Zoey's Updates...

Zoey: Mini-Picspam

2008-04-03T01:54:49Z

So, Zoey crashed earlier on the floor as she tends to do sometimes, just awake one moment and BOOM sound asleep the next. Given the spot, or rather what she crashed next to, I had to share.

So while I was at it, I picked out a few Easter images to spam you all with.

Behold, her eyes are open. This is very hard to achieve because she KNOWS a flash is coming and thus will squint. It's the red eye light on my camera that alerts her, but once she's aware other people have cameras, she will squint even though she loves having her picture taken.

Even though she was too young to grasp the whole idea of an Easter egg hunt, I did buy a few big jeweled-plastic eggs and hid them under blankets to "find" that morning, then later at the party, we took her to one corner of the big family egg hunt so she could find a few. She was pleased. You can also see her three teeth there.

Afterwards, we chilled while she checked out the eggs, we opened them, she got to look at the stuff inside and then, because it was all tiny, chokey stuff, we took the stuff away and left her the eggs. She didn't even miss the little toys, as the eggs were more fascinating to her anyhow.

According to wiki, heterochromia is an ocular condition in which one iris is a different color from the other iris (complete heterochromia), or where the part of one iris is a different color from the remainder (partial heterochromia or sectoral heterochromia).

Her right eye is brown with a pie wedge of blue (though it's sort of blue-greeny now) and her left eye is entirely blue (again, blue with greenish/goldish flecks). I worry she's going to feel strange later in life because I still obsess about how mean kids/teens can be, but thus far everyone loves to tell her how beautiful and gorgeous and special and sweet and etc she is and her eyes are, so I don't think her self-image is in danger for many years still. ;)

The squint in action! She knows it's hilarious so that's why she's so giggly as well. This is currently one of her favourite things to do, trying to climb through the bottom of that bouncer.

ALSO, A YEAR OLD IN LESS THAN FOUR DAYS. omg.

A 'few' months worth of updates :D

2007-12-21T23:48:52Z

I have severely neglected updating this - really, I need to do more like write brief entries when she does things/thoughts come to me so I have a reference for her baby book and she has this to look back on. I have become horribly forgetful. ;)

Despite being five weeks premature, she is remarkably on track for a lot of development milestones, which definitely makes Zane and I happy, as despite knowing she should be five weeks behind whatever chart or book or guide says she should be doing at a certain age, she's actually ahead. :D

FOOD:
Just before she turned seven months old, we started offering her her first vegetable baby food - peas. They were not a hit. We ended up using the one container of food in thirds for three days in a row for the three test days and I still ended up throwing a portion of it away in the end. She had shown interest in the idea of people eating food - watching us put food in our mouths and chewing, opening her mouth if we were eating while she was in our lap and mimicking the mouth motions we were making - but baby food itself was not her thing. We gave her few weeks before we tried again, this time with carrots. Marginally better results, but still not enough that I was convinced she was really into it. Around Thanksgiving, we gave her squash and that was a hit. She finished nearly one container in one sitting, so over twice what she would eat of peas or carrots. We went back to peas and carrots after that, with a better success rate, and just today I started her on sweet potatoes, which seem to be as big a hit as the squash. She still won't eat a whole container at once, but we're working up to it. We're not in any rush, as she certainly gets enough between pumped breast milk and formula, but it's a nice diversion for her to have the baby food when she doesn't always have it daily.

MOVEMENT:
About a month and a half ago, she started rolling herself all over the place in earnest while sleeping and awake. She had rolled over before that, of course, but usually rolled herself back rather than stick around on her stomach and definitely only preferred sleeping on her side. The first few weeks of this deliberate movement onto her belly, or doing it while asleep, she would yell after a few minutes or scream-cry upon rolling over and waking up, but then she started to adjust to sleeping that way. Now if she does it, I or Zane don't hear her until she is actually awake and wanting someone to come get her.

Dropping toys/throwing toys/bashing toys off other toys is becoming a big thing, but Phoebe isn't smart enough to pick up Zoey's toys and give them back to her. ;) However, she will give her ball to Zoey daily, as if hoping today is the day Zoey's learns to pick it up and throw it. Zoey and I worked on that a bit, but the tennis balls are too big for her to grasp with one hand, and getting both hand son it means it heads for her mouth, not gets thrown off for Phoebe to chase. :D I think Zoey uses her left hand more than her right, but I doubt it means anything definitive about her dominant hand as of yet. she typically grabs with her left then passes it to her right, though occasionally she'll do the reverse.

As for crawling, her back half has it, but her front half has yet to catch up. She gets her butt hiked clear up into the air but doesn't get far as she still tries to push herself along on her chest.

INTERACTION:
We're really the typical easily amused parents. Every time she learns the newest little skill, we get all excited and tell her how smart and wonderful she is. :D Most recently, she has been sucking her tongue to make a sound approximate to us making kissy sounds at her. She thinks that works for kisses.

