Thanksgiving 2007

Hope you have a little while, because this is going to be a long post. Not my fault, we just have a lot of pictures from our Thanksgiving! We had a total blast!

Here's a pic of Z before we left. We took down our dining table (we actually rarely use it) to make room for our Christmas tree setup. We wanted to have plenty of room for the train, and that was the only place we could think of. So Z's booster seat now sits on the floor. He just loves to sit in it and inform us that it's a chair ("car"). Right now I kind of collapse it so he can't play on it - I noticed a few stress marks on the tray and figured playing with his food chair wasn't a great habit to get into. No worries, though - we bought him his own upholstered chair with pooh bear on it for Christmas. It's super cute.

As I said, Z loves to sit in his chair, and often times I'll get it ready and ask him to sit down. He usually does. Sometimes we'll ask him to put on his bib, and he'll try to do that, too. He's so smart!

I don't know what he was pointing at, but it makes for a cute picture.

Here he was touching the chair and saying his word for chair.

Alrighty, so on to California! Our flight there went reasonably well. We had one layover in Dallas, so we didn't have to worry too much about getting delayed. Z did relatively well. We brought bread and his food and a sippy cup, so when we took off and landed he was always eating/drinking. He didn't have any problems with his ears, so that was great. And we kept him pretty well amused with only a few books and toys. And balloons!! He loves them. On one of the flights there was this older lady next to us, and Z let her hold him so he could look out the window at the lights. Then he'd realize it wasn't one of us holding him, so he'd say our names and/or try to crawl back to us. Then he'd realize he couldn't look at the lights and want to go back to her! She was super patient and he did this several times. Though if we told him it was okay he would stay a little longer with her. On the second flight he got a little feisty as it was a couple hours past his bedtime - with no afternoon nap. So I hung out in the back of the plane, held him and rocked him. He was so tired but didn't want to go to sleep. And it didn't help that the stupid bathroom doors were normal doors that flung out, not the pocket type that fold into themselves. To make matters worse, the stupid airline ladies were actually quite rude. Several people were getting up to walk or stand back there out of the way, and the stewardesses kept telling people to stay out of their area (for security reasons). That left little to no room for us to stand without getting nailed by the bathroom doors. Then one of them decided to pull a cart out far enough that I couldn't get out of the way when people opened the doors, so I kept getting nailed. It was pretty unnecessary and really annoying. They weren't very friendly, either.

So finally Z fell asleep for about 20 minutes and we started our decent...which meant I had to go back to my seat. Needless to say, Z woke up and was pretty upset. He was just so tired. He was screaming and flailing. It was a bummer. And then one lady (and one of the rude stewardesses) felt like they had to tell us that it was probably the pressure on his ears. I assured them that he was just really tired and mad that he had been woken up. Thankfully for us, another baby started crying. Once I pointed out that there was another baby, he stopped, started saying baby and trying to see them. Not very fun for the other parents, but I was thankful! Then we landed, had to wait for our bags, and drive for 45 minutes to get home. So Z was super tired. The whole trip he had trouble sleeping, and only took one nap a day, but only for about an hour and a half. And he woke up several nights (if not all but one) at about 4 or 5 and had to have help. Yuck!

Anyway, here's Z with a ball and an apple. We had to go to the store and get all of Z's food. I underestimated how much effort that would take! In retrospect, we should have thought more about just buying his food, but we didn't. So we bought heaps of produce (I brought his grains) and made it all up for him.

On Sunday we went to the Zoo. It was a bit of a bummer because our zoo, when I got my membership, sent a list of reciprocal zoos. The Oakland Zoo was on this list, but apparently they were unaware :(. Oh well. We had fun anyway. And the zoo, while a little weird with the layout, did have some nice exhibits. Most of them were big with several animals (they had about 7 giraffes).

While we were walking there was this dude with his daughter who was 11 months. He politely asked if she could say hi to Z, so we spent a few minutes with them socializing. It was pretty cute! She even offered him her flower, though I don't think Z understood. It's funny to see the difference in dress - they must have thought it was relatively warm, but I was a little chilly, so Z was more bundled than her. And even with his layers his hands got cold.

J and Z looking at something.

Z loves to push the stroller. He'll ask to push, so I let him (until my arms give out!). It's much harder to do with this stroller, though, so we kept swerving everywhere.

