early november

silly face

a while ago we hung out at the park. she climbed halfway up these stairs, then turned around. i couldn't tell if it was from boredom or exhaustion. i suspect boredom.

tutu!

jonathan's birthday Nov 2, 2008

at first she was afraid of this horse, because it moves its nose and makes horse noises!

a real girl doesn't let a dress get in the way of hanging with a pal

yee ha!

bruiser

pretty

yes, i'm starting from the beginning of where i stopped blogging due to vacation (thanksgiving in florida) and family colds that seemed to last FOREVER! so, on november 2, we went to my friend justine's house for her son jonathan's first birthday. you may remember jonathan from pictures here and there. zoey and he have had a sordid relationship from the start when he was still in that sack-of-flour stage and she patted him on the face with great interest. the other day we went to lunch together and the played with each other's hands and almost hugged...so that's good. the birthday party was a blast as jp has a wonderful playroom with lots of fun toys, and his parents put on a lovely spread of food and fun. balloons were a big hit with zoey of course.

memories, like the corners of my fuzzy mind

i know zoey's changed a lot in a year, but i had to check out last years posts around christmas anyways. look at this cuteness.

http://babybirdzoey.blogspot.com/2008/01/christmas-2007.html

i'm sure you're all sick of seeing zoey's monkey butt when you open the blog. i'm sorry! she's been sick since we got back from florida, and eric had a cold, and christmas preparations have been done! also, my computer port that the power cord goes into is broken so i have to hold it just so to keep the screen from changing constantly from power save mode, to regular mode so i haven't been on it as much. ggrrrrrrr.

hopefully i'll get back in the swing soon. if nothing else, i'll have lots and lots to post after christmas.

happy snowdays.
anna

halloween 08

yes, i'm still catching up with october good grief charlie brown!

love

blue eyes show up in the tub

the following are from a trip we took to the audubon society with cousin kohle, who loves zoey so much. sometimes it's hard to see the love until i look at it in still pictures later, because kohle is so active i spend half the time saying "get out of her face!!!!" and "let her be!!!!" but how sweet he is.

inspired by an old friend

as i sat here, a minute ago, reading some poetry and looking at some gorgeous photographs of a non-parent old friend of mine, i thought how far i am from the place where he still is. although he has changed and grown, he still resides in a single artist's world, whereas i, a person with a solitary goal of being stain free when i choose my outfit for the day, just cleaned up a zoey-puked-on blanket, and nursed her back to sleep.

oh good, i just found more a.b.c. dinner on my shoulder.

i feel like doogie howser.

fla

i know you want to see pictures, not words...but help! i'm in florida and my dear (sickening) laptop is home. therefore, all my pictures are there too...except florida ones, which i guess i could put up for you all to see. the thing is, i have issues with things not being in a certain order (except the kitchen, that can be totally out of order) and if i skip all the good pictures between my nov,. 2 post and now, it will bug me FOREVER! it's late, i'm feeling dramatic, but it is true.

zoey is enjoying the visit, as am i, with her mimi who is my mama. she also has seen "ah nah" aunt nancy (my aunt) and her brother, "uh my" uncle mike. when uncle mike is not around, or in the other room, she says "uh-my" with a seriously thoughtful look on her face, over and over again. but, when uh my comes over to her, or looks at, or talks to her, she is so timid. she runs away, but is curious as well. hopefully he'll get some good zoey loving as she gets more used to him...we'll be here until dec. 2 yeeha!

eric is joining us soon YAY

happy thanksgiving all

sixteen months

when i was little i begged my mom or dad to lay with me until i fell asleep, but one thing i didn't like was how i was breathing their breath when our breathing wasn't in sync. i felt like if i breathed their breath i would be getting to much of their carbon dioxide or something, and i would start to feel like i was suffocating. as i got older i felt that way if i had a friend sleep over in my bed too. i even don't like breathing eric's breath at night a lot of the time.

however, i try to breath in zoey's breath. it has only smelled not sweet once, after eating a scallion pancake and i was crushed that it had changed that day as i felt she was immediately done with her sweet baby stage of life. her sweet breath came back the next day though, thankfully, and since then i've been trying to ingest her innocence through my lungs. that sounds so monstrous...but i can't get enough zoey breath. after she falls asleep i hold her over her crib and put my face really close to her mouth and breath in. it's so delicious.

