I want you to keep your baby

At the conference, my friend Vidya was holding Finn while we were eating, and Vidya took Finn with her to go get dessert. Zoe stood up on her chair and said, "No. Where is Finneas going. Mommy, I want you to keep your baby."

She was quite worried.

Good Job Mommy

Zoe went to another conference, and she sat through my welcoming the start of the conference with my co-chair. She was quiet and respectful, listened. When I was done, I returned to collect Bruce, Zoe and Finn, and Zoe said: "Good job Mommy!'... it was the highlight of the conference.

tree climber

Zoe's new favorite thing is to climb trees. We have a short, sturdy, tree with redish leaves out front that she loves to climb on. She can't get up in it yet, but once in it, she is a monkey at home. She is very cautious, not fool-hardy, but very active once in the tree.. pics to come (had to recharge my camera and missed the opportunity yesterday).
Oh, and she calls them "granches".

After tree climbing, she said she had to go rescue the baby griffin (from a Wonder Pets episode) and preceded to go over to our big rocks, ask for help up, stood on top, cradled a branch of a near by tree, and said "yeah, I saved the griffin!"

chewing on books?

Zoe recently has developed an affinity for chewing on things.. like books, cardboard, plastic pieces.. yesterday I caught her with laying in front of her dad's night stand.. chewing on what looked like newspaper.. to find out she bit 3 pages out of a book and tore 4 more pages (more snack?).

holy shoot!

Zoe is now in the front room saying for the 50th time: "holy shoot"... but when she says it "holy" has a few more letters.. but I can't figure out how to type it up.

we talked about this

mom: [music,singing]...Wonder pets, wonder pets, we are on our way
zoe: Mommy, remember the doll ride? remember the doll ride? We talked about this.

buy a tail

Zoe: I have toes. The kitties have paws. The kitties have a tail. I don't have a tail. You don't have a tail. We should go buy a tail. One for you. One for me.

Zoe quotes: nose picker

Mom: Zoe what do you want to be when you grow up?
Zoe: A teacher
Mom: What will Finneas be?
Zoe: A baby
Mom: What will Daddy be?
Zoe: A Teacher too
Mom: What will I be when I grow up
Zoe: A Nose picker

[Side note: Zoe has started to pick her nose.. I've been trying to consul her against it)

Zoe Goes to Disney part 2

a few other Zoe notes:

"Little Fella"
At one playground, Zoe found a little piece of bark and called it "little fella".. she carried it around like a baby bird, still climbing around, but very careful with her "little fella". The next day, she went back, and he was gone. Zoe and Daddy hunted all over for it.. she was very upset. I can't remember whether they found it.
A few days later, the first day Dad left to go on the cruise, we were walking to lunch from the playground and Zoe kept picking up leaves on the side walk, calling them little fella, and saying that she put them back with their family. It was so cute!

Zoe goes to see the mouse

Zoe went for her first trip to Disney.. this one for 17 days at Disney World Resorts and parks. We first stayed 10 days at the Port Orleans French Quarter and quickly established a routine.. get covered in sun screen, get dressed (this time she would accept wearing dresses and skirts which kept her cool), head to breakfast.. of course there were copious amounts of ketchup involved... there were these Mickey shaped straws that she must have.. we lost a few the first days, then got smart, but I think we still came home with 3 of them.
Afternoons included lots of good snacks (smoothies, icecream)




Then to the playground on rest days or to the bus stop on park days. We set it up so we'd do every other day as a rest day.
Rest days were spent at the playgrounds and then over to the pool. But Zoe has developed a bad reaction to getting wet.. she hates it. It is so strange for someone who loved to get wet, shower, bath, pool.. but she spent most of our time near water, but not in it.
At the pool, she loved to pitch her toys in the water and wait for someone to pick them up.. Little boys loved to play that game.. the little girls would just stare at her. She learned to make friends and did so easily.. some kids she bonded with easier than others; some had friendlier parents than others (ie the kind who would gladly let your kid play with toys, floaties, balls versus the kind that would nearly rip them out of your kids hand.. it was an interesting social experiment to watch).

