What’s Goin’ On?

Zoey and I have gone to the recently remodeled Greenwood Library a few times lately. It’s very nice. Zoey loves to walk all around and sit in all the different chairs and flirt with all the people. Rona and I are rediscovering the joys of borrowing books and CDs rather than spending money on them. We don’t check anything out for Zoey, though, since she has so many books already, and she’d just end up ripping out pages and coloring on those remaining with her beloved crayons.

Zoey has been using her signs a lot lately, creating phrases like "more" + "eat" and "duck" + "bath" (upon seeing ducks swimming in Greenlake). She has also gotten back into practicing making various sounds, including the popular "Da-Da-Da-Da-Da" and "Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma." Once or twice she has said "Daddy" or "Mommy." She loves identifying animals, either by sign (for ducks) or by noises–panting for dogs, snorting for pigs, hoo (or any sound including "ooo") for owls, mmmm for cows, and sort of a high-pitched "ew" noise for cats.

Little Z also has gotten into fake sleeping. She will lie down with her eyes wide open and make a cute snorting sound for snoring. Sometimes she pulls a blanket or quasi-blanket-like cloth over her. She isn’t the only one who can fake sleep, though–her stuffed animals and her Fisher Price Little People are quite good at it, although Zoey has to supply the snorting/snoring and will pat them, give them kisses, or pull a blanket (or "blanket") over them to make sure they’re sleeping comfortably. Then a couple seconds later she pulls off the covers, grabs her sleeping toy, and hucks it across the room. I assume the toys don’t mind.

On Friday night Shandra came over to babysit while we went out for an after-detox sushi feast. This was the first time that Shandra was going to put Zoey to bed, so after warning her that she would probably experience much angry crying resistance from the youngin’, we headed out. …Fast-forward past a very disappointing sushi meal (we threw away our leftovers after getting home!) and follow-up coffee… We arrived home and joked that Zoey probably learned how to climb out of her crib and we would find her up with Shandra playing in the living room. It turns out that after a couple of whiny minutes after Zoey figured out we’d ditched her she was a perfect angel, coloring with Shandra, eating the food Shandra offered her, happily conversing in fluent sign language, and going to bed with nary a fuss. Sheesh! As always, we’re very impressed with Shandra. (And Zoey clearly has our number, the little brat!)