an ordinary photograph...

this may look like your average everyday snapshot, but in fact, if you examine it closely, it tells you quite a few things about our little zuzu these days:


1. hats. if you haven't heard already, zuzu likes hats. green hats, cowgirl hats, baseball hats - all kinds of hats. now, zuzu is an outside-of-the-box thinker, so hats can be anything that will sit on your head. if a "hat" has straps or an elastic waistband, it's an added bonus.

2. pants. zuzu doesn't want to wear pants. zuzu wants to wear pants. it's up to her. she likes saying "pants," which usually comes out as "panths." she enjoys taking her pants off (see previous post). this has actually been a little helpful for us when getting her ready for bedtime. i've recently realized that we won't have to do everything for her forever (though, i don't mind). special note: a pair of pants can also be worn as a hat.

3. shoes. zuzu likes shoes. she's liked them from a very young age. she seems to have dozens of pairs - each appropriate for its own occasion. she gets that from her momma, i think.

4. fridge letters. zuzu loves playing with the extra large letters on the refrigerator door. her favorite thing to do is to pull them off of the fridge and onto the floor. in october, she enjoyed putting them into her pumpkin basket, one by one. zuzu is getting pretty good at repeating the names of the letters when we say them to her.

5. fridge pictures. zuzu loves looking at the pictures that we've placed on the refrigerator door. there are pictures of her aunts and uncles, her cousins (even a dog cousin), herself, mommy, and daddy. old pictures. new pictures. we thought putting them inside plastic sleeves or in magnetic frames would protect them from her curious hands, should she decide to take them down. well, she decided to take them down - and has greatly enjoyed shuffling through them on the kitchen floor.

6. catalogs & magazines. zuzu really likes to browse through the various catalogs and magazines we receive. for a while, we had a nice stack behind the corner chair in the living room. behind the chair became her secret spot for relaxing and flipping through pages of pictures of other children - some wearing hats, others playing with water toys. another related activity involves tearing pages out of these publications and scattering them around the living room.

7. fridge access. zuzu has learned that she can open the refrigerator door anytime she wants. even if she's flat out refused to drink her milk or water at mealtime, she'll head straight for the fridge handle within 5 minutes of getting out of her high-chair when she's done eating and grab the leftover beverage to sip at her leisure. sometimes she'll even sit on the bottom ledge of the open fridge and say, "chair!" though this could also be classified as "out-of-the-box thinking," it may be time for a fridge lock.