We saw some cool things, though. Lots of monkeys, but they also had some crocs in a newer exhibit (I know there's a difference, but not sure what it is, so they could have been alligators. Whatever.) This one dude was just hanging out right near the glass, so we got a really good view of him. For a while he was super still on the bottom. We were all contemplating if the zoo would put a fake animal in there when he decided to come up for air. He was pretty cool. Of course, Z thought the leaves were much more interesting. I'm trying to teach him that if he doesn't want to hold my hand, he has to walk right next to us. But sometimes he just likes to explore, so I try to tell him the difference.

We also saw some pretty cool birds. One of them was super pretty, but only while in flight. He had bright blue wings that were hardly noticeable if just resting. It's probably my favorite bird that I've seen. I think only Paul and I got to see it fly, though. I can't remember anything else noteworthy. Z did have to eat his snack (I forgot his spoon...again), and while doing that he decided he was going to play peekaboo with his hood on his coat. It was cute, and Paul got a video of it.

Near the end of the loop, we were trying to find the bobcat exhibit. We thought we were running out of time, so we were trying to hurry. When we stopped to consult the map, we realized we had taken a wrong turn, but we found something else instead!

This is us in front of the "bobcat" exhibit. There were many a joke about it, though I think Z was clueless :).

One night while we were there, Paul, Jason and I went outside to look at the stars. Paul has a telescope, binocs, and a really cool star pointer! It's super rad. Since Paul hadn't been stargazing in quite a while, it took him some time to get his bearings. Meanwhile, J and I pointed at stuff and looked at planes :). Finally we gave up just standing in the street and went to the telescope. We were trying to find a globular (I think that's what it's called - it's just a heap of stars really close together) and the Andromeda galaxy. We were successful in finding both, though for a while we had them confused :). But it was super hard to see because the moon was so bright, so we decided we should just look at that. Paul got a picture (still not entirely sure how), but it turned out pretty cool.

We didn't fully baby-proof the place, which lead to a few mishaps. Thankfully, Z wasn't super inquisitive and didn't destroy things or get into too many places. He did, however, burn his little fingers on the fireplace. It's encased in glass, and we just didn't think anything of it. Here at home, he can wander out of sight and it's no big deal. He can be gone for 10 minutes and it's still okay - he loves to play in his bedroom. But not when it's a new place! I told him to go get his books, he went out of sight, we all thought somebody else was watching him, he got distracted with his objective, and before we knew it he was crying. So we put his hands in some cool water (he actually liked that...then started splashing). We weren't sure where he got burned or how badly until later - two of his poor little fingers were red and a few days later started to blister. It could have been much worse, so we were thankful. He hasn't had a whole lot of experiences with hot. I had him touch the bread when it came out of the oven about a month ago. He started to cry before I helped him take his hand off; I think he knew it didn't feel good but didn't make the connection to move his hand. So I think the same thing happened - he just didn't know he could remove his hand. But for the rest of the trip, whenever he saw the fire, he would say his word for fire and then hot. Sometimes after that he would say all done :). Quick learner!

Another fun incident was learning that Z knew how to climb stairs. Really well. He went off to find something and decided he'd give it a whirl. He got to the fourth step before we realized what was happening...with a tile landing. I'm so glad he didn't fall. There was another time when I went upstairs to get ready to leave and J thought I was watching Z. I start to come down the stairs and was greeted by Zachary, more than halfway up (right where it starts to curve). It's amazing the amount of serious injury children have the potential to endure! It was pretty scary. If we were going to be there any longer, we would have purchased some gates.

Anyway, so we had a pile of his toys in the living room for him to play with at will. Later in the trip we moved some of them to the sitting area right off the kitchen - it seemed that more often than not we were in there. Just made it easier watching him!

Here's Z with Grandpa Dave. Z calls him "aiya," either because Dad said "arms up" to him a lot (when he was getting in his booster seat) or because he'd say "hi ya!" a lot. Either way, that's his name for now.

Here's the fireplace...and all the shoes. We're supposed to take our shoes off here, and it's usually a huge mess. I straightened it up and someone took a pic. There's a lot of them! Last year was fun because Jason had just bought some of the same exact shoes that Paul has - just a different size. This year there were little baby shoes :).

