1st Valentine's Day!

Two of three looking at the camera aint' bad!

Before Zooey was born, Adam and I joked that she wouldn't cramp our style all that much because we already eat and go to bed pretty darn early. So for Valentine's Day, we didn't see how having a 10 month old would prevent us from celebrating this wonderful "Hallmark" holiday with our new Valentine with a nice 5pm dinner out!

The day started out on a good note when Zooey's teachers presented me with Zooey's Valentine's Day gift- a picture of her painting a picture with the actual painting on the reverse side. So neat! This reminded me once again how lucky we are to have excellent child care. Zooey clearly has so much FUN at school. Every morning when I drop her off she is so eager to get to the floor to start exploring!

It was a regular day at work, but as silly as it sounds, all day I was really looking forward to dinner with Adam and Z. I was able to sneak out a little early so I had time to change Zooey into her Valentine's Day dress (one of her shower gifts from my co-workers). Then Z and I walked just a few blocks over to Flour & Stone, a newish pizza place in Streeterville. I'm definitely going to miss being able to walk to so many restaurants and activities when we move, but I know having more space- both in our home and green space in the form of parks- will more than make up for it!

Zooey and I ordered salad, pizza and adult beverages while we waited for Adam. Zooey was super well behaved (as usual) and spent a good 10 minutes ripping up napkins (don't worry, I picked up the pieces that fell to the floor, we are not THOSE people with kids at restaurants!). Z was very excited to see her daddy when he arrived. It is becoming increasingly hard to get good pictures of this girl and almost impossible to get good ones of her smiling because she is ALWAYS MOVING. But I keep trying!

Hi Daddy, can I have your glasses??

Zooey also opened the Valentine's Day present from her Grandma Lilly- a cute spring dress- can't wait for it to warm up so she can wear it!

Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa Lilly!

We were able to get through salad and most of the pizza uneventfully while Zooey enjoyed peas. We then let Z have her first few bites of pizza (crust)! We figured surely she'd love it as much as her mom does! As we marvelled at how well she was handling the seemingly huge bites she was taking, she started coughing. Cough....cough...cough.... BLECH!!! And just like some alien horror movie, out came a huge.....green....stream of peas....all down the front of her dress.

Eating peas.

Eating crust.

She may be our first, but we've got this parenting in public thing nailed and within a few minutes we had her outfit changed, got our food boxed and were out the door. :)

She was fine and in fact fell asleep in the car on the way home which was her Valentine's Day present to us, I think.

Some of you may recall that last year Adam got quite ill at Valentine's Day dinner and wasn't able to get through the really long, lovingly worded card I gave him without a trip to the bathroom with a bucket. Suffice it to say, I'm a little nervous about next year because it must be my turn.....

Hope you all had a great V day!

Due to the great vomitus of 2014, Z opened her gift
from Grandma and Grandpa Nelson today instead:)

Adventures at 10 months!

Zooey turns 10 months old on Monday. She has had a very busy month learning lots of new skills. She has started feeding herself solids much to the absolute excitement of her school teachers, parents, grandparents and great-grandparents! The first food she sought out to feed herself was a bagel. She was at school when her teachers looked over and to their absolute surprise she had a huge bite of bagel in her clutches (and mouth!) that she found on the floor! They immediately took that piece away and put her at the table with a fresh bagel piece which she continued to eat. They promptly videotaped the event and sent it to me a few minutes later. I love the excitement of Zo's teachers - they are as (if not more) excited about Zooey's development as we are!

She also learned how to get herself into a sitting position in the past couple weeks. She does it in an odd way. She basically gets herself into the splits from laying on her belly then pulls her legs around. What a goof! 

Just this week she has started to pull herself to standing. We bought a foam block just in time for her to practice this skill over and over at home. 

Other adventures include playing in (and eating) snow:

Continuing to teethe. (She has two adorable "toofers", I think she's working on more on the right side.):

Brushing the two teeth she has. She loves this and opens her mouth in anticipation as soon as she sees the toothbrush.

Yoga poses....cobra anyone?

She crawls through everything. She loves to conquer obstacles- like crawling through her elephant rocker- even if there is a much easier alternate route to traverse!

That's all for now! Stay tuned for a Valentine's Day post!

Zooey having fun @ 9 months

Z on a beautiful quilt handmade by her great-great aunt and uncle!

Clearly I've been woefully neglectful of this blog of late! The job search process has taken me all over the mid-west and that combined with my job, Adam's job, Z's crazy sleep schedule (that has finally improved!), and just life in general, there was no way to fit in blogging! But I miss taking the time to document Z's shenanigans so I will try to be more consistent over the next few months.



Our job search travels actually took us all the way to Washington State where we had the added perk of getting to visit with my brother and his family. Garrett, Jill and Gwyn were kind enough to drive all the way over the mountain to meet us in Leavenworth for a day of German food and touristy shopping. It was chilly, but fun! You can see how enthralled Zooey is with Cousin!








Zooey still enjoys almost everything she does. She likes baths, traveling, walks and the occasional run (though this has been curtailed of late due to the crazy weather).

Post bath giggles!

We're off for our annual Turkey Trot!

Z is now 9 months old and is becoming more and more fun by the day. She is very interactive and loves to smile, roll around, scoot, crawl over obstacles, read books, and go on adventures of pretty much any kind. Every morning as we take 3 different elevators to school, Z stares down the people on the elevator with us until they look at her then she gives them huge grins. She really sets a great tone to the day for me and the random strangers we encounter!

Smiling with Cousin Maya

Naked baby at Xmas!

I make funny faces when I'm teething!

Post art project.

Z loves school. She rolls and scoots all over the room, reading books to herself, playing with the other kids, doing art projects. We are extremely lucky- her teachers adore her and know WAY more about child development than I do! She is a great eater (finally!) though doesn't show much interest in putting solid food in her own mouth yet. Though she can feed herself a bottle if she's in the mood.

Hmm....what are you going to give me next?

Zo is very open to new experiences and is generally fearless. She isn't bothered by falling, or hitting herself in the face with toys. This weekend we went swimming. She kick, kick, kicked and splashed and had a great time.

Finally, I'll leave you with a really cool pic from Xmas. The bottom photo is me at 11 months at my first Christmas. The top is our baby Z, 8 months old, in the same dress that my mom saved from my first Christmas. I sure had fat cheeks!! I think we are both pretty cute:)