More Zoe

Zoe’s daycare teachers say she really loves books and will spend long periods flipping through them on her own. Hmmm … wonder where she got that from?

She is a drooling monkey and will sit around making funny faces like sticking her tongue out, “spitting,” and just generally doing weird things with her mouth, which I think are all due to her teething. But no teeth have broken through yet!

I think she’s starting to understand “jokes.” I was making funny faces and noises at her last night and she kept giggling.

She’s eating green beans and other veggies, in addition to oatmeal cereal. We’re trying to give her the green stuff before the sweet things. Our pediatrician (and others) have said that once you get them going on the sweet stuff, it’s hard to get them to eat the greens.

Last week, Zoe and I shared two classic mother-daughter moments. I was taking her to daycare and I was wearing a dress that shows some cleavage (this becomes important later in the story). I’d fed her, made her bottles for the day, dressed her, loaded everything in the car, and grabbed my jacket. I was in the process of putting on her sweater to walk out the door when she started having a coughing fit. She made the sound every mother dreads, that chocking noise that sounds like a cat hacking up a hair ball, and then she puked … straight down my dress. From the outside, you could barely tell. Inside my dress, I had warm spit up sliding down my stomach. Of course, I had to change my outfit.

A day or two later, she was having a bath. I’d just soaped up her head when she got her telltale red face. She started grunting; I freaked and lifted her out of the water where I found a couple of presents. Nate said, “this bath is over,” and I guess he dried her hair with the shampoo on it (because I didn't hear any water running) while I took care of the water and poop disposal.

And those, my friends, are the moments that no one can prepare you for as a parent.