and he recommends against using it!

Antibiotic children

Today was kind of a shitty day. But before I get to that, let me thank all of you who have left comments. I will have to try the food Jax & Kel recommended, and it is interesting to see people's results on the quizzes.

This morning Lauren was screaming and crying when she tried to take her nap. This is very unlike her, so I felt instinctively something was wrong. We took her to the doctor and she has an ear infection. :( She's on antibiotics and Jake is, too.

After we dropped off her prescription at the pharmacy, we went to Tuesday morning to buy wrapping paper and I had a little incident. This happens to me about once every 2 or 3 years-I get this weird tunnel vision thing and start seeing spots. If i'm reading a number, say "2489", if i focus on the 24, then i can't read the 89, and vice versa. If I close my eyes, it's mostly okay. So I have to get to a dark room and lie down and try to sleep. Last time it happened, Jenna came over and took me to the ER but by the time I finally saw a doctor, the symptoms had gone away. Saw an opthamolist who thought it was either stress related or an occular migraine. I was not under stress either time, and in the times in my life when I have been under a lot of stress, nothing happened to me physiologically that was worth seeking medical attention.

Anyway, Ryan dropped me & Lauren off at home and then went to the pharmacy to pick up Lauren's first ever prescription, which did not go well because they could not find her in the HealthNet system. Ryan called and they did not have a record of her in their system, but he had added her in April. So he had to pay full price for the prescription, which wasn't too bad, but made us worry that all these months, she had not been covered under medical insurance and we would have to reimburse the pediatrician's office. Because he thought he would worry about it all weekend, Ryan drove back to his office tonight and found the fax confirmation page from the form he sent months ago adding her to his insurance. Now on Monday he'll call his HR office and raise hell.

Ballerina girl

Lauren's got food issues. Specifically, she doesn't like to eat. She will nurse every couple hours and she's never refused milk but rice cereal has zero appeal. She does take a couple of bites to be polite but her heart is not in it. I was given the advice to forget what the books say about nursing first, and give it to her when she's really hungry. So last night we tried that. No interest. I was also told to try some bananas because they will usually like that. Nope. She tried a bit to be polite and gave me the most confused and horrified look, like "WHAT is this crap?!". I tried mixing it with rice cereal and it was like that poisoned the taste of the cereal, which before she was just tolerating, and now she was loathing. I am not sure what to do, keep trying to give her bananas every day for 5 days to make sure she's not allergic? And how would we even know, given that she spits out 99% instead of ingesting it?

Oh and the ballerina girl subject line was meant ironically. She's still off the charts for weight, although all from milk, and although her height is up there too. But she's not exactly wasting away!

Jake wet the bed

$462.85 to find out that Jake probably has a bladder infection. He has been wetting the bed a little bit each night. Luckily, he no longer sleeps with us, he is on his Jakey bed. It only happens when he's deeply asleep. Ryan took him to the vet yesterday and they did x-rays to rule out large stones, checked his prostate (fine) and did lab work on his urine for crystals (normal). They could have done another $140 test on his urine to see if he had a urinary tract infection but they decided to just give him the $50 medication anyway, since the lab test takes over 1 week to get back and it would cost more than the medicine. So we're all hoping that's all it is. If it doesn't clear up, then he has to go back for a $400 ultrasound to see if he has smaller stones that the x-ray didn't pick up. Sad day when you're hoping your dog has a UTI, but we are, considering the alternatives.

Again, I recommend anyone getting a dog to get pet insurance.

someone else do this test too so i know if it's accurate or coincidence

You Are Likely a First Born

At your darkest moments, you feel guilty. At work and school, you do best when you're researching. When you love someone, you tend to agree with them often. In friendship, you are considerate and compromising. Your ideal careers are: business, research, counseling, promotion, and speaking. You will leave your mark on the world with discoveries, new information, and teaching people to dream.

The Birth Order Predictor

Vote Yes on No

Today is election day. I have no strong opinions for this ballot. But I am considering automatically voting "no" for every candidate or proposition where I received a phone call "urging" my support. We probably got about 5 phone calls which seemed to all occur as I was trying to put Lauren down for a nap, or just got through to a friend on the other line, or stirring something hot on the stove. And I don't give out my # very much, and pay extra for it to be non-listed. I am on every do-not-call list known. In contrast, my parents got about 5 calls per day.

(Note, similarly, I hate getting menus on my doorstep and refused to patronize restaurants who litter, on the theory that if their food was any good, they would not need to send guys with backpacks out into the neighborhood to leave menus. Also, the menus tell robbers when people are out of town.)

I didn't get his permission or anything, but here's an email my dad sent about one recent call he received:

With 24 hours before the election, the political phone calls are coming in at a hectic pace and are getting even more bizarre.

Besides the hundreds of candidates for local offices, there are 13 propositions on the Nov. 7 ballot in California...everything from alternative energy to a huge cigarette tax.

The state assembly and senate don't actually make any decisions in California, they put everything on the ballot for the voters to decide. In California, people do all they can to avoid confrontation. We think it may be that they don't want to offend anyone by casting a vote that someone would not like.

To date we have received calls from Rudy Giuliani, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael J. Fox, Bill Clinton, an elementary teacher endorsing a community college board candidate, the wife of a candidate obviously intent on keeping him gainfully employed or at least out of the house and a myriad of other, lesser movie stars and politicians.

All have been recordings until this morning.

An elderly man called me while I was in bed trying to shake the flu.

He was calling on behalf of the Women's Political Group, or so he said, and he wanted me to vote against Prop. 87, the state alternative energy initiative.

Because I thought it was a recording, I made the mistake of asking him a question. That led to a half-hour conversation during which he asked how everything was down there in Georgia. I had to explain to him that he called me in California about a California proposition. He said that he couldn't be expected to keep track of these things because he was in Illinois.

He did not have a good answer to why he was calling on behalf of the Women's Political Group and I suspect that he probably didn't remember who he was calling for because the name changed several times during the conversation.

He did ask how Gov. Gerry Brown was doing, so I told him about Ronald Reagan, Pete Wilson, Gray Davis and Arnold all of whom succeeded Gerry. But I had to add that Gerry was running for attorney general this year. The caller thought maybe this was a good idea since he was such a good president and, after all, this caller was a Democrat. I'm not sure, but I think he had Brown confused with Reagan.

We hung up, but not before promising to touch base during the next election campaign. He thought it was every two years or so, but I told him about the frequent special elections for politicians who are often recalled or convicted and the numerous annual propositions here.

He didn't know whether the Women's Political Group would hire him next time to express an opinion about the propositions, but I sure hope so.

He had a killer recipe for horseradish that I have been looking for.

Well this makes no sense but here are my results

Your Political Profile:

Overall: 65% Conservative, 35% Liberal

Social Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

How Liberal Or Conservative Are You?