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.....)