Thats alota snot. No itsnot. Exactly.

Yesterday was Sunday, the day usually set aside to think about food for the week. But yesterday was also apparently the day for snot. So I ate cinnamon rolls for dinner and my daughter just wiped her nose on my shirt and my jeans and the floor and her blankie and occassionally she'd scream while I wiped her snot on a tissue.





Poor kid. Today her nose is all red and it's still running... where it is going and when it will stop, nobody knows.

Until then.. here's one of our favorite WTF? Zola moments. She has these often.

Grant is almost done with his cold and mine is still towards the beginning I think... sore throat, to be followed by sneezing and snot.





Maybe I'll feel like thinking about food later... hopefully after I wash the dishes that have now breached the counter and moved on to the stove.

Magical Moment

I love that magical moment- when we find the exact second Zola needs to take a nap- when she nurses and takes herself off (!) and then she climbs up on my shoulder and snuggles in and I feel her warm, milk-sweet, baby breath on my neck. And then she actually lets me put her in her bed and without complaint she grabs her blankie and bunny and curls up to sleep. sigh. Magic.

Sunday is for FOOD

Menu thoughts for this week.

- i have some marinating, raw green peppers and onions and zucchini leftover from grilling out last night... i think i will put them in a baking dish with some chicken and some sweet potato chunks and bake it all together for a while... maybe with some rice.

- chicken tortilla soup (from our freezer)

- pizza for friday (so far I've done, chicken barbecue, french bread, my own crust w/ vegies... perhaps we'll try english muffins?)

H.A.B.

This evening I'm sitting at the computer reading through my daily blogs (read: trying to spend 5 minutes ALONE after an entire day spent with family)... when Grant sidles up next to me and proceeds to fill the entire space around us with a cloud of dense, ass-stink. As I begin to hurl he mentions that he may have eaten a lot of hummus earlier.

Pretty sure I'm never making hummus again. Or if I do I will just put it right out in the open on a refrigerator shelf where he will never find it.

As the smell becomes more and more repugnant I informed him that I would be blogging about this incident.

"Emily. We're going to have to lay down some ground rules for blogging" he says.

I ignore him.

"Remember the 'Craigslist Incident'?" He scrapes the last of the hummus from the bowl.

Seriously though. The 'Incident,' he refers to, was one time (ONE TIME!) that I had someone meet us at the grocery store that we frequent that happens to be close to our house. Now we have a "Family Craigslist Rules List"...

"Craigslist is different from blogging." I probably should have just kept ignoring him.

"But you're giving out personal information!" His pitch is rising now.

"YOU don't even read my blog!"

"I read it every day!"

"Then what is the last thing I blogged about?"

"Zola."

"I think this conversation is over now."

Later he tells me that he's going to create a new club.

H.A.B. = Husbands Against Blogging

Love Thursday

I cannot explain how much I love her.

Mooo

Zola has a lot of gas lately. It seems to be the main culprit waking her up at night. We hear a cry and then some loud (LOUD) gas and then more crying and usually she needs me to help get her back to sleep.

hmmm...

I think I'm going to cut out dairy from both of our diets for the next few days and see if that clears up the problem.

Now to find other things to eat with calcium...

Is she growing?

Last night Zola slept with me all night because I could not get her to stop nursing! She did this a few weeks ago and I had heard that babies typically go through a growth spurt around 9 months...but at 10 months, too?

She has also been refusing to eat fruits and vegies in favor of meat or beans or eggs or yogurt...all high protein. More evidence?

I guess we'll find out at her 12 month appointment.

Sleep, what's that?

So a few weeks ago we decided to start trying harder to get Zola to sleep all night. I read some books, talked with a great friend whose daughter happened to be in the same position, made a plan. Persistence, Consistence, Patience.

After a couple of night it was working! Zola was sleeping up to 6 hours at a time. BLISS, I tell you, BLISS. We were getting more sleep which equaled more energy and we were being much nicer to each other during the day.

Alas...I guess all good things come to an end. I started noticing it was getting harder to get her down for her naps. Persistence, Consistence, Patience. But it just kept getting harder. I was fighting her for almost every single nap. Upwards of an hour or more each time. She just refused to sleep. So I regressed. After the back and forth of sit up, stand up, throw everything out of the crib, shhhh, it's time for sleep....I started napping with her. I mean, she had to get some sleep, right? And I was exhausted.

And then nighttime sleep took a turn towards wakeful. The plan wasn't working. She'd just play and ignore my very Persistent, Consistent, Patient plan. Until I left the room. And then she'd scream and throw her loveys on the floor and cry until I came back. Shhhh... it's sleep for time. it's sime for teep? oy.

And then she was suddenly back in our bed for part of the night. She's teething we say. She had some really bad gas this evening, maybe that's her problem. Her bones must be aching from all that growing... do you want to go get her and bring her in here? Yes. Okay.

Last night she was up for 2 hours. From 1-3am. Nothing was getting her back to sleep. Grant and I are borderline delirious from sleep deprivation this morning. I just got her down for a nap- by herself, in her crib- but only after an hour of crying off and on and finally being rocked to sleep.

