Zack's 2nd Birthday! Party prep.

Zack is two today! Here are the cupcakes we made for his daycare party, peering suspiciously out of the fridge. Does death by little teeth await them all? Yes. Yes it does.

Edited by Julie:

This is a fun snapshot our lives via our refrigerator. There's the leftover Chinese takeout, the margarita mix, Zack's beets in a tupperware container, and a bag of chocolate chips that Jeff left in his trunk, where they fused into one mega, bag shaped chip.

Memorial Day Weekend

We had a pretty chill weekend. On Sunday our friend Marc popped off some of the best family pictures we've had yet. I couldn't choose so I just posted them all.



Mommy's head!

Head hug!

Grrr!

On Mem Day itself I took Zack to feed the ducks in Balboa park. He liked the ducks but didn't quite get the feeding part. Every piece of bread I gave him to throw he ate himself, and then he threw his Lego cars into the water instead (but I fished them out). Then he enjoyed a big lunch in his stroller, looking over the lake.

The HAIR

Just woke up!

And here's three more from the park.

Different Kinda Day

I called in sick Tuesday, because my back was hurting, and I was exhausted. And maybe because I was lazy, but what's it to you? I threw my back out a little while ago and it sucked, so this was um, preventative. Yeah, that's it.

Then Tekla called to see if I could pick up Geneva from school. So I ended up doing my internship in the morning, which was really just an excuse to bring Zack in so everyone could meet him. I got Zack from daycare very early and he had lunch over at Cheyenne. He is playing with a truck he borrowed from Arnold Rifkin, producer of most of the Die Hard movies. Hollywood cracks me up sometimes, even if it won't pay me most of the time.

This might be a blurry picture, but know this: his mouth is open because he is saying the word, "hexagon." See those tiles? So cool!

Then we picked up Geneva, got snacks, and went to the new park we like.

This might be slight overkill on this series of pics, but the thing is, it's so great for us to see Zack smile in a photo. He is usually so obsessed with the camera that we don't get his fantastic smiles. But he was too into Geneva to notice me shooting pics.

I do wish I'd gotten video of this, because his giggle is just too much.

Geneva is hilarious!

Geneva wanted ice cream. Since she already had three Trader Joe's cereal bars, I wasn't too sure what Tek might think. As you can see, I decided to be the treat lady. Hey, special occasion. (I am finding I am pretty easy to convince on two points: TV and sugar. Oh another cookie and another episode of Dora? OK, special occasion. You know, Tuesday!)

This little sweetie shared his cars with Zack. Zack did not reciprocate and then threw a fit when we left. We are working on transitions with him. It's very lucky that Jeff and I share parenting philosophies and we like to talk about these small interactions with Zack a lot--what they mean, what we're communicating, how we might be affecting him. The other day we were at another park, and Zack wanted to get on these heggi-gagga (helicopter) riding toys. This tends to turn into a scene, with the owner of whatever toy returning to claim it and Zack getting upset. So I started teaching him. I just realized he was probably ready to learn that we can't just go taking other people's stuff. I kept explaining it. This belongs to someone else. It's not like at your school. We have to ask permission. If the kid who owns this comes back it could really upset you both. Finally I picked him up and took him to the swing, and he said, "Bye, heggi-gagga," and that was it. Successful transition.

So I tried telling him pretty early on this time that we were going to have to leave these cars with this nice kid who shared them with us. Then hey, one more minute with those cars. And okay, we're going.

Unfortunately, Geneva messed up my timing a bit, so there we were, waiting to leave with Zack wanting the cars and crying, while she dawdled getting her shoes on, because she didn't want to leave. Transitions for 6.5 year olds, maybe not so easy, either. Geneva also had suggestions about how to handle the situation. And really, they were good suggestions, but I've tried them. She said just get him out of sight of the cars and distract him with his own car. Good idea for younger Zack, but 23-month-old Zack sees right through that ruse. The only thing that works now is enforcing the limit. We're leaving, we're leaving, we're going now, and...we're gone. Nothing personal buddy, but it's just time for us to be going. Then he's sad for a minute and gets over it. He's a very good sport.

But staring at the cars while the end of this episode stretched on too long just made him super upset. Having two kids must be full of moments like that. I was sorting how to juggle the two personalities and developmental stages, but lucky for me, I don't have to do it every day.

