First Haircut

So, after two appointments cancelled due to sickness, Amelia finally got her first haircut yesterday. We got there a little early so she could see what was happening. Because of time management issues, Amelia ended up going before I did. She was not a fan of putting the cape on, but once we got her arms out from under it and gave her a brush to hold she was ok. We didn't take much off. Just enough to even it out on the back and get rid of the mullet she was starting to get. Afterwards she played on my cell phone till I was done. I think she got the most upset when the hairdresser used the hair dryer on me and he hadn't on her. A couple of swipes across her face and she was happy. I may have bribed her with the promise of chocolate milk and french fries if she behaved.

The car ride home with fries in hand.

When we got home, she ate dinner and then ran around like a lunatic for 30 minutes. Of course this required the wearing of all four tutus in her dress up box. She also took my blood pressure and made sure that she had a heart beat. She's a little obsessed with the stethoscope. The day before we had to check the heartbeat and blood pressure of all the Sesame Street gang. Thankfully they all passed.

The good doctor at work.

PS - she looks even more like my baby pictures now. Which is scary.

Layering Like A Bay Area Native

Growing up in the Bay Area you become an expert in layering. When the fog comes in or you drive over hills, the temperature can vary 25+ degrees. The first summer I was in DC I was getting ready to go to a baseball game in Baltimore. I had a huge sweatshirt that I was bringing to the August game. Matt and our friend looked at me and asked what I was doing. I answered that the fog would come in and it would get cold...never mind, I'll go put this back now. I'm still likely to be carrying a sweater or a scarf, just in case. Some habits never die.

Amelia has instinctively picked up this ability. Check out the three layers of tutu, fairy wings, a boa, wand and Elmo slippers. That's impressive layering.

Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programing

Amelia is starting to understand the idea of a trip. That someone leaves our house, and then they come back. I'm fairly confident she thought Nana and Poppy were going to come back in a couple of days. I've been trying to explain that they were on a trip when they saw us. They live in California. To try and work on this concept I tried to find a map. This was much harder than it should be. I found plenty of globes, regional and local maps but no maps of the world or of the US.

Once I found it, hiding at the back of a rack in Staples, I wrote on it where everyone lives. She can almost recognize her own name. I started with Grandparents because she isn't even two. I'm well over that and I can barely keep track of where everyone in our immediate families are.

I almost added my brother Roger just so I could put something on the middle of the map, but decided against it. Even if I added siblings, it would put one point in the middle, a bunch in the areas around our parents, and one on the other side of the wall for Bunny and Pete. I think this will also help when Matt and I travel so she knows where we're going.

She can kind of say Rhode Island and California, but definitely knows what an airplane is and that Teddy even goes on trips (to the dog walkers' house) when we're away.

We had a quiet weekend because she wasn't feeling that great, which meant we held off on the haircut. I'm going to get mine cut on Saturday, so she's going to come with me and get hers done after me. It should be interesting...

Fifth Time Is The One That Will Hurt The Most

This post is about me, because once a year I go to my association's big convention, and there are about four zillion things that go on while we're there. I either give you a brief rundown now, or you run the risk of catching me with a drink in my hand and I'll talk about it for an hour.

This is my fifth year. Last year, it was the longest I had been away from Amelia. The year before I was 38 weeks pregnant and shockingly enough my OB wouldn't let me run around Las Vegas. The year before was the last time I did it with help. (Insert long, rambling bananas internal politics story that ends with me being the only person in what had been a four person department.) The first year I was so over my head since I'd only been there three months, that I barely remember it.

I don't want to say too much, but I will give you my goals I have every year.

• Enough coffee and alcohol so I don't hurt someone
• The staff generally not killing each other
• Not getting fired for telling off my boss
• Remember to bring the black flats for the last two days of the show because they're already stretched out and are the only shoes that will fit

This year I had to add "No one dies by the end of the week" not because I was going to kill someone, but because three (technically four) people I work very closely with to make this week work ended up in the hospital. The first is the one I'd ask people to keep in your thoughts, even though you don't know them. The woman is on our Board and I work with her closely. She had undergone numerous (I believe at least 6) IVF treatments, plus additional pregnancies, and they had finally figured out she had a blood disorder that was causing her to miscarry. She delivered her son at 20 weeks, weighing 2 pounds. Thankfully, his lungs look at least 5-6 weeks farther along and he's gaining weight at a good rate. She had some sort of complication (there's really only so many details you want from a work colleague) and they'd had to put her under general anesthesia, so she wasn't awake and her husband couldn't be there for the birth. But she took much longer to recover than a routine c-section.

The other people, while very serious, were not quite as life threatening as a 20 week old baby.

The rest of the week went like this. If we controlled 100% of what was happening, there may have been a few bumps but everything looked good on the outside. If we controlled 60%, like when we were in a nightclub for our awards and it really didn't work because of things out of our control, people generally had a good time and said we did the best we could. If we controlled 95% of something, the other 5% would blow up so badly that no one would remember the rest of it.

I walked into one of my many meetings and the people in the room (all are people I've know for the whole time I've been with the association) look at me and say "You look like you could use a drink. Do you want some Scotch, we've got it right here?" Which is one of the reasons I love our membership. And thankfully it was at 5:30pm, and I think it's the law in Vegas that you have to have a drink in your hand by that time. For the record I said no because I hadn't eaten anything since an 8am meeting in the same room.

Getting back to fun Amelia things, she's in love with her trains, obsessed with "reading", and needs to have all her Sesame Street characters together before she can go to sleep at night. Her hair is officially out of control, so this weekend we will be doing her first haircut.

I would like to point out that this was almost exactly a year ago. Where did my baby go and who replaced her with a miniature teenager? She has started to argue with us about what she wears. She tells me specific colors and items, but she tells Matt things are just "too big" if she doesn't feel like wearing it. God help us when she gets to be an actual teenager.