Whew, a Big One

Howdy folks,

I suppose a proper update is in order, as we generally only cover the vague specifics of Zoë and her life. For those who don't see or interact with her on a regular basis, it's only fair that you get a better idea of who she is nowadays.

Heck, I just realized as I leaned back from the computer after that first paragraph that today marks 18 months of Zoë in our life. (Well, at least externally.) Time flies when you're having fun.

I could go into the trite things that most parents say, like "Oh, she just loves life" and "She's such a happy child", but let's be honest, aren't most kids at this age? When you've only got 18 months under your belt everything is still exciting and new, so of course you'll have an overall rosy outlook. (Assuming, of course, that your parents give you a decent amount of positive attention.)

Personality wise, the best word we could use to describe Zub-Zub (as dad affectionately calls her) would be "ham". She loves getting attention from people. ANYBODY, she doesn't care. She is constantly grinning and genuinely interested in interacting with others. (I assure you, she didn't get that from me...)

It's pretty much impossible for us to take her out without some stranger pining over her for a moment. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard somebody comment on how she's just the cutest baby ever... Humorously enough, on more than one occasion this has been said by another parent IN FRONT OF THEIR CHILD, which somehow just seems wrong. Granted, there's probably a bias on my part, seeing as how it's our kid, but I genuinely believe that she's cuter than average.

Mentally she has consistently tested above her age range which is especially interesting as she was supposed to be a month behind on every milestone. (Owing to the fact that she was a month premature.) However, across the board she has excelled in all categories, particularly with reasoning and language skills. We've lost count of actual words that she knows at this point, though I'd wager it's 40-50. She's started forming basic sentences and can now give us a general idea of what she wants or needs.

Potty training officially began a week or two ago, but we're far from complete. She has a little Elmo potty that she's encouraged to sit on and she frequently joins us for our bathroom sojourns. She hasn't actually utilized it for its intended purpose yet, but you've got to start small.

Her imagination has kicked in full force at this point and she loves to pretend. One of her favorite activities is to pretend to feed us bits of food. Unfortunately, with the emergence of imagination also comes its side effect...nightmares. Most nights she does fine but occasionally will have evenings where she's plagued by bad dreams. She's generally good at calming herself down and going back to sleep, but on occasion we have to bring her into bed with us.

She is enthralled by our two cats and tries her best to get close to them and pet them. Of course the cats are a bit wary of this, as she's not the most delicate at handling them, but they usually take it in good enough humor. We have warned her many times that "kitties are pointy", a lesson she's had to learn the hard way a couple of times, but still she persists. Her love of cats is demonstrated by her apparent want to be one. She loves to crawl around and meow at us. Give her a small sized snack and she will invariably put it on the floor and eat it like a kitty. I've caught her trying to drink from their dish on many an occasion and almost nightly we have to put the cats' food and water up until her bedtime.

Another favorite game (that she only plays with me, for whatever reason) is to find an object: a small bottle, one of her shoes, etc., put it in her mouth and then have me take it from her with my mouth. We'll pass it back and forth and she'll laugh and clap. I guess dad with a shoe in his mouth is humorous. Got me.

She's recently become quite keen on dolls. She particularly likes baby dolls. She has one she got relatively recently that she totes with her everywhere she goes and snuggles up with at night.

Zoë has fully transitioned into a toddler bed at this point, replete with appropriate bedding and pillows. This definitely set off a sense of pride in her and she has begun to fully identify her bedroom as "her territory". This is a good thing, parentally speaking, as it means that she's more willing to stay in her room and babble and play a bit after getting up before summoning us from slumber. We take what we can get. ;)

Books are a major obsession for her. She has several strewn about the house at any given moment and she's read to (almost) every night before bed. Her particular favorite at this point is "A Circus of Colors", which Jen has read so many times she has it completely memorized. It's not uncommon for her to beg us to read it 4 or 5 times before she'll go down at night. In fact, Monday night when bedtime rolled around, that particular book had gone missing. Zoë went BALLISTIC because she wanted THAT book and NO OTHER. A frazzled Jen tracked me down to see if I knew where it had gone. Luckily I had spotted it earlier that evening and the crisis was resolved. When she gets a bit older I intend to start reading her the Harry Potter books, but we're still a ways off from that point.

She certainly has no concept of money at this stage of her life, but she has a definite idea what to do with it. SAVE IT! She has a piggy bank in her room and any chance she gets she will add money to it. Our friend Brian has had his loose change stolen on many an occasion only to hear Zoë dropping it in her bank and clapping each time. Can't say I'm too upset that she loves to put her money away.

We took her to her second Zombie Walk in Atlanta last weekend. The weather was rainy, cold, and miserable, but still a good time was had by all. She's obviously still too young for us to really put much makeup on her, but we did slash up an outfit, sling blood all over it and put a wee bit of blood on her face. Before you go thinking we're terrifying this little girl, it's worth mentioning that she LOVED her little outfit and kept insisting on wearing it around the house. Interestingly enough, we ran into several zombies who remembered her from the previous year. And she even made it into the promotional video that the group that organizes the walk created.

