Thanksgiving Eve

Note: I started this on the road but I finished long after arriving at Danny & Steffanie's house. Don't get confused.

At this moment, we are roadtripping to Nevada to spend Thanksgiving weekend with Danny & Steffanie. Woohoo! Amelia (15 months old) is decidedly anti-carseat today, of course. She keeps wailing something that sounds eerily like “LET ME OUT!” and it's freakin' me out a little. She's too young to talk! Well, not really. I know lots of kids her age are saying way more words than she does, but this kid uses words very inconsistently. At times I wonder if it's because James and I are usually pretty good at figuring out what she wants without the words, especially now that she can point at something she wants (usually something I'm eating) if a whine is insufficient to communicate her needs.

Amelia has also invented a sign which we think means “hug”. She folds her arms emphatically at times, and we've been interpreting it as a demand for a hug or cuddles or something. For a while we weren't sure what it meant. Heck, we're still not sure, but hugs seem to satify.

So it seems talking is merely a tool for entertainment for now. She has mastered “OH NO!” and “WHOOOAAA” and “MAMAMAMAMAMAAAA!” and “HAHAHA!”. I would find “mama” much more endearing if she'd use it without making it sound like a complaint. She says “daddy” sometimes, but she says it a lot when James is at work. Perhaps she's just wondering aloud where he is...

A few nights ago she said “amen” with us at the end of our family prayer. Woohoo! (Update: During family prayer at Danny's house, she even knelt and folded her arms with us. Impressively cute.)

Amelia has pretty much plateaued growth-wise. She's still big and all, but it my delight she has yet to grow out of 18-month size clothing. She's gotten longer without adding much weight to her bones, but I'm not sure if she's gotten skinnier or not. Still, now the clothes issue is keeping them clean. I've discovered how pervasive dirt stains can be... and yet I have discovered how strangely satisfying it can be to take once-white socks which have been brutally transformed into nearly-black (and sometimes multicolored) creatures of filth... and them make them brilliant white again. Ahhh. So good.

It's possible she no longer needs size 5 diapers and can switch back down to size 4... We had to move up to that size back when she was 8 months old because her thighs were so fat that the size 4s were too small to reliably hold in pee. I got leaked on too many times in a row to deny that we needed to move to size 5. It's just a little weird though, because her cousin Oak (about a year her senior) is only in size 4 diapers. It feels backwards for her to be wearing bigger diapers than he does.

Speaking of diapers... for some reason, ever since we came to California, she has all but shunned her potty. How odd! She used to love the thing. We've been giving her some extra diaper-free time lately (during which I tend to call her Naked Butt Lady) because, importantly, it helps her diaper rash go away and stay away.

So far, our carpet has been completely spared. (Miracles!) When she pees during diaper-free time (we can't always avoid it, sadly), she trots over to the adult toilet and pees next to it. Most of the time. If the bathroom door is closed, she squats and pees on the tile next to her little potty. (Sigh. Really? The potty is right there.) She also climbed onto the kitchen table once to pee there. As far as I can tell that was her only purpose in climbing onto the table at all. This morning she peed on the bed though. That was less fortunate, so I was grateful that we'd planned to wash the bedding this morning anyway.

I've decided to take her pee location choices as encouraging, though. I mean, peeing next to the toilet is almost peeing in the toilet, right?

Amelia still nurses a lot. There was about a month or so where she cut her nursing in half—inexplicably—and then—also inexplicably—she went right back to nursing like a maniac. There are still some days when she shuns solid food and prefers to nurse. (Those days are just a tad frustrating because it seems she is never quite satisfied. And some of those days I don't want to nurse that much, so she just has to deal with it. I figure no nursing when Mommy would rather listen to hours of fingernails on chalkboards instead is a completely okay as a rule, particularly when Amelia is old enough to get calories elsewhere.) Mostly the lots of nursing is fine with me. The increase was just surprising. And she still shuns all liquids besides water and the rare orange juice or high-quality apple cider. Seriously. Picky, picky, picky.

Ug. So just now we took a 45-minute walk around some fancy schmancy shopping center because Amelia needed to stretch her legs. It took that long before she seemed even remotely ready to be strapped into the carseat again. Of course she screamed bloody murder when we strapped her back in.