Paul and Maggie. Zachary loves Uncle Paul. Absolutely adores him. He would walk into their room (off the kitchen) in search of Paul. It was funny. Now that we are home, he wants to see pictures of Paul. He knows that on the camera and the computer pictures await. On the second flight home, the only thing that kept Z from screaming was looking at pictures of the fam. He came up with a name for everybody but Maggie. Luke just barely made the cut :). But apparently Maggie is just a really hard name. I had been working with him for a while now (at home) to get their names down with pictures in the hope that he could utilize that information while we were there. He had Paul nailed from the beginning :).

Z up on the second floor. This overlooks the kitchen, so you're bound to find someone down there. Jason was up there with him, don't worry. I didn't let him wander at all on the second floor.

If the family wants to help with the baby, we let them! Here's Amie ("a-he") feeding Z. Paul and Maggie had a turn, too. I tried to give them his favorite foods so he would be more inclined to let them feed him. Though he usually didn't have many problems.

I don't know what this look was for, but toddlers do have personality, that's for sure!

Here's a picture from the second floor - and Maggie, Amie and I making pies! We had pumpkin, apple, and sweet wonderful pecan chocolate chip. It's super sweet. I made that one this year, and oh my! You have more appreciation for the caloric content when you see what goes into it! I actually spent a fair amount of time in the kitchen. With Zachary's foods, homemade bread (oh so tasty), breakfast cake one day, chicken tortilla soup one night, and some other stuff, it seemed like a little too much. We also had some tasty banana nut pancakes (with oatmeal in them). Like I said, had I known I might not have done all of Z's food. Since Z couldn't go play by himself, someone always had to be watching him if I was in the kitchen. It got a wee bit stressful at times.

It's Amie's job to cut up the green beans. Luke does his cranberry/pineapple/cherry/pecan/jello mixture, and Maggie does the turkey. She did it in a bag this year, and everything went quite smoothly, from my knowledge. Z loved the green beans and potatoes, but I don't think he much liked the turkey. Though he hasn't had that before, so it was a new taste. But he did like pumpkin pie :).

Maggie's super organized and has that black binder with all the recipes needed for the meal in plastic sleeves. We try to help out as much as possible. This time we made the chex mix. Gotta have that to snack on :).

So while we were in the kitchen, making sure everything would be timed right, others found more important things to do.....

And Jason decided to go for a bike ride. Paul and Maggie are pretty hard-core into cycling, so Jason used their stuff for a ride. It's hard work! (I'm told :))

Z didn't want him to leave :).

And leave it to Luke to get the kid hooked on video games...Luke brought his DS with him. Zachary liked pushing the buttons :).

After dinner we went for a walk. Pre-dessert :). Did you know the average American gains 7 pounds between Thanksgiving and New Year? Per the Biggest Loser, anyway. So we figured we'd do our part. We had our weigh-in before dinner, then weighed ourselves after dinner. I think 2 pounds was the most. Last year I tied for the most with three pounds, but I think that might have included dessert. It's a fun game we play :).

But it was super pretty outside, though slightly brisk. The day was just beautiful, though! Sunny and warm. Z and I went outside for a while and it was just gorgeous.

Z walking along after everyone...

For a while (even with Paul), Z didn't like being held by everybody else. Then we learned the magic tool. Bouncing! Z loves to bounce, so we put everybody to it. If they would stop, he'd say "b, b, b" and bounce himself.

Here's Paul in one of his myriad of crazy facial expressions.

This is a pretty good one.
But this one is my favorite. Just say some crazy words and Zach will giggle like crazy. I think here we used "booger."

Zach even let Maggie hold him on the ball! We got proof of it! For some reason it took Z a lot longer to warm up to her. He was pretty quick with Amie, though, so we decided that he must be able to tell that Amie is younger. He just seems to warm up to younger people quicker.

Bouncing with Amie (and Paul being weird...again :)).

And bouncing with Luke :). I guess Z didn't bounce with Dad, though he did let him hold him a lot (at the end of the trip).

Paul seems to always have crazy hats, and this one is no exception. He was doing his Smurf impression (which is surprisingly accurate).

Z eating. He's so cute. Sometimes it seemed that he wasn't super focused on eating - there was so much going on to distract him.

Here's Amie lounging. She looks super tall because of the angle. She's not really, but she's still taller than I am...