Halloween is coming up and we're letting her be a bit more traditional for that one. She has decided on a Minnie Mouse costume this year. (At a frighteningly high amount of money. I'll tell you, parents get screwed by costume companies. They know they have you by the short hairs.) No blood, no bones, no exposed viscera, just plain old Minnie.

Her desire for that costume was brought on by her love of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, a CGI cartoon geared towards toddlers that teaches basic numbers and colors in an entertaining (yeah, right) manner. It's bright and colorful and she seems to enjoy it. Luckily for us she has recently become obsessed with the show Wonder Pets, which believe it or not is pretty awesome, even for adults. It follows the life of three friends, a guinea pig named Linny, a turtle named Tuck, and a duckling named Ming Ming who rush around the world saving baby animals in trouble. It's actually quite cute and very entertaining. It's more like a mini operetta, as most dialog is sung and every episode is performed by a full orchestra. Zoë asks for "Ming Ming" every night now.

She doesn't get a whole lot of TV time, though. We generally only allow her 1 (very rarely 2) episode(s) of a show a night. We're a little more lax on the weekends, but we don't like to use the TV as a babysitter, and we're not heavy watchers ourselves, anyways. In fact, we don't even have cable, so she's stuck with whatever we have available.

We signed up for Netflix last weekend, primarily so we can stream childrens' DVDs through our PS3. They have a huge selection and it's giving us a chance to explore some new shows for her.

Zok (as she is also known by dad) is amazingly well behaved in public overall. She's usually very quiet and doesn't cause a scene very often. Part of this is due, I'm sure, to the fact that we have a zero tolerance policy for bad behavior in public. We will whisk her out of any store or restaurant the moment she acts up.

That's not to say that she's all wine and roses. She certainly has her tantrums at home, though they're not excessive. (Unless she's just having a very bad day.) The biggest problem we have with her overall is that she's an only child and she knows it. That means she's not very good about sharing with other children. That's something we certainly intend to remedy, but figuring out how to go about it is the tricky part.

She has many of the standard girly interests. She loves clothes, she loves shoes, she loves getting her nails painted. But there are definitely splashes of my personality hidden in there. (See above with her complete lack of terror at a group of more than 1,000 blood soaked monsters storming Atlanta.)

Okay, whew. I guess I went off a bit on this one. Well, I hope it helps give a better understanding of Zoë's world. She's certainly not in need of any love or attention, she gets that in spades. I'll try and get some new pictures up in the next day or so.

Zoë's Latest Update - Director's Cut - Contains at least 37% new footage

Howdy folks. Long time no see.

Life continues at its regular hectic pace and Zoë continues to grow, both physically and mentally. She's moving into 18 months and is just shy of 3 feet tall now. Her vocabulary seems to increase almost daily and she is definitely starting to pick up on new modes of thought.

An example: She has figured out when Dad is messing with her. She has a toy that involves five little doors that pop open when switches or buttons are activated. These doors contain little plastic animals. By holding down the button on the lion I can prevent her from properly closing the door. It just won't latch. She figured out that I was doing something pretty quickly, as it was only that door that won't stay shut, and only when she tries to shut it. Every time I shut it, it stays shut. I got some wonderful looks from her over that one. Looks, I might add, that came straight from my playbook. Zoë pretty much has Jen's overall look, though her facial expressions are all mine.

Summer has been quite hot down here, but in the last week or two the temperatures have mellowed so we've started taking Zoë to a local park to play. She LOVES the swings. Put her in a swing and push her as high as you can, but you'd better not stop. She gets immediately cranky when the swing stops a swingin'. Of course she has managed to try a few new things at the park including a spinny seat thing, which prompted her discovery of the concept of dizziness. I can't help but feel a little mean for sending that girl's head spinning, but hey, you've got to learn it sometime. Best to do it with adults around, I suppose.



We took Zoë to visit her great grandma over Labor Day weekend. Grandpa Whitner was there as well and we spent a nice weekend playing at the pool and spending time with family.

Zoë proved to have a bit of a death wish at the pool. We've taken her swimming many times in the past. She loves the water and usually hops right into her floaty and enjoys the surf. Unfortunately, we forgot her floaty back home and she had to content herself with being dragged around the pool by the two of us.

At some point I was in the water at the midpoint between the shallow and deep end, and Jen was on the edge of the pool following Zoë around. Zoë typically likes to walk around the pool and check out everything. However, this time she decided to just throw herself in, mindless of the fact that she doesn't know how to swim. I heard her hit the water and immediately dived. I managed to catch her about 4 feet down and brought her back up. She found this hilarious and just laughed and laughed at her brush with mortality. Soon she was attempting to throw herself in any chance she got. We ended up having to suspend all pool activities for the remainder of the visit. (Even after running out to buy some new flotation devices.)

She also has a new habit that she's picked up on her own. She likes to pretend she's a cat. She will frequently throw herself face first into her food and crawl around making meow noises. This lead to her acting the part in front of grandma. Note how she's not satisfied where Jen puts the raisins and will move them before eating. I promise, we did NOT teach her this...



We've decided that we're going to get her into swimming lessons next summer. We'd also like to enroll her in some sort of music program in the future, as she has a strong love for it. This is evidenced by her nightly dancing and hooting to the songs of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. A show, I might add, that we can sing all the songs to and pretty much know all the plots for.

As always, click the pics for a closer look.