Who Took Our Daughter?

I think I'm being unbiased when I say that Zadie has always been an unusually calm, content, and overall easy baby. But over the past week or so, some other personality seems to have overtaken our sweet angel Zadie. She has started screaming/growling when she wants something.

I'm sure you're familiar with the behavior because you've seen other kids do it -- their mom takes away something and then they scream because they're mad. But somehow I didn't think MY kid was going to do that. It's like Zadie has all of the sudden discovered that she can cry not only because she's sleepy or hungry, but also because she's mad or because she wants something.

So I'm not a big fan of this new stage and I'm soliciting advice on what to do when your kid starts crying if they don't get what they want. I have tried talking to her sternly (what I will call the "Hal Kuykendall" approach), but that doesn't seem to work and for some reason cracks Tori completely up. Tori's approach is to try and ignore it as much as possible and reinforce her when she's not growling. I'm sure that's a far better approach.

I hope she's not going to be like this during the holidays with all the family members!

Grandaddy Hal

My mom and I took Zadie to get her follow-up flu shot today and she weighed 19 lbs 4 oz.

I really love this video of my dad and Zadie. It's really sweet!

Zadie has always loved her Granddaddy Hal. In fact, he was the first person to elicit her belly laugh when she was only a few months old. She particularly likes his singing, which you'll see in the video. My dad used to sing me these very same songs. And, of course, he always told me that he taught Willie Nelson how to sing and I got in huge arguments with people, notably Pat Stender, insisting that he DID teach Willie Nelson how to sing.

Thanksgiving

I wanted to do this much sooner, but I'm finally posting a few photos from Thanksgiving. We all went to Julian and spent it in the mountains. I thought about it a long time and I decided this was my favorite Thanksgiving ever. First of all, I think the food was better than any other time. Mom, you have to make those same mashed potatoes next time! But more than just the food, it was so cool to hang out with everyone and play lots of cards, Scrabble, pool, king of the jungle, etc. I had lots of fun with my nephews and nieces -- it was a great time.

I really like this bathtub photo of Zadie and her cousins. Don't ask me why they're wearing rabbit ears -- my mom just thinks they're cute and likes to put them on the girls. The photo of me and Zadie and Tori was taken in downtown Julian and we were dancing with Zadie sandwiched in the middle. And I LOVE the photo of Zadie in the basket on my mom's tandem bike. A similar photo will be featured on our Christmas card, which I'll post later.

Zadie is mostly a really amazing baby. She's very happy and full of smiles, even though we sometimes push and wake her up by dragging her all over the place. We're very lucky. She's ten months old now and loves to stand up and hold on to the coffee table and carefully edge around it. She only has the one tooth, but she's eating lots of different kinds of solids and is pretty good at gumming stuff.

A Tooth!

I've been so overwhelmed by all the things that I want to post about that I can't find the time to write it all down. So I'm just going to start chipping away at it with this one little post.

Zadie's first tooth appeared on Monday, December 1st, at exactly 10 months. She didn't fuss at all -- it just appeared. Our little Zadie is a trooper. It's one of her bottom teeth, right in the middle and there's another one next to it that I predict will appear soon because her gum is a different color there.