Happy July!

It’s July First already. Zoey is almost 18 months old. Time sure does fly. This is Zoey a year ago. And below is her today (well, about a month ago), reading her favorite book. What a cutie. Now she gets into the dog food and tries to squirm away during diaper changes. But, she also sleeps through the night, usually 11 hours or so. Plus she takes a 2-3 hour nap in the middle of the day. Ahhhhhhh.

We are beginning to see a bit of her personality coming out. I think maybe a little bit of a perfectionist may suit her. When she tries to put things where she wants them (a Silpat onto the stool for example) and it doesn’t go according to her plan (the Silpat is grippy), she cries about it. But, not for too long. She tries again or leaves it alone being distracted by something else (”Oh! The back door is open and there are two full bowls of dog water on the deck just waiting to be dumped!”).

She is very into tickling feet. And she’s good, too. She is also quite proficient at giving raspberries. The blowing kind. She’s better than me. And she thinks that is the most hilarious thing in the whole world.

We have also now seen her guilty look. We have to be very careful not to laugh. I caught her eating dog food and the look on her face was priceless! Evan caught her doing something else, I don’t remember what it was. Soooo, she knows what she is and isn’t supposed to be doing. Hmmmmm. She is a great little toddler these days, though. She is walking more and more. She sits in her little chair and plays with her stuff. She is talking (kinda) and laughing (except when in teething pain) and a general goofball. She likes to type on my keyboard and listen to her “cell phone.” It rings and says “Hello, may I help you?”, and does a little song and says “bye bye.” It isn’t annoying at all (yet). She is getting taller because she can reach more stuff on our table and on Evan’s desk. Her favorite thing to steal are pens. She can write on herself, too!

The Re-org of 2005 is going along nicely. I am still getting all the cupboards cleaned up and we put up a wall spice rack. For those of you who laughed at my Martha Stewart spice drawer–it is all gone now. It has become a much needed Ziploc bag (all sizes from snack to 2-gallon) and foil/parchment paper/cling wrap/wax paper drawer. It is very handy. So, the spice rack looks really cool and it is near the stove. All the spices that did not fit went into the other spice drawer we had. Gee, I guess we have a lot of spices. Anyway, tossed a few of the old ones, too. Gotta do that every once in a while.

The next priority is to move all the music from Zoey’s room into a filing cabinet that will soon be in the garage. This is like the domino effect. We got a letter size filing cabinet from my Dad and Barb (Thanks!!). We have to move the contents from my current legal size into the letter size, move the legal into the garage, and move the letter into the place vacated by the legal. Then we can move all the music into the legal-sized cabinet in the garage. After that we can move Zo’s toys into her room! YAY! And the final goal–to make as much space as possible in the living room. It starts to feel claustrophobic in here.

Another part of the clean-up is our backyard. We are hiring the young, strong 16 yr old hands of Barrett and Conrad. We need to take out the blackberry bushes that have invaded the land. We also have crazy big thistles. And weeds, weeds, weeds. Officially, we and our neighbor, Mike will be renting a backhoe to take out the bamboo that started in our yard and made its way into theirs. This is a little more involved since Mike had to call the city to get the utilities marked before we dig. Well, they marked his house, but not ours. oooops. So, he is calling again for us. So, I figure we can take out the whole back 5 feet of our yard, which contain blackberry bushes, bamboo, and dying climbing roses. We still have to see about taking out the HUGE apple tree from the back and cherry tree from the front. These are wonderful trees, just too big for our space, ya know?

On another note, we just signed Zoey up for more swimming lessons! We are going to the same outdoor pool, Mounger Pool. But this time, the only times left were at 8:30 in the morning, M-F. We are already up, so this shouldn’t be too hard. The class is two weeks long. It starts up on Tuesday, next week! We will take more pictures. Hopefully, it wont be too cold, but the pool is very warm, and at least there is much less chance of sunburning the lil’ fairskinned pun’kin.

We should be getting our pictures from the photo shoot in Portland soon (Thanks Evelyn!) and we will post them as soon as we get them!

We will be heading to Casa de Hess for July 4th. Big Barbeque, games, dogs, beer (for some of us) and general good times. Happy Independence Day weekend, y’all!