The First Family?

front half of the plane

back half of the plane

Today we went to the Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.  This was on our L.A. "bucket list" and we kept putting it off because either we were sick, or Leah was sick, or we were just too busy or tired to do this.  Saturday morning, on a whim, BA suggested we go.  We were all feeling relatively rested, and Leah was just starting to come down with a cold, so I said, "let's do it."  What a cool museum.  They had the actual Air Force One jet that flew President Reagan around for 8 years, and we got to walk through it.  There was a large chunk of the Berlin Wall.  There was an exact replica, built to size, of the Oval Office during Reagan's first term.  And it was all set atop a mountain overlooking this dramatic valley.  It felt like we were on his California ranch with wildflowers all around and cool, crisp air.

The museum was really cool, but about halfway through, it struck me that there was no mention of Reagan's first wife.  I was pretty sure he'd been married before Nancy, but the entire exhibit on his early life omitted any mention of a first wife.  I also noticed that there was really no coverage of any bad policy decisions that Reagan made.  It started to feel a little like propaganda after a while, but I guess when you are building your own museum, with your current wife supervising, you can choose what you want to include and what you want to leave out.  I wonder if the Clinton museum has any mention of Monica Lewinsky?  Haha - I bet not. 

In any case, we had a wonderful family day.  Leah was a true champ.  She won the hearts of all the museum docents, and was so easy-going the entire four hours (!!!) we were there.  Of course it helps that museums are family-friendly places, with handicap (stroller) accessibility, clean restroom facilities for changing dirty diapers, on-site dining, go-at-your-own pace entertainment, and lots of friendly people to guide you through.  It was really a great day for all three of us.

A Change of Heart

Well Valentine's Day has come and gone.  I never liked Valentine's Day.  I thought it was an over-commercialized,  non-holiday, it didn't come with any time off from school or work, so what was the point.  But I've had a change of heart.  This year, I really enjoyed Valentine's Day.  I made Valentine's cards for her daycare classmates and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies for the parents and teachers.  And I was excited about this!

In fact, since Leah arrived, I've started to like the smaller holidays more and the bigger holidays less.   She'll be wearing shamrocks for St. Patty's day and I'm even looking forward to the Fourth of July because of its potential for back-yard bar-b-ques and Leah in a bathing suit.  I think having a baby gives me an excuse to celebrate those "little" holidays when I wouldn't have bothered before. 

As a kid I never cared much for Thanksgiving, but now, the idea of eating delicious food and spending time with family really appeals to me.  It's easily become my favorite fall holiday, inching out Halloween, with Christmas coming in dead last.  Growing up I loved Christmas.  Christmas meant time off from school and getting presents.  And in college, Christmas was about seeing my family and hanging out with old high school friends.  Now I kind of dread Christmas.

I do love the religious side of Christmas - going to church on Christmas eve, the decorations, singing carols, and spending time with family.  But I hate the commercial side of Christmas and the obligations that come with it.  We were so fortunate this year to have my mom and sister come to visit us (thanks guys!!!), but usually it's BA and I traveling to see family.  We spend massive amounts of money and time to get back east and the whole process is just stressful.  Driving around trying to see everyone and never feeling like we spent enough time with the right people.  And presents - ugh.  If I had it my way, we'd never exchange presents again.  I don't care for them because I spend several weeks leading up to Christmas stressing over whether or not I got the right things for everyone, and making sure to get an equal number of presents for each member of the family.  And I really don't want people to feel obligated to spend their hard-earned money on me either.  I am a firm believer in the saying, "it's more fun to give, than to get."  But I'd rather just cut the whole thing out.  Let's all save our money and do something else with it.  I have a friend in law school whose entire family - brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents - takes a vacation to Aruba for Christmas.  They've done this for 8 years now.  They don't buy any presents, they just all go on a sunny beach vacation together.  This sounds perfect to me.  And for a while now, my side of the family has been trying to do something like this but we've never been able to pull it off.  Maybe this year we'll finally do it. 

Last week I found out that an acquaintance of mine has leukemia.  She is only 28 and was living a normal young adult life in D.C. until she came down with a flu that wouldn't go away.  Less than 2 months later she checked into the hospital and started chemotherapy.  That was a year ago.  Now the cancer is still in her bone marrow and has spread to her brain and spinal fluid.  This is the same cancer that killed my uncle 20 years ago.  It is a terrible, awful disease, and it's not fair.

When I heard about this acquaintance of mine, my heart dropped.  I just wanted to snuggle with Leah and thank God that everyone in my family is healthy.  I thought back to Scary Doctor and how much they tormented me.  I thought about how wrong Scary Doctor was and how lucky I am to have a healthy, happy, baby girl.  I was reminded of what's really important in life; the only thing that is important in life ... spending time with the ones you love, and letting those people who you can't spend time with know that you love them, too.  And that's why the "little" holidays are so great for me now.  They don't come with stress, or presents, or travel, or obligations.  They just come with family, and close friends.  And Leah.

