Back from West Virginia

We just got back from visiting my grandmother in West Virginia; we went with my mom. My grandmother has a separate guest house behind the main house, thats where we stay whenever we visit. Zoe had a great time, and she came across many rocks (which made her very happy). One of the photos is a leaf we found at the WV state rest stop with a smiley face on it.

Interesting Stories

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Dallas Arboretum

We joined the Dallas Arboretum today. We can get in now anytime we want for a year. They gave us some dark chocolate when we joined (as you can see from the photo below).

Our friendly little one

It turns out Zoe is very good at socializing with kids her age. Whenever we are out and there are kids her age around, she has no problem going right up to them and initializing play. When it comes to adults (especially males) she tends to be shy, but around kids her age she is exceptionally social. We went to Kalachandji's for lunch today and sat out in the atrium, Zoe had fun playing with this little girl. They were dipping bracelts into the fountain.

Arboretum with cuties

These are some photos Nikki took today at the Dallas Arboretum and Kalachandji's. Nikki went with 3 other moms and their little ones. You can see all the photos on our Picasa album.

Zoe's new fish sunglasses and bracelet

Its Springtime!

Go to online album and see larger photos

schmap

A travel site called Schmap contacted us about using one of our travel photos we have on Flickr. They are using our photo of the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Rome as one of their reference photos.

A couple of pics of Zoë-bug

The first bubble bath!

She loves this hat

Fa, fa, fa, fa, fa

Zoe has made some huge developmental advancements since she got over feeling crappy when she had roseloa. She's talking almost non-stop during the day. She's picking up new words sometimes having only heard them once or twice. One day last week, I counted her saying 5 new words.

The last couple of days she has been saying "eye-Da". I'm not sure what it means but I think it's a declarative statement. I believe that the "eye" is "I", just can't figure out what "Da" is. Maybe she is saying something like "I am", or it might be her trying to pronounce "Zoe". She says it very loud and forcefully over and over again. I can't find any context for the phrase. We thought it might be "I want", "I have", "outside" or "olive" but it doesn't seem to be any of these.
Zoe is also saying "mama" and "dada" all the time now. I love that!

She's been trying to tell us about things that happened in the past. This week there was a huge thunderstorm that came through the area around 3am. It woke her up and she couldn't go back to sleep for an hour or so. The thunder and lighting were continuous and the wind was so strong that the front door to our apartment was banging - it sounded like someone was trying to get in. The next day I was changing her diaper and she made the sounds for sleep "fa, fa, fa, fa" and then pointed to her ear, and then made a loud noise. She was telling me that she heard loud noises while she was sleeping last night. It's a bit like playing charades.

Another funny story from last week. As I mentioned, Zoe says "fa, fa, fa, fa" because that's the sounds that Daddy makes when he's pretending to sleep. We were in the car going to dinner and the Talking Heads' song "Psycho Killer" came on. If you don't know the song, the chorus goes like this:

Psycho killer, que'st que c'est?
Fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, fa, far
better Run away

Well we told Zoe that they were singing about going to sleep and she thought that was just hilarious. She still giggles uncontrollably every time I put the song on.

Photos of the storm's aftermath

There was a big storm that came through North Texas last night. These were all taken within a couple of miles of our place

WTF?

I cant stop watching this. The older lady's pants keep disappearing and the lead singer actually washes her face with McCain at one point. Watch out for the floating McCain head (I'll be having nightmares about this one).

They're serious about this video, this isn't a joke. I guess its not that surprising considering who they're voting for.


Update (April 18th):
This turns out to be a joke video by a comedy-news website. They did a great job, very funny.

Woodland Zoë

Story of Stuff

The story of stuff. If you haven't seen this already, its worth checking out.