news from the homefront

We’ve been working on the sitting thing for a while but Zuzu has been more interested in assisted standing, which has been fine with us, and we’ve figured when she’s ready to sit she will so we haven’t pushed it. On Saturday while we were in Ames visiting family, she was perched on my lap for a bit before I realized she was sitting! I took away my hands and she sat there for a couple of minutes without falling over – and a roomful of witnesses to vouch that she sat by herself for the first time.

On an unrelated note, last night we met with the contractor to remedy the problem that caused a very wet basement in August. Remember how I said that having our basement flood would turn into a house project that grows exponentially? The foundation of our house says welcome, Mr. Jackhammer and hello Mrs. Drainage System! How lovely to meet you, Miss Backup Sump Pump! Make yourself comfortable, Madame Exterior Drainage Line! We’re thinking that removing the contents and shelves from our storage room is going to be loads of fun (note overtones of sarcasm), but not nearly as exciting as pulling up part of our deck (anyone have experience with this?).

p.s. we’ve really appreciated some of the recent comments – zuzu likes knowing that people read her blog!

why i normally don't drink caffeine

almost midnight, in our bed...

queen of the castle

Look who finally has a high chair! Eating rice cereal AND oatmeal these days certainly calls for proper seating options for our little babe. We have never before been so excited about something largely vinyl and plastic in our home. Zuzu seems to like her new perspective and we really enjoy no longer squatting on the floor to feed her in the bumbo. But she did look awfully cute in that, too.

under the weather

Zuzu has been sick for the past few days. Poor kiddo. Just a virus but her first time officially being sick still felt like a milestone. Sometime last week she started an occasional dry cough (only I thought she was merely exploring this aspect of her vocalization and enjoying the attention). Late last week we noticed her cheeks were pretty red plus her nose was a little runny (but no fever), and chalked it up to spending time outside in the cooler weather. By Saturday she wasn’t quite herself and she began to look a bit speckled… hmm, we wondered if she was reacting to our laundry detergent. But by Sunday morning she had a croupy cough – out came the humidifier -- and her spotted appearance gave way to a definite rash. At one point she looked a little beat up between the rash and eyelids red from rubbing them and of course her relative patheticness melted my heart. She didn’t sleep well Monday night (which meant no one slept well) and didn’t have much interest in her cereal either. There was no going to Margarita’s on Monday or Tuesday (and I felt terribly guilty for not being the parent to stay home with her) but Ty enjoyed two full days with his girl.

ninja dad

On Wednesday night Zuzu attended her first kids’ birthday party – the three boys at Margarita’s celebrated their third birthdays together. When I walked in the door, Zuzu was wearing a party hat and man, she looked smashing with the pointy hat on her head and the little elastic band under her chin.

When we got home from the party, I spotted a creepy-crawly on the vaulted ceiling in the kitchen and mentioned it to Ty. I think my, ahem, distaste for bugs has created an instinctual reaction in him, because with ninja-like stealthness Ty flung one leg up and lept onto the kitchen counter and started to reach a Kleenex up in the air. With un-ninja-like intuition, he didn’t recognize the ceiling fan whipping around with a 100 watt bulb glaring out like a beacon that says “I’m on!”. If it wasn’t for the spike in his hair, he would’ve never felt the fan blades graze against his head, which caused him to duck and gash his lip on the top of the cabinets. I’m pretty sure the spider was laughing inside as Ty cried out to the cabinets for getting in his way. If you see Ty, please commend him for his heroic attempts at saving his poor wife and innocent baby from the spider in the kitchen.

And today I ran over a squirrel while taking Zuzu to Margarita’s house. I think tomorrow we’ll buy a lottery ticket in hopes of bulking up Zuzu’s college fund.

rice cereal

The time finally arrived this week for Zuzu to eat rice cereal -- her first taste of anything other than breastmilk. She seemed to love this new experience (actually, she seems to love just about anything in life), which made feeding time quite nice for us. Here's a video clip of her first feeding -- that's her real smile in the video after the first bite.