We marveled at Zoe's aptiptude for climbing... there isn't a park thing that she wouldn't scale if she could.. its not that she was crazy daring, a few things she would not do (like going down backwards on the big ladders), but we were always impressed with her ability to do the climbing things created for 5 year olds.




Wanna go home:
By the end of our long days, or if she fell and got hurt, Zoe would plead with us to go home. She'd say that she needed to see her kitties and would talk very foundly of them. This lasted at least a week.. eventually she learned to just ask to go back to the "ho-tel"

A Lick:
for some reason Zoe on this trip started licking thing. In Seattle while shopping, she stopped in several places to lick the ground. I have pictures of her licking her dad's leg while we were playing at the pool..



A Beat:
Dad: "Zoe, what was that?!?"
Zoe: "A beat."
Dad: "why did I get a beat?"
Zoe: "Because you didn't do what I wanted"
yes, Zoe started hitting.. it seemed to reach a peak in frequency over the trip, and has now almost all gone..

Dad: "Zoe, what's the rule when you go into the bathroom?"
Zoe: "No touching your hair"
Dad: "No, that is the lollipop rule. The bathroom rule is no touching anything"

Zoe at the park:



The first ride she went on was the Merry-go-round
then we stood in line for 40 minutes for Dumbo.. at her insistance..
It turns out that taking your little girl on rides like that where you are off the ground jump starts a mom's heart.. I was weirdly freaked out about it.. Zoe did not like going up in the air.


We also took Zoe twice on Pirates of the Caribean
It too starts out kind of scary.. she'd cover her eyes for the first part.

All of the parks had places for kids to cool off.. eventually we learned to bring her swimsuit.. but sometimes, we just relied on back up clothes.



Zoe's favorite ride is probably "Small World", although she did quite like "Peter Pan".
At small world, or as she called it "the doll ride", I couldn't help myself and I would start singing.. she'd shhh me with her finger and said "Mom, we've talked about this".. finally on the third time through, she was singing the song herelf.

The attraction Zoe liked the least is probably any of the 3D shows.. we took her to "Honey I shrunk the kids" and I took her to the "Bug's Life" one... she cried through both of them.. I almost left bugs with her early, but we stuck it out.


Zoe did also get pictures with Princesses:











Epcot: Every Parent Comes Out Tired







After being at the Port Orleans, Bruce had to go on alone to the cruise ship conference.. Finn was not allowed to go, being 10 weeks old with a 12 week old requirement. So we met up with Auntie Carrie and Uncle Scott, first at Port Orleans Riverside, then stayed "at the zoo" at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. It was fabulous.. we really enjoyed it (perhaps me more than Zoe).
But again, we settled into a pattern: sunscreen dress breakfast playground

The first day at the playground, Carrie and I just sat chatting while Zoe played.. there was a 10 year old girl and 3 other 3 to 4 year olds, and 2 year old Zoe, running around playing tag and hide and seek.. you could tell Zoe didn't quite understand the rules, so the big girl took her under her wing and played with her, they'd hide together and Zoe would stay hidden until found (it is a game we play at home, but Zoe does the counting while someone else hides).
Later that day in the bathroom, a little girl came up to her, "Joey (that is what they thought her name was), remember we are BFF, Best Friends Forever!"
So cute!









We alternated days of napping/no-napping. Napping usually happened in the stroller at a park.. We'd put Finn in the Baby Bjorn, and Zoe in the stroller with the baby car seat.



Pick center of flower: Another Zoe habit.. picking flowers.. I think this is something she is allowed while not around me. On this trip, she started picking the center of the hybiscus flowers.

Zoe phrases:

"Mommy, you are so pretty/proud/nice"
"that is _ so _ beautiful!" (in reference to a girls swim suit, a toy she liked...)