daddy and the governor

(Rev. 6/1) VIDEO now available: go here and click on the Cable Franchise Bill story to play the video. (Note: the video may not be available after a couple of days.)

Zuzu's birthday card to Ty said that she likes the exciting stories he tells, he is funny, and that she is proud of the special things he's done. Now we can add "TV appearance with the governor" to the list.

Ty made the 10 o'clock news. Too bad Zuzu was crying at the time so we couldn't tune in, plus our TV antenna doesn't really work these days anyway, but swarms of faithful friends (okay, one person we know of) saw his appearance. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an online broadcast on KGAN, but Ty is quoted in the online summary of the news story.

Text version: http://www.kgan.com/csArticles/articles/000037/003773.htm

p.s. okay, so ty wasn't really with the governor in the interview. but only three people were interviewed and the governor was one and ty was another one, so that's still exciting, right? and just to clarify if you read it -- ty works for the city's community television service, not public access.

can you hear us?

Baby monitors are pretty handy devices. We set up the base unit of Zuzu’s monitor, which has the mic, in our bedroom for now since that’s where her bassinette is. Right off the bat we discovered, at Ty’s expense, that it picks up all the sounds from our adjacent bathroom too, which immediately led to some practical jokes. We also randomly whisper things into the mic to make the other person laugh somewhere else in the house, especially when late night tired silliness kicks in. Oh, and we do use it to hear Zuzu too.

Last week I was perplexed when Zuzu’s baby monitor didn’t pick up the click-click sound of her swing while she was in our bedroom. It turns out I had forgotten to turn on the base unit, but I was still hearing things through the receiver: a child’s muffled voice, the clang of a pan, footsteps running past the mic. We had picked up interference from another baby monitor in the area.

For about the first five seconds after discovering this, we thought the idea of hearing someone else’s monitor was pretty entertaining, especially since we don’t watch much TV these days… until we were mortified by the realization that if we could hear someone else, someone else could hear us.

Needless to say, we’re grateful for good neighbors, who may have been just as flabbergasted as we were upon learning we were capable of picking up each other’s monitors, but were quite gracious about the whole thing. If they heard our bathroom pranks they were kind enough not to share that with us, although I’d have to say one thing: that would make for some great blog material.

On Saturday Zuzu made her first visit to Ames (also her first long car trip) to see Jenn’s family -- Zuzu’s Ama & Poppa, her aunt, uncle, and cousins. Ama and Poppa hadn’t seen Zuzu since mid-April and the Francos hadn’t seen her since she was six days old, so all week leading up to the trip Ty and I were eager for everyone to see how much she’d changed. She was loved, loved, loved every minute of her visit, and neither cuddles nor cameras were in short supply. It was especially exciting to see her two older cousins' adoration for their new little cousin, particularly since they have ample baby experience with their little sister, and both older girls are quite intuitive when it comes to little ones. They were quick to tend to Zuzu’s needs, hold her, play with her, tell her they love her, and provide a commentary of her actions. Even her youngest cousin, who turned one just a few days after Zuzu’s birth, was very curious about the “Ba! Ba!” (baby) and wanted to touch her when they were close.

smile and the world smiles with you

Today was the greatest afternoon with Zuzu. I just love that girl. We sang and bounced, read, explored different textures, practiced tracking objects, cuddled, watched a family of ground squirrels that apparently live in a hole in our front yard, and enjoyed her latest discovery: her fist.

Lately she has been showing more interest in faces and will often respond with smiles, wiggles or wide eyes to the different expressions Ty & I make for her. Since she was pretty alert and happy this afternoon, I put a mirror in front of her to see what she would do. Soon she began to smile and kick her arms and legs in jubilation for the baby in the mirror – herself. Then I grabbed the camera, aimed it at her, and flipped the screen around so she could see herself. The same response: happy, happy, happy. Today when I sang there was Zuzu, looking back at me, mouth gaping open in a huge grin interspersed with drawn out sounds as if she was trying to sing back.

Above is Zuzu’s reaction to seeing herself on the camera screen.

where do you put the baby?

Recently our fridge started to get bare – really bare – and we were desperate for a trip to the grocery store. Since neither of us had tried grocery shopping with Zuzu alone, we waited for a day when all three of us could go together. However, when we grabbed a cart at the store we were perplexed how to go about securely putting Zuzu’s carseat on the cart.

“Um, there are no directions on this cart” said Ty, puzzled, as we jiggled the upper rack. Everything we tried seemed a little precarious. The longer we stood there, the clearer I thought I recalled an episode of 20/20 warning of shopping carts tipping over, baby and all, if the carrier was installed wrong. I pondered asking someone for help but felt a little silly (before Zuzu, if I’d seen another couple fumbling around trying to get their carrier containing an itty bitty baby hooked on the front of the grocery cart, I might have been guilty of thinking they weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed). So we decided to do what most hungry, fridge-bare people lacking shopping cart/baby carrier instructions would do, and simply put the carrier containing Zuzu directly in the cart.

Except she took up the entire cart.

“There’s got to be someone else in here with a carrier on the shopping cart,” one of us muttered thinking we’d simply look to see how it was done, and we set off down the aisle. Hmm, good idea, except everyone’s cart was baby-free.

“Let’s see -- bread, buns, is there anything else we need?”

We quickly envisioned trying to shove a big sweaty gallon of milk and a carton of eggs in the cart, except the only place left to put food was on top of her. Instead we pushed our cart containing two food items and a baby to the checkout line.

(The next day a friend, who is also a new mom, explained how the carseat securely attaches to the shopping cart and affirmed that she initially was mystified too – fortunately we weren’t alone -- after all, how would you know how to do it unless someone showed you?)