We still have another two hours before we reach Danny and Steffanie's. I'm really hoping she'll decide to fall asleep and stay asleep now... or soon. [She didn't fall asleep until we were half an hour from Danny's house. She was quite angry until then.] She slept for about forty-five minutes earlier, but honestly, it didn't count for much because I got emergency starving and so we stopped at Popeye's and ate some finger-lickin' good fried chicken. Om nom nom. And then she woke up. Oh noes! Darn it. We wasted our nap on fried chicken. Oh well. Thankfully, she is currently quite entertained by some My Little Pony board books we found at Barnes & Noble the other day for fifty cents a piece. Awww yeah.

Anyway. Speaking of naps, the little one continues to be wildly erratic in her napping habits. Sigh. Well, she usually takes one nap everyday, which lasts something between twenty minutes and three hours. And we've established a bedtime routine... short and simple. Pajamas, brush teeth, sit on the potty and maybe read a book with Daddy, baby prayer, then nurse and/or cuddle with Mommy in bed until asleep. Even with the routine, there is no guarantee she'll actually go to sleep anywhere near the same time each night. She goes to bed sometime around 7pm and 11pm. Doom. Especially because James and I ideally like to climb into bed by 9:30pm.

Oh oh oh! The other night was super special and she slept for four hours on her own mattress all by herself. After the four hours though, she apparently desperately needed to nurse and so I was forced to abandon my book and join her in bed. Oh well. It was a record-breaking mommy-less stretch of sleep, so I was excited. I think she is nursing less and less at night. It really is kind of exciting.

At the end of next month (December 22^nd), I will be flying down to Arizona with Amelia to spend a couple weeks with my parents. I'll be honest. I partly decided to do this because I wouldn't have to ride in a stuffed-to-the-brim car with a whining toddler for an entire 8+-hour drive. Also, if I fly away, I will also take the baby, the carseat, the gianto stroller, and an entire suitcase worth of clothing. Which means there will be lots more room in the car to take extra things back to Oregon. Namely, books.

I am so going to miss Pleasant Hill. I love, love, love it here. It has been my most favorite place to live in my entire life so far. So I am sad to leave. One of the awesome things I will be leaving is a library which is highly superior to the pathetic library back in Springfield, Oregon. One of the things that makes this library so awesome is the HUGE used book sales every three months. We will be leaving California with over one hundred more books than we entered with. I am so saddened that we will be missing on this book sale for the rest of our lives. Le doom.

Though I'm not certain that I could point to any one thing about the Pleasant Hill that I like better than anywhere else I've lived, but I do love it. Most places I have to continually convince myself that I like it. I have not had to do that here. My best guess is the proximity of other Diltsen. We like Jesse and Jenny. And Urban and Ayla and Oak. And I'm sure we'd like Pikachu when he or she is born. (I wonder what they'll name him or her.) And also there is significantly less rain. And our apartment is significantly nicer than any we've lived in before. And library. And everything I could ever want within walking distance...

And even a ward I really like. And the ward really likes us. (Honestly this shocked me. My first impression of the ward was that everyone even close to my age were couples of “it” girls and former jocks. Possibly still true, but my mistake was thinking that meant I'd never be able to connect to anybody in the ward. Boy, was I wrong. And I was never happier to be wrong in my life. I guess I needed to learn something. To my credit, my hopelessness at finding any friends here lasted all of forty minutes.)

People keep trying to convince us to stay. Unfortunately, as I keep trying to explain to the Pleasant Hill branch of our fan club, this would require James dropping out of school and losing all our income and perhaps find a job as a cashier at Safeway or something. And then we wouldn't even be able to afford living here. Doom! And then there isn't much hope of us ending up here in the future because that would require James landing a professorship at UC Berkeley. In his words, he's good but not that good. Awww maaan!

I've spent a lot of time reading lately. Although I've been reading like a madwoman trying to get through the Wheel of Time, I've finally admitted I'm not going to get through book 11 by the time I leave California if I continue at the current rate. I slowed down significantly this week while trying to read Lord of Chaos. I suppose it's possible it's something about that particular book, but I think more likely it's just because I've been busy and super tired. I've spent more of my free time napping this week. Oh well. I guess that just means I'll be forced to purchase book 11 so I can continue reading the series since the Springfield library is lame and doesn't have it.

I've been really enjoying this series, but I feel a little silly when I realize that it has most affected me in the following way: I am heavily considering not cutting my hair for a decade or two because I think it'd be sweet to have a waist-length braid to tug when I'm angry. I'm not sure how this'll work, since as you may recall, I don't like having hair. I have a better chance now than I ever did before though, since ever since James bzzzzed all my hair off, it has grown back immensely more cooperative than I ever remember it being in my entire life. Strange, but I'll take it.