We all survived and made it out of the park.

And this is one of Geneva's shots.

I don't really like what Zack is doing in this picture, but I'm glad Geneva caught it. He likes to wrap his hair around his finger and pull it out. Then he looks at all the little red hairs and says, "Hairs!" I hope that habit doesn't stick. The weird thing is that I have a lot of nervous hands in hair type stuff, too.

Park Pics

Marion showed us a great new park on Friday. Here are the boys, swinging. It was tough to get a picture where they were both looking at the camera, because they were both very excited that the moon was out.

And here they are, back in January, 2009. Before the enlarging ray hit them both.

So now they are actually playing together. If Wes was out of sight for a second, Zack said, "Wheah Wes?"

Zack's routine was to slide down the slide. spot Wes, and say, "Mmmmm!" a few times before moving on. Wes thought it was pretty funny.

They also played Chase and Ball. Their versions of these games are so sophisticated that it's tough for adults to understand the complicated rules. So it might look random.

Zack climbed these!

There is a cool skateboard area in this park.

This was yesterday. Zack is a bounce house party crasher. We end up in bounce houses at our local park every weekend. Duncan and Jessie and Dean came to visit us yesterday.

Two from Easter

As usual there's some older stuff I want to get around to posting, but I just loved these two pictures from our friend Marc's mom's Easter egg hunt too much to wait any longer.

That's Marc's nephew Boston next to Zack, and he was yelling something to the people in the backyard down below. Zack thought that looked like fun and started yelling it, too (I forgot what they were saying). Zack looked at me in mid-giggle and I happened to be camera ready. I love this pic because it's so difficult to catch a smile on camera, although he does it all the time.

Zack was very interested in this sophisticated keyboard toy and kept coming back to it. He didn't really register the Easter egg action at all.

Happy Birthday, Julie!

That's right, my lady marks another year on the planet today. Last night I made a card for her using actual construction paper, and tonight we're going to get our minds blown by How to Train Your Dragon, which according to a friend of ours has flying sequences that make Avatar look like your Aunt Yetta.

Happy Birthday sweetie! Love you bunches.

Spring Break!

I'm off work for a week!

And there was a major milestone recently. March 23rd, Zack went an entire day without nay nay. I've been keeping track on the kitchen calendar since then. He nursed three times the 24th, once the 25th, and yesterday, when these pictures with the Wrights were taken, was another day without nay nay! Zero!

So my plan is to keep Zack out of daycare during Spring Break for most of the time, and do lots and lots of fun stuff. It's gonna be crizazzy. And I want to keep him so distracted that we stay on target with the weaning.

Tekla and Zack.

Geveeya!

Zack loves Geneva. She cracks him up. I have to post the footage on here of the first time this happened. But in the meantime, some fun stories. The other day, Zack was going down for his nap, and he had a little trouble. I heard him on the monitor saying, "Mommy?" Then: "Daddy?" Then: "Geveeeeya!!!" He figured he better shout, since she lives kinda far away.

Whenever we pass her street, Zack starts talking about her. "Geveeya! Baka baka baka baka Geveya?" Which I think means, "Hey, this is where Geneva lives. Are we going to see Geneva?"

Tekla and Bruce and Geneva came over for dinner last night, and then we walked to the park. Zack was totally thrilled and did not want to see her leave.

TODAY

I worked a few hours, and then Jeff went to class. I knew I'd have to keep Zack distracted to keep him off nay nay.

My brilliant plan:

Home Depot! Where we had to return something. Boring for Zack.

Except for these flowers. I thought this would be a great way to pass the time, until I saw petals getting torn apart. Then this turned into me carrying a screaming toddler out of Home Depot.

And he wanted nay nay to smooth over the disappointment. I stayed strong.

Next part of my clever strategy:

The car wash!

I mean, Zack loves cars. Zack loves baths. What's not to love?

This was boring, too.

A nice woman passing by snapped this picture for me. And you can see from Zack's expression that the whole car wash thing was just not impressive.

Next part of the plan:

ICE CREAM COOKIE SANDWICH!

We sit down on one of those cheesy coin massage chairs that seem to be in every LA carwash. As soon as we're in a big chair, it's "Nay nay?" But the cookie does the trick! Yay, cookies.