first time finger painting, when i discovered she was too young to finger paint also, first picture to make me realize she has made this face more than once

so, anyway. she does have other smells that are not so nice. in fact, her feet smell like adult feet which is bothersome. they have since she was around 10 months old or so. we always used to joke with her that her feet smelled because it would make her laugh so much. i try to remember that whenever i stuck my feet in my mom's face and said, "don't they stink?!" she always told me they smelled like roses. and even if i knew it wasn't true, it made me feel good.

zoey loves broccolli. tonight she shoved handfulls into her mouth and eric observed, "she's trying to shove the broccolli into her soul!" i agreed.

give me more cake!

she has become a parrot by repeating lots that we say. she can say eieio as in old mcdonald had a farm. when eric pours water over her head in the bath, she goes "ahhhhhhh" because he always says that. she tries hard to say avocado, which comes out kind of like "ahgacahvo".

hanging with the boys isaiah and romeo

zoey tries to do a lot of things on her own now, like dressing herself...in my underwear and shoes. tonight she wanted to wear her poofy pink snowsuit from last year so eric sort of fit her into it. her shoulders appeared to be around her elbows and she was like a turtle on it's back if she tipped over, but she insisted on walking around and got very upset, to the point of crying and beggining "nooo, nooo, noooooooo" as eric took it off. a lot of times, when she's on the changing table, she'll say "oww oww owww owww!" like we're hurting her, which we are sure we're not. i don't know how she learned that!

she's super cool, that's all i know.

halloween party

the monkey rides

fake shy

they trick or treated through the library

full monkey mouth

last tuesday, the mom's club we're part of had a halloween party in the meeting room at the local library. i love kids in costumes. in fact, i used to say kids should wear costumes every day because people will think they're cute, not weird. but those things are expensive! that's why i'm lucky to have received this monkey gem from a friend who's 10 month old son wore it last year. zoey is 15 months and it's too big for her. she's not super small, the friend is super big and cute too. i'm annoyed at the cost of all halloween costumes that are not at thrift stores. WAY to expensive in my opinion. even if you have the money to spare.

anyway, the kiddies decorated pumpkins with painstakingly cutout sticky felt facial features, and walked through the library which is about two rooms long, trick or treating with their little paper sacks and showing off their costumes. i'm sure it was pretty amusing seeing 20 moms coaxing their toddlers in the right direction. "come on zoey, we're going to go trick or treating, let's go see what's in the bowl! follow henry! look what's that!" in retrospect, i wonder if it's really necessary to go through such theatrics. the kids seemed to enjoy it...but probably would have been fine playing on the floor with the toys in nothing but a diaper. i mean, it IS the mom's club. we need to do these things! and then i worry about what i'm teaching zoey...enough? the wrong things? the right things? the necessary to survive things? the creative things...

cousin laughs as usual

happy birthday mimi

mama, "zoey. hold the sign right under your face so i get the perfect picture of your face, with the sign underneath."

mama, "how about on the tray? okay, say cheese, and close your eyes. perfect.
(after all why would mimi want to see your beautiful eyes?!)"

zoey, "yeah right!"

zoey, "i got a sign here"

zoey, "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, i've had enough of this. now i'll go crazy!"

zoey, "i'll never do what you want! i like to crush paper."

peekaboo

well, okay, as long as peekaboo is involved because it's the most fun!

yay!

happy birthday to you dear mimi. we miss you.
love anna, eric and zoey-bird

sophia's birth day

we were walking at battleship cove in fall river when i got the call that kristin and scott's sophia was born! it was a perfectly warm, but not hot, sunny day. aside from the carousel being closed AS IT HAS BEEN THE LAST THREE TIMES WE WENT! for a party grrr, it was a great afternoon.

tired

she got a balloon because she was good at the doctors

i told her to kiss ebony (the cat) so i could take a picture. she suddenly, and for the first time, decided that cats must be kissed squarely on the mouth and spent a few minutes forcibly pulling ebony's head so it would line up with her lips.

they taught her how to put her arms up when cued by the word "touchdown!" i can't resist commanding her and having her react in such a cute understanding way.

i took a two mile walk today because my car is in the shop and now i can barely stand to be awake, but zoey is up and won't go to sleep....