The Best Clapper in the House

Last week I talked about how curious Zoe is and how she will get into, or try to get into, everything. If you don’t want her to get into it or touch it than you absolutely cannot leave it within her reach. She will find it. Alison and I have frequent oh! moments, where we see her reaching for a glass that’s just a little too close to the edge of the table, or a precariously piled stack of magazines that she is about to pull down on top of herself. But I didn’t mention how cognitive she has become. She quickly imitates our actions, and takes noticeable enjoyment in our praise of her accomplishments. For example, clapping is something I tried to teach her starting when she was only a few months old. Now every action requires clapping. And because she is cuter than a tiny kitten, when she claps everyone claps. Than she claps some more. Then everyone else claps some more. Than, pretty soon, everyone in the room is singing the, “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands,” song. Zoe may be learning from our every action, but she causes everyone who happens to be in the room with her to visibly lose IQ points.

Did I mention that her two top front teeth are coming in? They started to break through while we were on vacation, which meant that she woke up every hour. Fortunately she still prefers Mommy at 3:00 AM, but usually just a little effort is needed to get her back to sleep, sometimes a quick snack and sometimes just shoving the pacifier back into her mouth does the trick. (A quick word on the pacifier. Early on someone asked us what we called our pacifier, since apparently you’re supposed to give it a cute pet name. Alison and I decided we would avoid cute names for it and refer to it simply as ‘the pacifier’. It’s not that we don’t have cute names for things. For example, I call preface almost every object, living or not, with Mr.; Mr. sippy cup. Mr. Kitty. Mr. Tissue. And Zoe’s name is never just Zoe, it’s Zoe Zo. Zoe-Zo is wearing Mr. Shoe-y shoe). Since last week her pulling herself up has developed. If two pieces of furniture are close enough, she can transfer her standing self from one to another., though she still has trouble getting back to a sitting position. While we were visiting someone recently with a round coffee table, Zoe figured out how to walk around its perimeter. She couldn’t get down, so she just kept circling. I suggested we space Cheerios around the entire table and head out for drinks.

See new photos in 10th & 11th month of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass