a nap? are you joking?

After all the Thanksgiving festivities and visiting both families, Zuzu was tuckered out from fun and therefore her body clock decided sleeping was silly and unnecessary. Imagine that! Mommy and Daddy thought much differently, but despite our efforts we had an overtired girl and tired parents. After night #3 of Zuzu not wanting to sleep (and finally on Saturday night her dinner making a surprise reappearance in her crib as a result of letting her cry it out), she settled down for a nap just before it was time to go to church on Sunday morning. Seriously hoping for a good nap for her, we stayed home so she could get some rest.

Her nap was short lived and she was wide awake. Out of ideas to get her back down to snooze, I wound up taking pictures (she's just too cute). This is her "I Heart My Cat" pose (by the way, she's started saying "eh-wa" when she sees Emma!):

...and this is her "Tired? Maybe a little. But take a nap? You must be kidding" pose:

...and life is interesting in the laundry basket:

...but hee hee hee, there's no way I'm sleeping:

wire zuzu

Pictured above is a wire sculpture that Maddie made for her cousin Zuzu. Can you guess who it is? It's Zuzu when she's older! I love her long curly hair and the fact that she's not afraid to wear a big beret the size of her head (if I remember correctly, Maddie said she put that on her because the sculpture had a bald spot...which Zuzu really does right now, only it's in the back). She's got on a funky top that, if it were real, I'd suspect may have come from a thrift shop (that's my girl!) or maybe is a hand-me-down from one of her older cousins, a chic scarf, and nifty purse (love the orange strap). And, she's wearing purple flip-flops. A very spunky girl!

thanksgiving!

zuzu's first thanksgiving started out with monkey bread, fresh from the oven. though she wasn't able to enjoy it in the same way that jenn and i did, she did get a chance to take a good look at it and perhaps breathe in its warm, gooey goodness.

we're all about enjoying classic holiday family traditions here, so next on the list was turning on the macy's thanksgiving day parade, mainly to just have on in the background - to create atmosphere. normally, we don't have zuzu watching tv, so she was quite curious about the activity taking place. even when turned in her exersaucer to face the other way, she insisted on twisting around to see the next float, balloon, band, or performance.

i started noticing how everything was so carefully orchestrated to blend smoothly into the advertising. the latest barbie super-princess mega-dream castle float featured a "live" barbie, singing about her perfect life (or something like that), then transitioned to a strategically positioned commercial alerting viewers to the newly available super-princess mega-dream castle DVD. ech! okay, the "corporate marketing machine" may have put me under its enchanting spell when i was a kid, but they can't have my zuzu! so i turned off the tv and we enjoyed some holiday music until it was time for a morning snooze-break.

after zuzu's naptime, we headed up to see my family for an afternoon and evening of thanksgiving feasting and fun. on the way, we took some time to talk about some of the things for which we are very thankful. loving families and friends, good health, and a happy home were found on the list, with zuzu being the number one answer on our board this year! thank you, god, for such a wonderful little girl. thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

everyone had a good time being together and playing with zuzu and dayten, her 6-month old cousin. we enjoyed a bountiful meal of turkey, dressing, potatoes (mashed and sweet), cranberry sauce, and more. we put zuzu down for her afternoon nap in the middle of the meal, which offered me a good chance to take a break from stuffing myself. i eventually made it back to the table to finish off an additional helping of some fine sweet potato casserole (thanks, julie!), turkey, and mashed potatoes.

zuzu's napping didn't last too long, so jenn and i spent a good hour and a half or more encouraging her to sleep by lying down with her on the floor and then on the bed. all the excitement of a festive family environment must have wound her up quite a bit, but eventually she fell asleep for about an hour. a bit later, we enjoyed some pie and took some family pictures.

it was a good thanksgiving, indeed!

pics

Ahh, the wee hours of the night. Zuzu is asleep, the house is quiet, and we have an internet connection. Before one of those things change I will quickly post a few recent pictures taken before bedtime a few nights ago. Now that Zuzu is really getting places with her rolling, we sometimes take advantage of that extra energy just before bedtime to help ensure that she wears herself out a bit to make sleep come more easily. Sometimes it works and sometimes it backfires! This was one of those evenings she was on the go... The little scratches on Zuzu's forehead were Zuzu's own work (not Emma's!) but were the reason why I snuck in her room to trim her nails at 2 a.m. last Saturday.

tootsie roll

Zuzu was a tootsie roll for Halloween, an adorable costume courtesy of her cousin Ella -- note that Zuzu is so long we couldn't cinch the bottom of the costume. Late in the afternoon Margarita dressed Zuzu in her costume, along with the three boys Margarita also cares for (Zuzu’s “big brothers”), and took the kids for an annual Halloween costume parade in her neighborhood. Margarita made her a little fleecy treat bag (which Zuzu reportedly held onto with success!). Below are some pics passed along to us by one of the parents -- Zuzu outside and with Margarita: That evening we briefly took Zuzu trick-or-treating to say happy Halloween to a few of our neighbors, some of whom hadn’t seen Zuzu in a while. Admittedly, we wanted to show off how cute she looked. We have such friendly neighbors (and I’m not just saying that since I know who reads the blog) so it was a good excuse to be, well, neighborly, since sometimes we’re so busy we don’t get to see them much.

big mess

Halloween also was the Great Basement Jack Hammering Day. It was a lot of work to get things ready for this project and it was only the beginning!



Okay, so you can see there are piles of things everywhere that came from downstairs. Mattress propped against the dining room wall, stacks of things, boxes, lamps, displaced dining room chairs, etc. When this is all over I am going to have to post a video of our house when it's together just to prove we don't live like packrats. But I admit, that is a lot of laundry; however, in our defense it was laundry sorting time and without the laundry room the sorting happened on the living room floor!

Emma was boarded (jack hammering sounds can be scary). I came home from work to find big barrels of concrete chunks in the driveway ready to be hauled off, and a thick layer of concrete dust coating the walls and floors downstairs, clinging to every object in our garage, and sneaking upstairs despite the plastic barrier. We were thrilled to turn the furnace back on in the wee hours of Friday morning after our first clean up attempt while wearing masks and goggles – that stuff is nasty -- although more rounds of cleanup remain. What a project! We are really crossing our fingers that in late November, three and a half months after the flooding, that this whole thing can be done and the house can be back to normal.

One good thing that came out of this is that we discovered we have hardwood stairs in the house. A neighbor tipped us off and after prying up not one but two layers of gross carpet and chiseling away disintegrated carpet padding, we found a little treasure, or at least great potential, in our entryway stairs! See, didn’t we say that the wet basement would mean a house project that grows exponentially? Maybe we’ll table working on the stairs until the spring. Now I’m itching to see what lies beneath the living room carpet (besides more carpet).

bananas

Zuzu’s Poppa (Norm) will be thrilled to know that she ate his favorite food on Saturday for the first time. Yes, bananas. Dad, I’m sorry to say she gagged on them, but we’ll keep trying.