I guess it's back to the plan. Persistence, Consistence, Patience. But when she will be consistently sleeping? That's what I'd really like to know.

But then she smiles in the morning and says "olley olley olley" in that funny voice and maybe give a little fake laugh and we crack up and pretend it wasn't that bad.

Sunday is for FOOD

Let's see...what are we going to eat this week...

Tonight I am making:
Apricot Chicken (Recipe by Jane)
Whole Grain Rice
Green Beans
Bread

On the menu for the rest of week (in no particular order):
- Spaghetti or Lasagna w/homemade meat sauce (frozen from last week's large pot)
- Egg Foo Young
- Leftovers

Zola has been fairly adventurous with her eating recently. Tonight she ate her mum-mum dipped in smushed black beans. She won't eat black beans off a spoon but she will eat them like crazy if she can do it herself with the mum-mums.

She is a big fan of turkey, chicken and ham. For lunch today she ate 2 slices of turkey. Yogurt has also been a big favorite recently. The yogurt made for babies makes her sick (as in puking all over the floor) so we give her regular adult yogurt and she loves it. I think it may be giving her gas though so I'm trying to give it to her in moderation.

I've been trying to use one new recipe each week. Apricot chicken for this week. One of the best parts about being married to Grant is that even if a dish turns out so bad that I won't eat it, he will.

Not I Sewing Master Am

I just finished my third jumper for Zola. This time I threw the pattern out the window (not really... I just hid it under a box). It turns out I was actually making a shirt for something the size of a large eggplant. Surprise!

In my head it was going to be this really great flared summer, tie-shoulder, dress. When she wakes up I'm going to try to wiggle her in it.. which she will love and ask me to do over and over again... and I will try to take a picture... if she can hold her breath for that long.

6 years. Or 6 dozen eggs. You choose.

As of last Sunday I have been married for 6 years. I have been married for almost one-third of my life. (picture circa 2002)

We went to McDonald's- in honor of our wedding night*. And then the in-laws came over and we went to the dollar movie theater to see the new Indiana Jones film. Which by the way is now charging $1.75 per ticket. We realized we'd been out of the loop for a while. It was still better than $10 at a regular theater.

*After our wedding my dad took us to our hotel and being as we had no other transportation, no money, no desire to call any friends to pick us up and take us out, we had to settle for whatever was in walking distance for dinner. And so we went to McDonald's. And I had chicken nuggets. At the time I thought it was all romantic - 'young, broke, newlyweds dine at micky's.' Then I went through a time where I was all- 'is it okay to eat fast food on your WEDDING night?' Now I just think it's funny.

Mommy's Nose

Three times today I asked Zola, "Where's Mommy's nose?"

And three times today she touched my nose!

This is the first time she's pointed to something on someone else. I always wonder if I will be this excited about these kind of things with the next baby. I think I will though... it is such a wonder to watch her grow and learn.

One of her favorite games is 'tent.' We lay on the bed or on the floor and use a sheet/blanket as a tent. She LOVES it. She'll talk and wiggle and try to hold it up and pull it down and then push me to put it back. She is so happy under her tent. We might have to get her a real one.

9.5 Months

In 2 weeks Zola will be 10 months. Double digit months. There's no going back from there.

In the last few weeks she has met some HUGE developmental milestones:

FEEDING HERSELF

Corn is Delicious!

MASTERING THE XYLOPHONE

FISHING WITH DAD

'Four' Real.

EATING MORE BERRIES

What's on my belly?



BOILED EGGS ARE DISGUSTING

Seriously Disgusting.

SWINGING AND MAKING FUNNY FACES

PUSH-UPS

VOTING IN HER FIRST LOCAL ELECTION

Can you see my tooth?

CLAPPING

MODELING MY FIRST ATTEMPT AT SEWING BABY CLOTHES

PULLING UP!

READY FOR HER FIRST NAMED STORM (FAY)

In addition, Zola took her first step!!!! I'm hoping to get the video uploaded here soon. Yes, I just happened to be videotaping her when she decided to take off! She has also started rolling over, going from her stomach to sitting, and crawling. Well... sort of crawling. Grant has dubbed it as the 'dead-leg crawl.' She tucks one leg under and leaves the other leg hanging behind while she pulls herself across the floor with her hands. It is hilarious to watch and hopefully I will have a video of that soon too!

Her one tooth has also been growing in more. And we can see a couple others trying to poke through but they haven't made it quite yet.

With all this rolling and crawling and trying to walk we are all exhausted! And it happened so suddenly that Grant and I are scrambling around the house trying to get everything baby-proofed!

Zola has been saying 'mama' and 'dada' for a while now but only recently in context. Most days when Grant comes home she squeals and will start yelling 'daaa-eee,' just missing that middle 'D.' She has also started flapping her arms when she dances and if you ask her where her belly is she'll pat it.

I'm tired just writing about everything she's doing these days. And I just know more will come.