I've also convinced myself not to ever write fiction... at least not for a public audience, anyway. No one would enjoy fiction I'd write because I have the most remarkable difficulty imagining any point of view besides my own in enough detail to write with. All my characters I imagine all act like me, think like me, and speak like me. My brain hurts when I even try to invent a character even remotely energetic or flippant or evil. Which presents another problem. How the heck am I supposed to create conflict when I can't imagine any motives for anyone ever doing anything bad? Ugh. I try sometimes. I'm like, oh, well maybe he's going to do this awful thing because he's super jealous and... wait. That makes no sense. Why would anyone ever do something that dumb? Yet somehow, other authors can pull it off.

Since this realization, my in-head fiction has even started boring me. And since I've used my in-head fiction to help myself get to sleep at night for almost my entire life, now I don't know what to think about to wind down at night anymore. Doom.

Oh, joy. Amelia just handed me a loaded mouse trap—which I mistakenly assumed to be sprung—and it snapped onto my thumb. (Danny's house apparently had a mouse problem before they even moved here, and now that the neighbor cat is no longer sleeping in Danny's garage... Lo, and behold, Speedy Despereaux Gonzales has moved in and is masterfully evading all traps.) And earlier she set it off and scared her. I think moving it out of reach was probably a good idea...

What else, what else...

Ah yes. It took a while, but my body eventually got over the miscarriage of Baby Beta. I was shocked that despite only knowing of Baby Beta's existence for two days, my brain had a really rough time coming to terms with this. I feel better now that I know that this is actually pretty common to feel that way... well, at least it is for women. It didn't seem to even phase James, so for a bit I wondered if I was going nuts. But apparently, I was acting and feeling pretty normal. Once the two weeks of bleeding was over, I started feeling pretty normal again. Woohoo. Thanks for your prayers and well wishes. I'm feeling optimistic for Baby Gamma to arrive soon. (Don't laugh. Sometimes when I'm feeling particularly baby-hungry, I look down at my belly and say things like, “Go, Baby Gamma, go! Divide into sixteen cells! Commence morula stage!” and “Psst. You should be burrowing into my endometrium now. I've made it super cushy for you over the last few weeks! You can do it!” I really hope there is a Baby Gamma and I'm not just talking to nothing...)

Well, love and turkey,

Jenna and Amelia (and hopefully, any time now, Baby Gamma)

Diva

I wish I could tell you that James and I have been super exciting for Halloween and such, but the fact is, we have not. We did not celebrate Halloween at all. We didn't dress up or go trick-or-treating, and no one knocked on our door. Oh well. We figured it was all right to ignore Halloween this year as we may never get to do so ever again.

I am worried to report, however, that Amelia may be a diva in potentia. I couldn't tell you where she inherited her diva-ty, as I was sure I'd distilled every ounce of diva out of my genetic code and, well, James didn't teach her how to diva.

Nevertheless, the signs are there. Take, for instance, her innate sense of dramatic timing. Need a maniacal laugh? Sounds of evil plotting? Incredulous laughter? Indignant exclamation? Amelia will provide it and you won't even need to ask. She's that good.

Next, I have detected a certain love of clothing and fashion. Every dish towel is a chic scarf. She digs through our laundry in search of flamboyant zebra-print panties to wear on her head, and is often found raving in loud tones about some clothing item or whatever. She was too pleased about her new penguin pajamas that we got at Costco last night.

(What does she do with all of mom's flamboyant underclothing? Why, dance, of course! I swear it looks like she's warming up for a dance performance.)

And, of course, she's a charmer. Oh, how she loves the boys. There is no doubt about it--she flirts shamelessly. And no one can resist her wiles.

Now, here's where it gets interesting.

The fact that it is her destiny to be an epic nerd woman is written all over her future. She never bangs me on the head with toys demanding for me to entertain her rather than rest; it is invariably a book that she stubbornly carried across the house to demand me to read to her. This happens something like twenty to forty times a day.

And then, if it wasn't obvious, she is my child... and James' child. She already has a nearly scientific approach to life.

Thus, we have reached the conclusion that she is doomed to be trailed by a swarm of nerd men until she is married (early in life). There will be so much doom.

Other than this revelation about my daughter's perilous future, I have been... stressed. And hormonal. Unfortunately, shortly after learning of the existence of a Baby Beta, I learned that Baby Beta had already met his or her demise. My poor body has been overreacting to this event, and I have felt... well, frankly... bloody (and) evil. Downright grumpy and mean. Quite unbalanced in every way. So I could use some prayers and good vibes and things. I am eagerly anticipating a return to my normal hormonal state.

Love and feather boas,
Jenna