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day - from our littlest Valentine to you.

Peanut is wearing my red velvet overalls that I wore for my first Valentine's Day, 30 years ago.

Seven

It's been a week since our last post, and things have been pretty good around here.  We were actually having so much fun just playing with the Peanut that we didn't take time to stop and blog about it.  Leah decided about two weeks ago to drop a night feeding so we are now down to just one feeding a night. Yay!!! And she is sleeping so much better in her crib. We have almost completely stopped having to soothe her to sleep. We just look for an eye-rub, and then put her in her crib with her pacifier, and she does the rest. She still thinks that 5 a.m. is a proper hour to wake-up, so I still feel like a walking zombie most days, but things are really getting better and we're grateful.

And my beautiful baby girl turned seven months over the weekend. Since it was so close to Valentine's day, BA got her a heart shaped cake. She is just so much fun right now. She has an amazing amount of energy in her little body and she is always smiling at us.  She still puts everything in her mouth, but she's also acquired some new tricks - like waving hi and bye, and jumping up and down in her exersaucer.  And I think she gets more and more beautiful everyday, but I'm her mom, and you'd expect that :) 

Waiting with bated breath for her seven month cake.  "What will I get, what will I get ....???

Exhibit A: She puts everything in her mouth - including her 7 month sticker

The flowers and balloon were for mom, but we didn't tell Peanut.

 

Happy Seven Months Baby Leah!!!

BA's Corner: Running Aarons

When I was little, I ran "Aarons" with my Mom. At least that's what I thought we were doing. Mom would always say, "Come on BA...we're going to run some errands." To me, it sounded like "run some Aarons," and it made perfect sense to me. I figured "Aarons" were things we did for the family...go to the post office, pick up dry cleaning, buy groceries, stop by the bank, etc. And I figured other families were out running "Smiths" or "Johnsons." Makes sense, right? Well, it did to me.

In any event, Leah and I ran some "Aarons" this weekend to give AA some solo time to study. Leah was a trouper, as usual. Unfortunately, I forgot toys. Stupid stupid stupid! All I could muster up (besides the never-leave-home-without-it pacifier) was a miniature flip book we had attached to the stroller a couple of days earlier. So when Leah got a little fidgety and was bored of the tiny, crinkly pages of her book, I gave her my phone to munch on. (No, I didn't tell her to munch on it, it's just that she munches on anything she can get her little baby paws on these days). That worked for a while.

All these toys, and you couldn't remember to bring just one???

The last "Aaron" was the grocery store. I hate the grocery store. Too many decisions, too many little cans and bottles of this and that in colorful packaging organized solely to maximize the store's profit rather than minimize the time I waste there. And, of course, too many people. I've got my list, and I've got my daughter..that's plenty for me to handle without searching up and down the aisles for a 4 oz can of green chiles while dodging every stranger who wants to put their grubby hands on Leah. Agh!

Leah must have felt the same way about the grocery store (and everyone wanting to be her best friend). About halfway through (meaning, we had circled through the store two or three times and had another two or three to go before I found 98% of everything on the list - enough to hit the road and tell AA I gave it my best), Leah decided she had had enough. Granted, 1 week earlier, same time, same place, Leah also had had enough and decided to throw up her lunch in the middle of the produce section. That's an "Aaron" I could have done without.

But yesterday, in the middle of the freezer section, she started melting. So I gave her a package of frozen P.F. Chang's Chicken Teriyaki Meals-for-2. My thinking was that between the crinkly wrapper, the colorful label, and the cold temperature, her little baby wheels would spin long enough for me to figure out where the Ranch seasoning was and get the heck out of dodge.

I should have skipped the seasoning. After a few minutes, she started fussing again. Here we go. The fussing got louder and louder. Okay, out of my way people...you don't want to see what's about to happen if you don't get out of my way. Louder. Louder. We're at the checkout counter. Louder. I'm unloading the cart as quickly as I can. Louder. The store manager comes over. "Oh, what a cute baby. Is it a boy or a girl?" Are you kidding me, buddy? Move on. Geez.

With the cart unloaded, I look at my daughter and realize the frozen P.F. Chang's has been resting against her leg! "No wonder you're crying...I'm giving you frostbite!" I felt so horrible. I rubbed her leg a bit, but it was still cold. What to do? I took the hot deli rotisserie chicken off the belt and held it to her thigh for a few seconds, quickly followed by these instructions to Leah - "Don't tell Mommy."

Dad, did you honestly put a rotisserie chicken on my leg? I'm so disappointed.