Like I said, it seemed that Zach warmed up to Amie pretty quickly. It might have helped, though, that she was the only other one (save for Paul) that he could identify in his pictures.

Here's J bumming around with Z and the video game again.

And what would we do without a little hacky sack? Apparently some high schoolers still do that, and Amie's started playing. I remember when we did that in high school! Paul couldn't find his sack, though (quietly - Z was asleep), so we used the one he picked up in Thailand. Several of us mentioned not using it, but Paul said that's what it was for. Fulfilling it's destiny type thing. So we played while Z slept. It was super fun, and we had some good laughs. Especially when pieces would fly off the ball (it's like woven wicker the size of a softball). It was just getting loosened up, though :).

But we weren't very good, and it bounced and flew a lot different than a real hacky sack. So we did a fair amount of running to get the ball. And then two cars went by and expected us to move out of the way. They failed to use their turn signals, though, so we didn't think they would turn onto the road we were on. If ONLY there were a way to warn people what you were about to do...

Here's us...watching the ball fly away. It had a habit of going under Luke's car.

We also made a trip to the Body Worlds 2 exhibit. Not for the faint of heart, let me tell you. Maggie's a vet, so she finds that stuff interesting, and Amie wants to be a vet, so we figured she'd find it interesting, but jeppers, probably not what Jason and I would pick to do. Definitely not what I'd pick to do. If it was just fake stuff it would have been okay, but knowing that all of the pieces in there were REAL people was a little trippy. Dad said he heard a few people say they just had to leave because they couldn't handle it. Over dinner they wanted to talk about it, but I needed something else to discuss. I know the plastination process makes them pretty much plastic, but they were real bodies once upon a time. And they had little babies from many of the months of pregnancy...and they were real people, too. Though that part was nice, because hopefully through that more people will understand that a fetus is a human, too. It's pretty hard to deny when you see it like that. The test tubes with weeks 4-8 might be a harder sell, but even then when we were week 8 we could see Zach's little heart beating. I feel technology has yet to catch up with the amazing growth of a baby in the womb. As it gets better, we realize things happen earlier and earlier. Just my little rant.

But anyway, the exhibit I'm sure would be great for anybody in the medical field. If I knew more I might have appreciated it more. It was just weird. And I missed the six-fingered man! I was bummed about that. But my PT here said she would have loved it. So if you can stomach it, it would be worth seeing. It was super crowded at the beginning, especially, and Zach had little interest in dead bodies, so Dad ended up taking him for quite a while. He just hauled off with him, and Z seemed to do okay. He was pretty tired, too. We did have some fun, though, before we went into the exhibit - the ticket got us into the Tech, too. They had an exhibit on alternative energy that was pretty fun, except for the pushy kids running around. I wanted to play too!! :) They had different pieces and you could make a wind turbine, changing or adjusting the pieces to produce the most energy. They also had the same thing with water, and another exhibit on solar energy. We didn't have that much time to play, though, before we had to see the bodies. That was a timed entry.

After the Tech we wanted some Ethiopian food, and drove there only to find out it was no longer open! So Paul got some Indian food while we put Z to sleep. We joked he must have pissed them off by asking if they had any beef (he forgot where he was), because the food was spicier than normal. It was crazy hot! Though I admit I have a low tolerance for spice.

Well it's taken like a week to make this post, so I'm sure I forgot things. One more thing; before we left for Cali, we did an inventory of Zach's vocabulary. Jason had told his mom Z knew about 40 words. We made a list and came up with about 85 that he could say (at least his version), understand and locate. Not just words that he tries to say but doesn't fully understand (we're currently working on elbow). It's since grown. He used to use two words phrases such as "pasta all gone" (all gone is just one word for him) or "dada bath." Now he's starting to say three words, such as "train bye-bye please" or "bubble pop please." Over Thanksgiving we taught him please, so he'll say that with the hand sign. At first he would mimic me and rub my chest to say please, but then he realized he could just rub his :). So we ask him to use his manners, and he'll say please. Sometimes he'll get a little bummed so we'll tell him he needs to use his words, and he often does. Sometimes it's just help or please so we don't fully understand and it's only semi helpful. But we're trying to teach him not to throw a fit but to communicate in more effective ways. Thus far it's working.

Now I have to go download more pictures from our time home since Thanksgiving and work on another post. It never ends!!