highchair entertainment

zuzu has been providing us with plenty of drama lately. enjoy the show!

valentine's day love

our valentine's day was full of zuzu's love and sweetness. here's a little taste of what we got to enjoy this morning from our favorite valentine...



we are the luckiest people in the world, without a doubt!

getting some "Z" before getting some ZZZs

nighttime has been pretty entertaining at our home lately. watching zuzu play freely, explore, discover, and generally have a good time is way better than watching the latest reality tv show, so i thought i'd give you a taste of some of what she's been up to.

christmas could be different...

for the last several years, we've been wanting to create a christmas experience for ourselves (and now for our little zuzu) that focuses more on jesus - and his coming to earth to show us what he and the rest of the trinity is all about - and less on buying and receiving. honestly... it's not easy and we've made very little progress.

this christmas, however, we're needing to seriously cut back - due to a number of unexpected expenses over the last year or so - which actually ends up helping us to step closer to our goal of spending less time and money buying and more time enjoying the true spirit of the season with our family, friends, and community.

this year, jenn and i rented and watched "what would jesus buy," a documentary that takes an entertaining look at the current consumeristic condition of christmas in america and encourages us to envision what christmas was like "before all the shopping began." if you really think about it, i'm betting that people weren't feeling an emptiness, a void, that could only be filled by material goods. imagine the activities that might have been happening in place of the craziness and busyness of shopping, the buying, and the getting.

recently, i discovered the following video on a couple of friends' blogs and it really struck me as something which captures the hopes i've had growing inside of me, more and more, year after year, christmas after christmas. it's an idea worth spreading, so i thought i'd pass it on.

kitchen counter tricks

zuzu's home with a fever today, so i thought i'd take advantage of some time during her morning nap to show you what she has been up to lately.

this is what i found her doing in our kitchen the other day...



look out, christmas tree!

2009 costume preview

zuzu had so much fun this halloween that she decided to get a jump start on next year by testing out a new costume idea. as you'll see, she was kind of hoping to keep it a secret - hence, she was a bit evasive - but i was able to get you a sneak peek.



she wouldn't let me in on the specifics, but i'm thinking...
1. bee keeper
2. bank robber
3. hollywood mosquito wrangler

what do you think?

(by the way - zuzu's "mask" was a zippered laundry bag for delicate items.  zuzu also tried out some of the "delicate items" as masks, too, but i thought maybe jenn would appreciate it if i didn't post those images!)

Texas Toast

No, she’s not a sandwich. Look closer. Texas toast, get it? Cute enough to nibble and homemade to boot.

Tata had her annual costume parade and early trick-or-treating around her neighborhood (somehow she and Tato got all the kids in costume, up and down the street with no one crying and Zuzu managed to keep her hat and boots on). We caught up with them late in the day. Adorable, huh?

Then we were off to Hy-Vee’s Halloween activities. We declined the candy, but Zuzu did get a balloon:

…a free picture, and a pumpkin cookie. When half the cookie fell in the floor by the meat department, Zuzu had a meltdown (despite the fact that the other half of the cookie was stuffed in her mouth – keep in mind, she doesn’t get sweets very often), so we wound up giving her the cookie back. You’ve got to pick your battles. One more stop by the frozen foods so she could get her picture with her costume’s namesake:

…then we headed home to visit some of the neighbors. The night ended with Zuzu ripping into a sucker, which she ate while standing frozen for five minutes at the Steele’s doorstep. This was quite a feat for a 19-month old wearing a cowboy hat and two large pieces of bread. She must’ve known we would take it away if she tried to walk with it in her mouth. She also saw two dogs, got licked by one bigger than her, and cheerily patted the Grim Reaper down the street. A good Halloween.

sweet dreamer

zuzu's fever hasn't affected her attitude or behavior much, but it has made her a bit sleepier these past couple of days. when naptime rolls around and it's my job to put her down, i often try to enjoy the perks of such a task by letting her fall asleep on my chest while we sit in the rocker. with her fever, zuzu's level of sweetness has been equally elevated to a higher level - her warmth and soft sighs against me are like smelling chocolate-chip cookies fresh out of the oven... so sweet!

this afternoon, zuzu was so zonked that when i eventually put her in her crib, she slept in the position in which she landed - arms and legs tucked into a big self-hug.

i caught a bit of this sweetness on tape and put in some music from plumb along with it. it seemed to fit so perfectly.

enjoy this, another slice of zuzu.