Baby Talk

Well my baby has an ear infection in both her ears.  She's had a cold for about 7 days and last night her cough was so bad that she turned red and was gasping for air.  Her cough was waking her up and she couldn't seem to stop coughing until we got her in the bathroom and turned on the steam shower.  We did three steam showers overnight last night and by the morning I was watching the clock until the doctor's office opened.  Turns out she has two ear infections and a little bit of wheezing in her lungs, which is from some viral cough that usually accompanies the ear infections.  Poor little girl.  She has been sick so much recently which I'm sure is due to daycare.  I have a love/hate relationship with daycare - love them because they take good care of my child and allow me to pursue my career - hate them because she will constantly get sick as long as she's at daycare.  And when she is sick, which is a lot, I can't take her to daycare so either I skip school or BA takes off from work.  We had to do both this week.  It's been a long week. 

Of course Leah was a perfect little angel at the doctors, no constant whining and fussing like at home.  She just stared up at him and blinked her eyes every few seconds so calmly like nothing was wrong.  Maybe she remembered her last visit when she got her shots and thought, "if I just play nice, he'll stay away from me."    

And since it's finally Friday, here's a video from last weekend, before she got this latest cold.  Have a good weekend, everyone!

Seen around L.A.

As we drive around town, we sometimes see things worthy of a picture or two.  For example, the other day BA snapped these two gems ...

Classic L.A. sign

And our favorite L.A. sign

Isn't a three-year time span your definition of "temporary," too???

Haha.  Isn't that sign the best?  I first saw the sign at the Santa Monica Blvd exit ramp off the 405 when I was driving to the doctor twice a week for ultrasounds, and I groaned because I thought, "great, another traffic hurdle."  But then I realized that the exit ramp was only closed at night, you know, temporarily, for 3 years.  Ah, L.A., you make me smile and laugh sometimes.  And isn't that Hollywood sign shot amazing.  BA found a lookout point to take this photo - it's not zoomed in, he's actually that close.  And it's really hard to get close to the Hollywood sign.  I think it's a super cool shot.

Leah has been sick this week with a bad cold that has started to sound like the croup.  She is basically coughing through the night, usually every 10 or 15 minutes and it started to sound pretty violent, and sharp.  So last night, I took her into the shower for some hot steam for 15 minutes at 1:30 a.m.  It seemed to calm the cough a little.  She's also back to throwing up her bottle when she coughs, but I think that's because of the cold and not the reflux.  I actually think we have the reflux under control.  (Yippie, Yeee-haw, Ya-hoo!!!!)  God bless Prevacid!  She doesn't seem to be having any more signs of pain from the reflux (arching back, waking up screaming in the middle of her naps or the night, and she'd stopped throwing up her bottle for a week until her cough started which, again, leads me to conclude that the cold is causing the cough, which is causing the throwing up - not reflux!)  And here's a big announcement ... we moved her to her crib this week and she's sleeping in it without the wedge!!!  We were scared to do it.  The reflux flared last month right around the same time that we first tried to take her off the wedge, and it was an awful three weeks before we finally gave up and put her back on the wedge.  Because the two occurred around the same time, we felt like maybe we were chained to the wedge and could never take her off it.  But then we got her on Prevacid and I felt like maybe we could try the crib again.  BA was content to leave her on the wedge because at least it worked - she didn't cry that much on it and she would sleep - kind of - unless she dropped her pacifier, which happened every 10 minutes, and then one of us would have to give it back to her.  She just seemed so confined on the wedge.  I could tell that she wanted to stretch out and I also suspected that she'd be able to soothe herself if she could roll around and find her pacifier.  As long as she was on the wedge, she'd never learn to self-soothe.  So I wanted to try the crib again.  Before we made the switch, we upgraded her crib.  First, we decided to buy bumpers.  We hadn't done this earlier because all the literature on SIDS recommended against it for newborns, but I decided that we needed to give her something to snuggle up against.  We found these super plush, chocolate brown, velour bumpers for $30 at Babies-R-Us and Leah loves them.  She will snuggle up next to them and run her hands over the bumpers to feel the fabric and I think it calms her down.  Another great side bonus is that they block out more light so she doesn't wake up when I walk in the room.  We also got one of those slight wedges that inclines about 3 inches and goes under the fitted sheet.  It elevates her head just a little, and she seems to like that as well.  This crib looks so comfortable now it makes me want to get in and take a nap.  And so far, she seems to like it too. 

This is huge for me.  For some reason, I've felt like a bad mother because I couldn't get my baby to sleep in her crib like all the other babies.  I know that's a silly thought and I shouldn't compare our situation to other babies who didn't suffer from reflux.  But I did.  Reflux is a whole different ballgame.  Even accepting that fact, I had expected to move her to sleeping flat in her crib at 3 months.  That never happened with us because at that point we had to use the wedge.  By 6 months, I felt like I'd failed because we were still using the wedge and I could tell that she was outgrowing it.  And now, when I watch her in her crib, stretched out and usually snuggled up against her plush bumpers, it just makes me so happy.  She looks so comfortable.  I love to watch her sleep.