Ben made it to his first birthday.
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Family
This weekend we celebrated Jessica's 3rd birthday. There is a gallery of pictures from the party on our photo site.
On each of Jessica's birthdays, we take a picture of her with a pink puppy toy, which was gift to her at her baby shower before she was born. Here, together are the pictures from birthdays 1, 2, and 3:
On a trip to New York for the weekend to visit my sister, Jessica (nearly 3) was playing with some wooden trains.
She held one up. "These ones are subway trains." (No surprise; she'd been impressed with our trip on the subway earlier that day.)
"The yellow ones are subway trains?" my sister asked, clarifying.
Jessica paused. "I will check on my phone." Her empty hand suddenly grasped an imaginary phone. With her other finger she touched it once or twice, then she just looked at it. "Yeah, yellow ones are subway trains."
Her Mommy, Daddy, Aunt and Uncle all use iPhones. She's apparently observed some things about how we use them.
Couple of new galleries on our photo site. One gallery is all from our day at Disneyland, and the other is from the birthday party of Jess' best friend from the old neighborhood. Click on one of the following pics to link to the galleries.
Jessica's reaction to the arrival of her baby brother has been interesting. She asks lots of questions about him and about what we're doing with him, though of course these days she asks lots of questions about everything. (She's in a "why?" phase.)
She hasn't shown any interest in holding Ben, or touching him or helping us change his diaper or interacting with him much at all. She has, on a few occasions, imagined that she can guess what he would be saying if he could talk; she then acts a bit like an interpreter, explaining to us what it is he means by his cries, sighs, and murmurs.
What she has done is taken a brand new interest in her baby doll. She's loved to play with her menagerie of stuffed animal friends for quite some time. We've had this particular baby doll since before she was born (it was actually something we got so we could acclimate the dogs before we brought a baby home). Until recently, she'd shown very little real interest in it.
Over the past week, though, she has begun to carry it with her all around the house. She acts out things she needs to do to take care of it, some of them reasonable and nearly accurate, others far fetched. It seems that one way she is dealing with the changes in her life is to simply be like her mommy. (Or, in the picture below, like her aunt.)
There are a couple of galleries of photos now up on our photo site. One gallery is all from Ben's first day, and the other is from his first week. Click on one of the following pics to link to the galleries.
I've done a bit of catching up on uploading photos to our photo site. Click any of the following pics to see the full gallery.
Jessica in a sibling prep class offered at the hospital.
For the baby shower, friends and family decorated some onesies for Tiny Zinn. Lots of creative ideas. Take a look below.
I've done some catching up uploading photos from the past couple of weeks. There are several new galleries, with one fun little movie clip:
A special caroling performance.
We went to Belmar this evening for a nice little holiday event at their ice rink. We got there in time to have dinner, which we did at a cute little pizza place.
When we placed our order, the waitress asked Jessica if she would like some pizza dough. Jessica, of course, had no idea what to make of this question; we were a little thrown ourselves, but said sure. Out came a lump of pizza dough, about the size of Jessica's two fists together, for Jessica to play with while we waited for our food. Just like playing with Play-doh, with the added bonus that you can also eat it.
I hadn't seen a restaurant bring out dough for kids to play with before. I thought it was pretty clever.
I flew to Phoenix yesterday for a cousin's wedding reception/celebration (the wedding itself was an intimate affair a couple of weeks ago). Had a great night visiting with a table full of cousins.
This morning I flew back to Colorado. Dana's mom is visiting us this week, which should be fun. Jessica is already loving it.
Tonight at dinner, Jessica was looking at a cup with pictures of some chefs. "What are they doing?"
Dana answered, "It looks like they're cooking."
Pause.
"Where's the microwave?"
We took a trip to a Pumpkin Patch yesterday. It was chilly out, but we had fun. Jessica took the opportunity to make some Halloween faces.
Let's see:
- Electricity? check
- Water? check
- Natural Gas? check
- Trash pickup? check
- Working furnace? check
- Telephone? check
- High speed internet? check
- Cable TV? check
- Laundry machines? coming next week
Why, a person could actually live in this house, if necessary.
I don't believe I've mentioned it here before, so let me say it now: we're moving to Colorado.
This is where I might like to write a few paragraphs about why we're moving, why we're excited, why we're anxious, the funny things that occur to me about the whole process, and something very profound about the whole event.
Truth is, I'm a bit overwhelmed at the moment trying to get ready. The moving company called today to confirm the truck will be here Monday morning. So I'm going to cut this short.
You know how everyone at some point in their life has to learn why you don't walk right in front of a grown person on a swing while they are at the top of their backswing and have no earthly means of stopping or slowing or swerving to avoid hitting you in the forehead an knocking you to the ground?
Jessica learned that lesson today.
UPDATE: The grown person on the swing was not me. Nor Dana. Nor anyone we know.
We took a brief trip to San Diego this week. Dana hadn't been to Sea World in around a year, which meant it was time.
This wasn't Jessica's first trip to Sea World (we went last summer), but of course she could appreciate many things in a whole new way now. She really liked all the shows, and visiting many of the animals. (Note to self: take a video of Jessica demonstrating how penguins waddle for the blog.)
One highlight was "Breakfast with Elmo". Jess has never watched a full episode of Sesame Street, but she has watched a number of the short Sesame Street video podcasts, and she has many books and other toys through which she has been introduced to Elmo, Ernie, Bert, Zoe, Big Bird, etc.
She was so excited to see these characters walk around during breakfast. When she first saw Elmo, especially, her eyes just about popped out of her head, and she repeated his name in some register only dogs (and furry monsters, perhaps) could hear.
In her typical cautious fashion, while Jessica was super excited to see these friends and watch them interact with other children, she wasn't crazy about the idea of getting too near any herself, much less getting her own hug. We did get some pictures with Elmo and Big Bird, though being that close to them made Jessica too anxious to really smile.
While Jessica was sitting in a high chair at the breakfast table, though, she had nowhere to run when a character approached. She leaned back a bit, but did very well during some interactions with Zoe, Cookie Monster, and Bert (who were all very friendly and handled it very well). Bert picked up a napkin and wiped Jessica's mouth. She gave a smile, and Bert gave her a hug.
My brother and sister are off to Peru. They are going to go see Machu Picchu. Should be quite something. I'm proud, and wish I were going with them.
Much like she did when she went to India, my sister has started a blog, "A Trek for Zinns" to document the travels. They aren't sure how often they will be able to post updates, but they're going to try. Check out the blog, subscribe to the RSS feed for updates, or check out the most recent entries in the sidebar here at KenandDana.com.
'nuff said
There are a few new galleries of pics available. These are from the Westchester 4th of July Parade and from swim class at the YMCA. (Click a photo to see the gallery.)