keep it simple...

once again, it's been a while since we've posted. we're trying to figure out ways to keep the blog-flow going and have a theory that a "keep it simple" approach may be the way for us to go in this season. post a picture or a bit of video, a couple of sentences, and you're set! as we all know, even just a drop of little zuzu in our life will keep us happy for some time.

this week, tata has been on vacation, so on monday and tuesday my mom (grandma) watched zuzu during the day. yesterday, i took over and began three days of "daddy-duty." unfortunately zuzu developed a fever on tuesday night/wednesday morning, which meant my plans of grand adventures (you know - like hot-air balloon riding, roller-coasting, and, say... mall-walking) had to be put on hold till a later date. today during lunch, i decided to entertain zuzu with a little comedy to lift her spirits. and i kept it simple... the ol' hiccup routine. works every time.

zuzu's first birthday

well, it’s been over two weeks since zuzu celebrated day three-hundred sixty-five and people are starting to talk. here’s the (long overdue) scoop on the celebrations that took place in honor of her very first birthday.

zuzu plays a video game!

zuzu has really been enjoying her ability to pull herself up and stand. last week, we had paused a DVD we were watching during dinner (a special - and rare - "feel-better" treat for a sick jenn) when zuzu noticed the moving screen saver graphic and took advantage of the opportunity to practice her hand-eye coordination skills.



she cracks us up!

exploration

zuzu's been seeking out many opportunities for learning and discovery lately. here's a recent experiment she conducted with her hands.



notice how she checks to make sure that the coast is clear - and that an upset emma isn't lurking around the corner - before leaving the scene of the cri- uh, er... experiment? i told her that since it's emma's bowls she's playing with, any spare fingers found there are fair game for nibblin'. actually, the more zuzu has been moving around, the more emma seems to recognize who the boss of the house really is.

dinner theatre

when zuzu hits the highchair these days, we know we're in for a real show.

recent pics

can we really EVER get enough of this girl?!

yogurt, anyone?

In an effort to expand Zuzu's repertoire of mealtime fare, lately we've been introducing a variety of new foods. Anyone who has seen Zuzu attempt a new food, appear to dislike it and try again can attest that her willingness to eat what's put in front of her was not inherited whatsoever from her mother, who was labeled as "picky from birth". Thankfully so far she seems to have gotten Ty's genes for food tasting; he will eat anything and everything placed in front of him unless he's seriously ill or is served mushroom stroganoff, a big mistake from early in our marriage and the only time Jenn has ever seen him refuse a meal. Case in point: the other day we tried to feed her some plain yogurt, her introduction to sour(ish) food. The result? Hilarious. Perhaps you will find it entertaining too.

fun with every day objects

Though Zuzu received plenty of actual toys for Christmas, we still find ways to make use of things around the house to keep her entertained.

hang on

Hooray for a baby who likes to take a bath! On most nights, a rub-a-dub-dub is part of Zuzu's bedtime routine. While we've tried graduating to a bath seat, Zuzu still likes her blue baby tub; and we like it because her bath toys (a ruber duckie and a firefly) don't usually wander too far. She always tilts her head back when her hair gets rinsed (she takes advantage of this opportunity to try to lick any water that runs down her chin) and has yet to lay a giant poo in the tub. So in a nutshell, she's very cooperative when it comes to bath time.

Last night, however, instead of grabbing onto duckie or the firefly, she clung to the side of the baby tub for dear life (don't worry, she wasn't really in any danger). It cracked us up (the spinach she eats must be making her strong!).

p.s. Zuzu, if you see this when you're older, Mommy didn't pixilate your bum for the video. It's just so darn cute.

that's entertainment

Some days, it feels like we entertain Zuzu as much as she entertains us. Lately she enjoys sitting in her high chair and watching us disappear and reappear from behind the other side of the kitchen counter. Even though it's me (Jenn) behind the scenes in this video, she seems to like it most when it's Ty hiding and popping up. The more she figures out what we're doing, the harder we have to try to get a good giggle or jump out of her!

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).

sunday morning nap

We went away on our fall trip for two nights recently. We followed Zuzu's routine -- like clockwork. Somehow, "strange place" and "schedule" didn't fit with Zuzu's plans, so her sleep cycle got thrown off, leading to an out-of-character tired and cranky girl. On Sunday morning I was so delighted to have her successfully go down for her morning nap that I decided to take a quick video of my sweet sleeper. Here's what happened.