Post your Dickensian names here...

c'mon Holly --what should he be named....?  Hardy 

Bilibous Snout?  Alfred B Picclenez? Reginald James Beedily?

Zoe Is Concerned About Jeff's Great Transformation

zoe is a party animal

so, our friend had a party to show his slides of his climb of Mt. Kiliminjaro & we brought zoe along. She is quite the social butterfly. if you get super excited she will too, so much that it seems she's about to burst. next time you see her, you who will see her, make sure you find a way to slip the phrase 'oh yeah!' into your conversation. she seems to be trying to mimic it. don't be skeptical...it's true! (she also said 'pee' once...I would not lie to you.)

i see!

More Happy Feet

Baby Ninja fights his father

So, concurrent with the theme 'all things baby' we submit to you this funny commercial.

Zoe Contemplating The Mystery of Her Feet

Wanna Knuckle Sandwich?

"Feed me or else!"

monkey taunting tigers

we all had a good laugh at this video; you can watch it several times in a row and not get bored. jeff likes the slapstick sound effects. i like it when the tiger gets his tail pulled. zozo just gets excited about the whole thing. ... this is one funny monkey.

babies learning to read?

zoe is cute. i love her....
and i've been testing someone's theory that babies can be taught to read as long as you write in large red letters. it appears that these letters aren't quite large enough, or zoe was just sleepy-slash-hungry. she looked for a few seconds but no more.

funny hippicupping babies

A fine tribute to hiccuping babies the world over. of which zoe is a chronic one. hiccups all the time. The little baby is full of such squeaky hiccups and with perfect comic timing -- or so his/her older little friend thinks. And then he catches her hiccups. quite charming.

fun house baby

marisa monte: good for lullabies

I can't tell you how much cleaner my house is thanks to this music. I just bought the album recently on iTunes: Marisa Monte - Infinito Particular. I've been playing the whole album on repeat, and she's sleeping very soundly in her swing. She had a little smile on her face at first, with her eyes halfway open, but now she's fast asleep.

p.s. thank you, Steph, for giving me the idea of putting you tube videos on my blog...

other bad habits

another internet junkie is born

change on thum thucking policy

just found out that sometimes parents actually ENCOURAGE thumb sucking unwittingly by forcibly removing the hand from the baby's mouth....so i guess i'll not freak out about it too much....

Many parents are concerned that thumb sucking at a late age is a sign of emotional immaturity or lack of self-confidence. When investigators have looked at late thumb suckers for common traits, they found only one thing in common that distinguished them from other children -- a prolonged history of a strong battle with thumb sucking at an earlier age. It is striking that many well-meaning parents have actually encouraged thumb sucking by trying to forcibly take the thumb out of their children's mouths.

link to dr. greene article

thum thucking not allowed

zoe's never been much of a girl for pacifiers-- well not entirely true -- she did fine with them in the hospital. now however, she eschews them mostly. she also is starting to have mixed feelings about bottles. true they give a rush of warm milk to the tummy, but they are also made of rubber. so she's found a fleshy alternative that she's fond of -- her fist. in fact, a few times when i have fed her a bottle lately, she does this: chews on the nipple to decide if she should drink it, starts to drink, and then midway thru, replaces the nipple with her fist. i think she would have consumed her entire hand if i had not removed it from her mouth.

so now we are removing her hand from her fist or covering it with her sleeve. she's almost discovered her thumb on a few occasions, so i try to remove the hand and find a distraction...altho i'm sure she would look cute sucking her thumb, i don't want to deal with future dental problems.

cutest little baby face

dean martin serenaded zoe today. check it out


he had this to say as well... very zoe-applicable, i'm sure:
"too beautiful to be real....that kid wasn't born ... (s)he must have been made by Stradivarius"

someone play the twilight zone

zoe is smiling and acting cute to someone over my shoulder except THERE IS NO ONE THERE

what I did today

zoe has apparently been making cheese in her eyebrows, at least that's what it smelled like. so i cleaned them out with a q-tip.....

