Fun Zadie

I decided it's time I throw a little love Zadie's way and post a video. This is "fun Zadie." I'll spare you all the "tantrum-throwing Zadie." I really wanted to get a video of Zadie going underwater in the pool because she's really good at it, but unfortunately she got really distracted by a water gun and it didn't happen. But it's still cute because she's jumping around and showing how happy she is to be in the water -- despite the fact that she apparently had a double ear infection and we were oblivious. Oops!

And how about this pool? Doesn't it make you want to visit my parents? It's a pretty nice spot!

Chug-a-lug

Here's Skip right after his bath. I call this his investment banker hairdo because I brushed it so perfectly flat and boring -- my mom prefers it when we give him the faux hawk.

Skip is doing a lot of chug-a-lugging. He's been eating 6oz every three hours since he was two weeks and it's really starting to show! The little guy who seemed so teensy now has a double chin, big cheeks, and rolls on his thighs. I took these photos today because I feel like his looks have changed so much recently.

Here's one of us outside on a cool summer night. It's cute how Skip is looking right at the camera.

Uncle Hank

I think everyone already knows this, but Uncle Hank is our "manny." He's been taking great care of Zadie since she was about 6 months old -- home with her four days a week and then going to school at night. Hank lives in our basement, so he just pops up at 8:15am when I need to head to work, which is quite convenient. I feel very thankful to have such a good childcare situation and it makes me happy that Zadie and now Skip have a male presence in their daily lives.

Zadie LOVES her Uncle Hank. For those of you who don't know him, he's really quite difficult to describe. I don't think you will ever meet anyone with a kinder and gentler spirit -- he's certainly much more kind and patient than I am! Uncle Hank can match any child in terms of his ability to play for hours and to make up elaborate imaginative schemes. Zadie and Skip get to learn about all kinds of things that they would never hear from me about -- like the solar system and science fiction and fantasy animal creatures and all kinds of stuff that I have no idea about. And Uncle Hank also helps toughen these kids up -- he teaches Zadie to dust herself off when she tumbles and to push herself to the next level at the playground. You should see him get her flying on the see-saw! She definitely gets some air time.

Hank also is a willing participant in "Mommy and Me" classes. He hangs out with the local moms at Zadie's music classes and swim classes. And, when he's not doing that, he takes Zadie to the park almost every single day.

I know that Zadie and Skip will have great memories of their Uncle Hank!

Reflections on Zadie @ 18 Months

Above: Zadie wearing Grandma Linda's crazy birthday hat.

Zadie had her 18-month checkup yesterday and she's had a big growth spurt. She measured 34.5 inches (100th percentile!), weighed 25 lbs, 2 oz (70th percentile), and had a head circumference of 19 inches (a precipitous drop to the 90th percentile). Sadly, she also has outer ear infections in both ears and we're now putting drops in her ears -- the doctor said she was quite the trooper to not have complained!

I've been thinking a lot lately about Zadie and how developed her personality already is. Maybe it's partly because I've been hanging out with Skip and I often wonder what his personality is going to be like when he gets older. So I want to jot down some observations about Zadie at 18 months so that she can look back on this later and see if she thinks some of these core elements about her personality hold true.

• This kid is sassy. One thing you have to say about Zadie is that she has personality, for better or for worse! Given ideal conditions (outdoors and lots of fruit on hand), Zadie can be the most charming and adorable kid you've ever seen. Grandma Linda always talks about Zadie's special twinkle in her eye. But just as surely as she has a twinkle, she's also got some little horns that can come out! This typically happens when she is not allowed to have some piece of fruit that she sees or is prevented from doing something she is really fixated on. Then she can deliver a ruckus. It surprises me a little that my child is so capable of loud ruckuses (given my calm and even-keeled nature!), but I think she has what I'm diagnosing as "Early Onset Terrible Twos." So I definitely think she will grow out of this stage, but in the meantime I will continue to marvel about how sweet her sweet is and how sour her sour is.