She giggles all the time - really, when she isn't resisting sleep, she is such a happy baby. I never really knew babies to giggle and laugh as much as she did, but she does it all the time. If she's not doing that, she's doing her 'shy face' - turning her head in to whoever is holding her, peeking at another person from under her long lashes and smiling all bashfully. I think Zane is all ready preparing himself for when she turns the face to 'evil' things like boys. ;)

She absolutely adores the animals - she will pet both the dog and cat and both Phoebe and Tigger are very tolerant of it, even when Zoey gets two fistfuls of their hair and tries to yank whatever body part (be it head, leg, neck, etc) toward her mouth for open-mouth kisses. She doesn't chew on them, she just open mouth pecks them. Phoebe happily kisses her back, and really, kisses her whenever she gets a chance, but Tigger is content to just stare at her.

She recognizes a lot of words and phrases - any mention of the animals names or "dog" "puppy" "cat" "kitty" will be followed with her looking for them, as does names like "Daddy" and such. She giggles every time anyone says 'I love you" and sometimes will open mouth kiss faces too if the person is close enough.

SLEEP:
Sleep is her big crisis though, she will fight and fight it until finally she just cries herself to sleep. We never really liked the idea of that, but even rocking her and soothing her still, in the end, got us the same result of fighting, screaming, then crashing. This, fo course, only applies ot being at home, when we're out in public, sleep comes pretty easy for her because she really does use it as a defense to over-stimulation. Family parties were the biggest example of that for months, but on Thanksgiving, she actually made it through the several hours of Zane's HUGE family without crashing.

miss_zoey @ 2007-12-21T06:29:00

2007-12-21T11:32:21Z

Zoey's portrait studios pics, taken at seven months old.

Click for slightly bigger images!

In other news, I fail at updating this for her. I really need to get together an entry recapping the last few months.

Doctor's Appointment (5/14/07) -- Update, 5/18/07 - 6 weeks old

2007-05-18T08:39:45Z

As of Zoey's doctor's appointment, she weighed 7 lbs, 8 ounces, which means she gained a whole half pound MORE than was expected of her. She was still smaller than the average birthweight for a newborn at that point, but probably by this point, she's passed that mark. :D We'll likely have to bid farewell to the newborn-size diapers shortly *sniff*

Tonight I noticed her right eye is changing colors, but not evenly - it's 3/4 dark blue/brownish and 1/4 blueish, like a perfect little pie graph. I hadn't really noticed it was so startling a division between the two colors until tonight, though Zane did say that eye's color has been looking darker to him for a few days. It's only recently she has been having longer wide-awake and looking around periods.

She's bound and determined to get use of her neck, the way she tries to move it all about when held the littlest upright, so we've been giving her as much chance as possible to work on the beginning of lifting it. She even freaked my mom out a bit the other day with the force at which she tried to fling her head - she's determined, hopefully not a precusors to the stubbornness of both her parents. :D

Doctor's Appointment - 4/30/07, 24 days old

2007-05-01T02:13:22Z

As of today, Zoey weighs 6 pounds, which means she has gained a whole pound since her birth three weeks ago. It's an 8 ounce increase in 7 days, so she's definitely progressing as she should and I'm thrilled. :D

Zoey on the 28th at 22 days old:

Update - 4/26/07, 20 days old

2007-04-27T03:50:23Z

Zoey came home the afternoon of the 18th (yes, I lose at timely updating, I'm sorry *hangs head*) at 12 days old, weighing 5 pounds, 2 ounces (she was born at 5 pounds and dropped to 4 pounds, 10 ounces before working her way back up from there). While it was a roller coaster of ups and downs from isolette to bassinet (her first failed attempt at the open air test she maintained her temp but lost weight) and lengthy days and evenings at the hospital, waiting for the next day and new decisions about her progress, we're grateful she only experienced issues with temperature control and weigh gain and was able to remain in the hospital nursery the whole time (instead of being transfered to a hospital with a NICU).

At her appointment on Monday the 23rd, she weighed 5 pounds, 8 ounces, so she easily did the ounce a day they wanted her to do. Everything else was great so all she needs to do is keep up her weight gain for her appointment on Monday the 30th. :D She's an absolute doll, fusses but hardly ever cries. Even when she does it isn't for more than a few seconds. We're waiting to see if she is just this sweet-tempered or once she's a little bigger she'll learn how to use those lungs to their full capacity. ;) She is steadily increasing her alert awake periods, so we joke she's finally figured out what her eyes are for and have been able to enjoy seeing her looking around. Phoebe, our dog, thinks she's the greatest thing ever and is very protective of her – I think she gets less sleep that we do, waking up at every little noise Zoey makes! Tigger, our cat, has been curious about her but has only peeked in the pack-n-play a few times to check her out.

Hospital Journal

2007-04-27T02:36:07Z

COMING SOON!

Zoey's Birth Story

2007-04-27T02:34:03Z

COMING SOON!