things they never tell you about babies

so i'm going to be making a short list here of things they never tell you about babies which i've learned since i know you all have either never had babies or you all are having one tomorrow.....
1 -- they cry all the time.
actually this one I sort of knew because I am accustomed to people saying 'stop being such a crybaby', etc. But now I know the full impact of it, and usually find out that the crying is in relation to something I did -- treated the baby too much like a sack of potatoes, exposed the baby to unfamiliar air while changing her, made the baby wear a diaper, assumed the baby wanted a bottle when the baby really wanted to look at herself in the mirror, didn't figure out the secret for getting the baby to fall asleep fast enough, left the baby alone to contemplate mobile fishies for too long, let one aggravation happen after another one had recently occurred (that's the one you really want to avoid), etc. etc.
2 -- their heads pulsate from time to time
so I knew babies had soft spots, which led to anxieties about sharp pointy things falling from nowhere. (Apparently the skin is really tough and protective up there, so if you touch it a little you aren't necessarily squishing their brain...) But I did not know that sometimes you can see the pulse there. It's a little freaky. I noticed it when I was nursing her the other day and called the doctor. I was afraid that she wasn't getting enough food because her soft spot pulsated and then seemed to sink in slightly. I'm still not convinced that that wasn't the case. However, the doctor was and informed me that she has actually gained almost a pound since our last visit a week ago.....
3 -- they get really hot and sweaty at night
this one didn't freak me out so much, but it did make me wonder if covering up the baby in tons of blankets was really necessary, as just wearing a cozy sleeper seemed to turn her into a furnace at night. I assume they are hard at work growing like crazy. Also, we co-sleep and the baby likes to kick me in the middle of the night when she wants to eat -- so I know she's working on getting bigger. (10 pounds 11 ounces with clothes on as of Wednesday.)
4 -- sometimes they forget to breathe
this is a scary one. baby is nursing or sleeping and suddenly you notice that nothing is going on with regular breathing. They snap out of it and catch their breath and suddenly look relieved. I thought my baby had asthma or something already, but I asked the doctor and he said they all do that, and then give a shudder of relief once they breathe again.
5 - umbilical cords falling off can smell bad
our pediatrician warned us that the umbilical cord falling off would freak us out, so we were braced. the blood oozing out the sides did not phase us. however, no one told us that it would smell bad potentially. it's full of old blood, and so it smells like old blood which doesn't smell good. we consulted the internet, which sent us into a panic when we were informed that we need to call the doctor if a bad smell is present. apparently they meant another bad smell. it was worrisome too because when you actually get a look inside it looks like some kind of yellow rubber cement that just doesn't seem right. and then there are websites telling you to look out for pus. we have since learned to take internet medical advice with a hefty grain of salt.....since she was just fine and not suffering from septicemia or whatever they thought it was....

I'll let you know if there are any other tips, even though you all probably either know this or will not remember until you have your own kids, at which point you will be inundated by so much unsolicited advice that you will forget to prioritize mine....(because I've learned that everyone wants you to take their advice first.....)

Did you know....?

Just found out some whacky information that I feel obliged to share, despite the fact that it may seem somewhat controversial....it seemed important that I tell you... I just found out that men can breast feed. They have all the tools required, if they try. Apparently there have been reported cases of babies surviving off milk they get from their fathers.... and apparently it was done in biblical times. And other mammals have done it as well.. Check out this website that gives more instances. I also found an interesting Australian short film that talks about it as well.... hmmmmm

Milk Men by Peter Templeman

more funny zoe

looking a little more like me here

fun baby video

take that, gerber baby

heretofore unpublished side effects of baby-wearing

arugula (?) and bleu cheese land on zoe's head as i try to multi-task.....

funny zoe pix

what zoe might have been named

i am having too much fun posting today. i came across a notepad file of baby names i was thinking up before we landed on Zoe (some were for boys)...so i'm posting the following to let my parents know what they won't have to get accustomed to saying.....

some highlights:

Henri Absalom "Axel"
Ian Johannes
Diego Carlos
Sunnia Leigh
Zoe Sunn
Zoe Jayne
Liesl Raine
Tajo ben Matthat
Tajo ben Yofri
Blackberry Zinn
River Legend
Levi Diego
Cassia Leandra
Ian Henri

p.s. the names are free for the taking if anyone has need for one....

recipe

so i have a confession to make to all germaphobes. it's not a confession, i guess, if you're not a germaphobe -- it's 'advice'. well i just found an omelet recipe which calls for the separation and then reintigration of the egg white and the yolk. you have to separate them to beat the white to frothiness. this recipe calls for two bowls. well my sense of frugality (read: laziness) made me come up with a new technique which saves the extra bowl. instead of putting the yolks in another bowl, i carefully keep them in the eggshell and put them back in the container. i also like doing this way, because the yolks look so cute sitting in a row. once my whites are frothy, in go my yolks. bowl spared....

p.s. it's a good recipe for all frugal ones out there, which i know is about 97.9% of my family. just requires eggs, bananas, butter or substitute, a fork, some sugar (i use maple syrup) and some salt. oh and a bowl. make the eggy part, make the bananas sweet with carmelization, make an omelet.

i would elaborate but my bananas are getting crispy right now.

free home repair lottery

ok so all that w/ the how cute we all are was a bit obnoxious. but given that mostly family members read this blog, and it's all about sharing the genes, I guess no one will object.