• She may have my genes, but she's got Tori's personality. In the ongoing debate over nature versus nurture, chalk this one up to nurture. I think Zadie looks a lot like me, but she acts just like Tori. Here's how:

1. Obsessed with the outdoors. Even when she was an infant, we could always calm Zadie down by taking her outside and letting her feel the breeze on her face and look around. Now, as a toddler, her favorite thing is to be outside at a park or, even better...
2. Swimming! Like Tori, Zadie is a die-hard beach-goer. We decided early on to let her embrace the full beach experience and she would eat handfuls of sand and go charging into the waves even when the water was freezing. Some of my favorite pictures of her are ones my sister took of her covered in sand in Hawaii. She also loves to swim at my parents pool in San Diego, which has been great fun.
3. Mechanical? As everyone knows, I am the last person you would ever want to ask to fix something. I struggle to put together Pack 'N Plays, pack the trunk of a car, and even arrange chairs in a room. But somehow Zadie is amazingly mechanical and one of her favorite activities is finding random keys and picking the lock to the cupboard in our kitchen. She's picked it open so many times that it's actually hard to open with the correct key and Grandma Linda gets frustrated trying to open it and has to call Zadie over to help! Zadie could also buckle and unbuckle straps for hours and hours.
4. Rough around the edges. Tori is not a quiet person. She talks loudly, laughs loudly, bangs dishes loudly, and generally lives life loudly (I love you, Tori!). Zadie seems to be cut from the same cloth. She greatly enjoys slamming doors and generally barrels her way through life. I'm relieved and surprised that there haven't been any stitches yet.

• Zadie loves her mama. Although originally we were going to be called Mama T and Mama K, that has now evolved into Mama (Tori) and Mommy (Kate). Zadie's very favorite word is Mama! She can't quite say Mommy and she sometimes uses Mama to refer to me, but most of her "mamas" are directed at the one and only Tori. Since Zadie loves being busy (very unlike me), she loves to follow Tori around and watch everything she does. She particularly loves to watch Tori cook, sew, water the plants, and fix things. It's really quite adorable.

• It's all about the fruit. Yes, I realize most kids like fruit. But this is something completely different. This is a total fixation on fruit, to the exclusion of all other foods. Zadie is madly in love with fruit. Her preference is for berries, and blueberries are her very favorite. When she visits my parents' house, my mom gives her buckets of the stuff and her diapers are purple. Although we are appreciative that her favorite food isn't, say, hot dogs, this fruit obsession results in daily battles over foods. It's miraculous to me that Zadie has grown so much on such a poor diet. She pretty much boycotts all other foods. My mother sees this as divine retribution, given what a terribly picky eater I was.

• MORE! Tori did not want me to neglect mentioning Zadie's other favorite word. "More" was the first and primary sign that we taught Zadie and it has kind of become her mantra, her guiding vision, and her reason for being. Her cousins Nick and Austin loved watching her frantically signing for more fruit in Hawaii (I'll post a video of her signing later). Now that she can actually verbalize it, her "more" comes across as quite demanding and bossy. We're trying to teach her to throw a "please" on the end of it, but so far that hasn't stuck.

Skip Smiles...For Real

Just a quick report to say that Skip smiled yesterday. Not randomly and not because of gas, but really in response to us smiling and looking at him. Since then we've had two or three smiles, but they have been great. Today I got one that was huge!

Skip Bonds With Hal and Denise

If you look closely at this photo, you can actually see Skip smiling!

Zadie and Skip and I got back today from four days with my parents. Zadie had her usual fun swimming in the pool, including with her cousins Nick and Austin. But what was special about the weekend was that my parents really got to bond with Skip. They had met him for a few hours a few weeks prior, but this time they really got to know what a good baby Skip is and they showered him with love and attention.

My dad was able to squeeze in some holding time, but my mom was pretty attached to Skip (or vice versa) the whole 4-day weekend. She didn't want anyone else to hold him or feed him and she sang him lots of songs and rocked him. It made me really happy to see him getting so much TLC because I have to admit that it's harder to give that time when you have a second child. Luckily Skip has many people in his life already who love him. Grandma Linda was here on the very first day we brought Skip home and she got to spend a week holding him and whispering in his ear. And now Grandma Denise got his turn.

Tori missed little Skip and she is sitting next to me right now feeding him. I think Skip just got way cuter all of the sudden -- probably because he is fattening up so nicely. He is a really good baby and we are feeling lucky! I just wish he would sleep a little bit longer during the night, but I'll save that discussion for a future blog post.