First, the Kid A milestones update:
She learned to crawl about a month ago! (Oh, she's 9.5 months old now.) Very exciting for her, and for us. I was beginning to think she would skip crawling, because she was getting so frustrated with wanting to be mobile, but not having the patience to stay on her hands and knees -- she much preferred to be helped up to standing than to practice trying to crawl. But, as babies are wont to do, all of a sudden she figured it out, and has been crawling all over the place. She's much happier that she can now get to where she wants to go. Of course, we haven't done all the things that the magazines and websites say you should do to babyproof our place, so that means we're just watching her like a hawk all the time. So far, so good, though!
She's become Olympic-class at pulling herself up to standing and getting back down again. She loves to stand in her Pack-n-play and wave at us and say "Hi." (That's her only word so far, by the way. "Hi." It's adorable, although I'm looking forward to some recognizable syllables.) She's trying out this new royalty/beauty pageant wave, the kind where it's all in the wrist. She seems to be doing it all the time, even when she's falling asleep on the bottle. Very cute. And the waving thing now seems to be happening for "Bye," too, which has just started in the past couple of days.
She still loves her daycare provider, Carmen. When I drop her off in the mornings, she gives them all big big smiles all around. It's wonderful to see, and I feel great about leaving her there.
She's eating lots and lots of different foods. She's losing her patience for pureed stuff and really wants to be trying real food. So far, pretty much anything with protein is a hit (oh, except for salmon. We were having some a couple of nights ago and she was sitting in her high chair at the table with us, and was eyeing my plate, so I gave her some. Not super successful. It's a strong flavor, so I'm not hugely surprised). She LOVES chicken, and has some for dinner every night. (This works out great, because I cook up some chicken breasts every weekend for my lunches during the week, and I just make a little extra that TM cubes up for her to feed herself with.) She also loved some amazingly delicious tofu that TM made last weekend, cooked in coconut milk and soy sauce and basil. Again, we were sitting down together, and she was super interested in what I was eating, so I gave her some, and she just kept coming back for more. I wasn't surprised that she liked tofu -- it's pretty bland, after all -- but I was surprised that she liked the other flavors that were with it. Although it was delicious.
Oh, and she has entered the beginning of the shrieking phase! So far, it's really cute, because she'll emit this high-pitched little scream, and then we'll sort of do it back to her, and we'll play that game for a good while before she gets distracted by something else. It's also cute because, so far, she isn't screaming for long periods of time, and it isn't yet super loud. We just sort of play catch with the screaming. It's fun ... for now, anyway!
Ok, briefly, before she wakes up and we have to get going for the day, my own personal updates:
I have been given my assignment in my new county, and I am back in Emergency Response (still with CPS, of course). I've been doing actual work for about 2.5 weeks now, and it's going very well. Very, very busy, but very well. For reasons that are unknown to me, I feel much more ready this time around to do ER investigations. Partly, it must be that I've done them before and so I've gotten over some of my initial fears about barging into people's lives (although I am, of course, still respectful and do my best to barge in as unobtrusively as possible). I think another piece of it is that Kid A isn't so little this time around, and the emotional nakedness of having a newborn has subsided a great deal; last time, I think I feared being an emotional basketcase, and this time I feel much stronger.
My referrals so far are intense: much more so than anything I worked on in my old job. I'm glad they're giving me real work to do, and I'm glad that because I'm still new, I won't be getting any new referrals for at least two weeks, but I have quite a lot on my plate for the next two weeks. I definitely feel the pressure, with the mandated timelines, to get things done quickly, but investigations themselves just take so long. There are always lots of people to talk to, and so far, nothing is just cut-and-dried "Yep, it happened and we have proof" or "Nope, it's all a big misunderstanding." I know that there will be a few of those, on both sides, but most of the time not. I wish I could write some details to flesh out what I'm talking about, in terms of the intensity, but, well, of course I can't. So yes, it's intense and busy, but I really like it. I like my supervisor, and I like the vibe of the ER unit in my new county. Good folks, little drama, good supervisors all around ... I'm happy. I feel like I landed in the right place.
And generally, I feel like I landed in the right place. I think my new county is, in many ways, a better fit for me than my old county. I think the size of the operations, and the size of the county, suits me better than the large county and bloated agency I worked for last year. I see that there's room to make an impression and advance my career in a more tangible way; the deputy director is in our building, as opposed to being off in some office somewhere far away. We only have three program managers, as opposed to the however many -- ten? twelve? -- the other county used to have. So there's fewer layers of bureaucracy, which is also a much better fit for me. Had I started out here, I wouldn't have appreciated it; I had to have the experience I had, with the bloat, and the layoffs, and all of that, in order to really appreciate what I've fallen into. So I'm immensely grateful for all of it: the roller coaster, and the job experience, and going back to work so early, and the layoff, and the six weeks with Kid A before I started working again, and the sheer joy of discovering that I really like my job. I like ER, and I think I'm going to be good at it. And I like my new, goofy, little county.
I've got some great new pictures of Kid A from Easter, and I'll try to post some soon. (We just went to the park during the day, and that's where the pictures were taken; that night, we went to TM's parent's house to celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary. 35 years! Congrats, M & E!)
But here's one for your enjoyment for now. She's SO CUTE!