And then, like all yummy things, the cookie must come to an end. Which means this:

It's gone??? This is some serious bullshit!

Lucky for us, it's finally cooling off enough for us to head to the park.

A rude little boy came and took a car Zack was playing with, saying, "That doesn't belong to you." Zack was crushed.

I was comforting him and saying, "Yes, I know, that wasn't nice, but it wasn't your car," when one of the girls from our daycare, who's in an older class, found a car on the sidewalk and gave it to Zack. So nice.

Make it go again, Mommy!

And it was a windup car, which was awesome.

Not a thought of nay nay at the moment. Totally content.

We did it! We made it through dinner, and then Daddy came home and did bedtime. Only one nursing session today--in the morning. I don't think I'll be able to get past that one, but maybe if we head out the door immediately. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.

Just now I heard Zack on the monitor saying, "Night night, Mommy!" Aaawwww.

Great Grandma Daisy

My grandmother, Paula Elizabeth Harrison (Daisy) died this morning. I am so glad Zack got to meet her. She was a pistol--hard drinking, smoking, gambling up into her 70s. And she was active in the Democratic party in Orange, which is no small feat. She was invited to two presidential inaugurations--Carter and Clinton. And she could kick anyone's ass in Scrabble, mostly because she liked to make up words and gamble that we wouldn't notice.

Her poem, which we put on her funeral cards:

One theory I find mystifying

Is whether there's life after dying.

I may never learn

Whether I shall return.

I can only be sure I'll be trying.

I know I owe my sense of humor and my love for writing silly things mostly to Grandma. I'll miss her!

Grandpa

My dad came to visit this weekend. It was his first time meeting Zack! Here they are at the farmers market petting zoo. Zack has a bus in hand, as usual.

Zack is missing his upper lateral incisors, and this weekend I learned that he inherited that from Dad. Dad's upper right incisor never came in, and all this time, I knew nothing about that! As you can see in this picture, Zack also got his dimple from my dad. I have this same dimple, but on my right cheek.

While it's too early to tell, it seems Zack may have also inherited Dad's obsession with vehicles and his love for animals.

A few pics from my phone

My mom is totally not enjoying this, as you can see.

So Zack knows most of the letters of the alphabet. Here he is with two of his favorites, I and Y. He also can identify the nearby bath toys, "star" and "whale."

I was writing down every word and phrase he learned, but they've exploded. He speaks in sentences now. He knows tons of words. However, about 75% of his verbal output is the word "bus." I kind of wish I'd never taught him this word. It was cute back when every large vehicle was "wee wee!" (Because see, fire engines say that.) But now as soon as Zack wakes up, the first word out of his mouth is, "Bus." And any time we're in the car, it's all about, "Look! A bus!" And "Do you see the bus?" It's truly impressive that he has been this obsessed for this long about buses. Daddy bought him some books yesterday about cars, trucks, and buses. Zack was thrilled.

He also really enjoys the moon lately, because he can see it from his new window!

This is Zack at one of my last auditions. I quit auditioning for a while to start an internship at a production company. I'm already loving it and getting to actually WRITE! Amazing.

Between that, Jeff's new job and new computer animation classes, and our new place, we are "busy busy" as Zack would say. I fell asleep last night in my clothes at 7:00 p.m., and Jeff did only a little better, crashing on the couch around 8:00.

Zack is now sleeping through the night most nights. We didn't get an easy sleeper. Or we did it all wrong. But in any case, he's finally sleeping through the night regularly, at the age of 22 months. Thank you, sweet Jebus. He still wakes up at 5:30 a.m., but hey, we'll take it.

Our new place is rockin! We are loving having a washer and dryer, and the light in here is excellent. We have these giant, widescreen windows upstairs. Seeing the sky every day does wonders for my mood. I mean, well, seeing it from inside the house.

Also, we have this really cool bamboo forest behind the apartment, and these really sweet little birds live in it. When you're in Jeff & my room, with the window cracked, listening to the wind in the bamboo and the little birds, you just can't help but drift off into happy nap land. It's truly a magic nap room. Then you wake up and see clouds drifting by over your head. Unbelievable.

It's a little dangerous that my office is in there.