so to change the subject i thought i would let you know that today, just possibly, we have won the free home repair lottery -- Yet Again. Last Friday, Jeff had a roofer come over and roof. they were going to roof more today, but then Jeff became inspired by his inner-handyman and said bullocks to that, I can roof myself, yes I can. but we hadn't paid yet for the leak which they sealed. he just felt that the repair they did was not worth the $300 they charged. Given that they just smeared guck on the roof in all of 5 minutes and then skedaddled. well they were supposed to come collect on the repair today, and as of right now, 6:22 p.m., they have not. So, I hope they just forget and don't scour the internet for confessional blogs about people taking advantage of forgetful roofers.

this would be the second such free bee. the first one was even more spectacular. it occurred when our tub got so plugged we could no longer endure it. we called a plumber. the plumber had lots of fancy tools. one was just the long snake stick thing they poke down there. the other was very specialized and highly electric. well either our old house just doesn't handle highly electric or the electricity ions were looking out for us. because our power went out. and he couldn't use his high end fancy machinery to impress our tub. so clearly he couldn't charge us $150 because what's so hard about sticking a snake down the drain. (well it's more than i can do, but we like to be critical where money is concerned, even if we are house-repair illiterate -- help Holly & Rick! help!) anyway, he left as he didn't want to wait around for our power to reignite as we are clueless and luckily couldn't repair the fuse which had blown. turns out, the snake did the trick and the fancy machine really wasn't called for. so we um cancelled his return visit. and got a drain that works in about 5 minutes.

so the moral of the story i guess is that we are immoral in house repair issues, but that if it takes only 5 minutes to fix, should it really cost all that much anyway?

are we bad?

Joffri -- so hot right now -- Joffri

while we are on the topic of lookiness....

isn't he
really really ridiculously GoodLooking

cute thing done by zoe

so zoe did something really cute a few days ago which i must relate...

she has been smiling sporadicallyhere for several weeks but they were usually only half smiles -- technically of course she was smiling long before that, but those were supposedly gas-powered smiles only. (of course i like to count the 3 smiles she did on the 3rd or 4th night in the hospital because each one came after i had made a joke....but per all the "experts" those are just some kinda reflex)

anyway, she's been doing this thing where sometimes when she nurses she smiles a little bit and keeps going. i couldn't tell if it was one of those gas-powered smiles (they kind of give her a spacey look because of how big they are). so, i noted how cute they were and wondered if it was just gas or if she was having some kind of fond memory of something amusing from her short history. well, the other day, she not only smiled as she was nursing -- she also laughed -- out loud. at first i wasn't sure she really did it, because it was so cute -- so she did it again! I must have humor just flowing through my veins.... : )

Zoe's Mom

Heather's posting of our gorgeous dog Mosha prompts me to post a photo of Zoe's gorgeous Mom.

The above photo of Heather is among my favorites.

and one of my gorgeous dog

more doctored photos

i am just having too much fun with this foto editor -- my only regret is that there are not more effect filters -- just works for doing the basics -- but i love the tint feature -- tell me if i'm going overboardthis is one of her first days on the planet...hooked up to an iv to feed her and give her antibiotics -- the tint hides some discoloration in her skin which she has thankfully recovered from...
i love this one because she looks like a little madonna and the color desaturation gives it the air of a 1940's postcard - this one is one of our last days at the hospital
another fun tinted one- one of our first days home together

this one is more fun in black and white for some reason - from the famed 'milk' series
so this one is actually better of me than zoe -- rare occurrence and sure to get rarer, most likely-- but check out the nice background -- yes, our living room walls are PINK!


i like the framing on this, although i do regret the look up z's nose

there she is in all her cutie-pie-ness...

i love this one b/c i oversaturated the colors a bit, which highlights her anger and angst as well as the flowers - she is full of life! another hospital photo, p. s.

more pix and an interesting article

just found an interesting article on bbc news about a harsh parenting style which involves routine over giving into baby demands and limiting children to 10 minutes of cuddle time per day -- eek! I can't imagine anyone thinking that would be beneficial to family life or society -- here's a link to the article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7037232.stm

also - been having fun with picasa, the free photo editing tool, for some more fun pix. in these pix you can see that our baby is not so enthusiastic about our parenting skills as she was upon first leaving the hospital. either that or else she's not fond of the flash...

well -- she still has fun with us some times -- and we definitely aren't limiting her to 10 minutes of cuddle time....

Another Wide-Eyed Zoe Pic

A Short Introduction by Narrator #2, Father of Zoe

Hello. I am Zoe's Dad. Perhaps you have heard about me. You will see more of me in the form of a blog entry.

Now For Our Central Character

I encountered Zoe's hat a few minutes prior to the taking of the above photo, one of a series of photos, part of which most of you have seen, taken a few seconds apart. We laughed hardest at the milk soaked Zoe photo, but this photo is one of my favorites... but my favorites change like the weather, so you may have to ask me tomorrow. Zoe is an endless source of amusement and wonder for her parents. Having her around has given me the best lack of sleep I've had in my life! How can I ask for more?

got milk?