hide and seek

Over the weekend I had a riot with Zoe playing "Hide and Seek"... she would stand in her room, I'd tell her to "cover your eyes and count to three".. I'd hide in one of about 6 places in our bedroom.. she'd come find me, shrieking with glee... it was so funny. She'd say "seek, seek, eyes" and run to her room. I tried to trade places with her when hide and seek got boring in my room.. but that was not how she wanted to play. Sometimes she'd get a little lost, couldn't find me.. I'd whisper her name, she'd come running.

(she doesn't really count.. she can count to two, not quite three)

sink!

Did I mention that zoe loves to play in the sink? I'm sure she does it twice a day now.. can push the big dining room chair over by herself (I used to hold her.. but I get tired way before she does, so I offered the chair as a solution, she now knows to push it over). If I don't take off her shirt, then we have to when she is done.. and wipe down the chair and the cupboards.

Oh, and notice the hair.. this was taken in the morning.. she gets the rattiest bed-head hair ever.. so fine and really tangled.. takes a wet brush and brushing from all directions to put her pretty curls back.



oh, and here is that precious "say cheese" face.

napping

well, the napping of 3 hour stints lasted two days.. the next day (with Anna) she did not nap at all, then 1.5 hours the next day, 2 hours the next.. and well today.. 2 hours.. guess we are back on track (and I'm trying to get her to sleep by 8pm.. which is mostly working).

ABCs

Zoe can now sing the first three letters of her A Bs Cs... so cute

She has been able to sing "Row Row Row" [your boat] for a while..

Zoe the meat eater

Zoe loves meat.. she will now eat two slices of Canadian Bacon at breakfast, and I swear we will have to start cooking her a steak... she'll eat as much as we can cut for about 15 minutes.

sleeping update

I've been trying to get her off nursing at night and it is finally working. I tried this a few months ago, and she would be unconsoleable.. now I've got a water bottle for her and sometimes she just needs to have a drink. But eventually she'll be able to console herself.. She is also staying in her bed for longer.. we had two nights where she was there by midnight, but this morning she slept in her bed until 6am, with only two wakenings that I needed to soothe.. (two more which she consoled herself).

sentences!

Yesterday I came home and Anna told me Zoe had been saying "I need a bag" "I need a shoe".... then I was playing with her, and she was shutting me in the room (she can now fully operate our doors).. and was saying "I shut the door"... Nana and Grandpa got to hear it too.

Earlier that morning she said "I suck" when she wanted to nurse too.

yummy? yummy? yummy?

I need to video record this, but as you know with young cute-ies, it would not work out anyway, as soon as I pull out the camera, cuteness stops.
Zoe's new thing at dinner is to take a bit of something, then look to me and say "yummy?" (and wait for me to say "yummy."), then the same to Rachelle, then the same to Daddy... she doesn't get tired of it, and well, we find it so awfully cute, we usually have at least 3 rounds of it at dinner.

new kitties?

We went to see our potential new kittens on Sunday... they are 5 weeks old.. gender not known yet... here are the pictures:

Bruce and I are having a bit of a debate though.
We don't want to freak Molly out more than necessary; based upon her reaction with Zoe as a baby, I believe that she would (after an initial adjustment period) adopt kittens, so we need them to be young.

however, Zoe loves to love on Molly (ie "hugs!".. and kind of lays on her).. and when we visited the young kittens, she kind of mauled them.

So I can see why lots of people say not to have kittens with kids under 7.

But I also believe we have plenty of house for the kittens to hide in, and the kittens and Zoe will have to be very carefully watched for a long, long time.

Dora legos

Here is a picture of Zoe with her Dora Legos. She can now keep herself busy for hours on end playing with them. She also likes her other Mega blocks, her tea set (from Nana) and playing with Mickey and Mini mouse (small dolls off of a baby mobile).


Yesterday, Zoe's nap lasted for more than 3 hours. Today, it looks like we are witnessing the same... growing pains I'm guessing.

amy-amy-amy-amy

We went to the beach tonight, and there is this great cement octopus, which would never happen in the US due to the liability, which makes parents really, really nervous.. anyway, Rachelle was up there with Zoe, and her dad and I were on either side of a tenical.. then Zoe made a break for it and Bruce said "Amy, Amy, Amy"... well, then so did Zoe.. about 16 times.. it was really cute. She used it as her phrase to mean, "put me back up in the danger again".

Beach girls: Rachelle (18yrs) and Zoe (19mos)

3 more weeks

We went to the doctor and Zoe will get her cast off in 3 more weeks. We tried to talk him into the half cast.. but he said no. In the end.. it might have been worse to put her through the saw twice (that's how they cut it off).. I'm not anxious for putting her through that.

"mommy", "yummy"

We picked up Rachelle from Seattle airport yesterday. The trip went well.. but our lives seem to be incredibly stressful now. We hope that Zoe doesn't feel any of it... and well... in times of stress, Zoe is a ray of sunshine.

A few funny Zoe moments:

she said "mommy" yesterday.. that is the first time I've heard it.. usually it is "mama"

she also said "yummy" after every bite (encouraged by her sister Rachelle)... it was cute.

when I get home, Zoe always fusses, and wants to nurse, so I've been trying to teach her to communicate instead of whining, so I said, "Zoe what do you want? Do you want to nurse?" and that was all it took for her to learn the word "nurse".. now she says it all the time. Bruce thinks it is hillarious, so he encourages it ...although I'm trying to get her to cut back...
mostly because she often doesn't nurse, but just pacifies or sucks non-productively... so I tell her.. "no sucking, you must nurse".... so one day she told me "suck"... oh... she is a cute devil.

walking, cast and all

Last Wednesday Zoe started cruising with her cast... along the bed, then took two steps, fell softly, tried again. By Thursday, she had mastered her peg leg, one week after having it.

We went to the beach on Sunday, which actually turned out to be kind of sad.. Zoe wanted to run free, through the puddles, etc. Even withthe combination of extra socks over plastic bags, I couldn't let her do much. She was super, super frustrated. I can't wait for her to be free of it; and more over forf the warm weather so we can let her go straight into the water (what she really wanted). We saw a couple of little kids in their rain boots chasing and catching crabs (dollar size). Can't wait to help Zoe on such adventures.