Big Beds and Other Developments

This has been an exciting week for us. On Wednesday, we were at Calder’s doctor appointment, and as the medical assistant was getting us settled into the exam room he asked Zoe her name, and Zoe said, “Zoe.” What makes this unusual is that Zoe had never, ever said her name before. Maybe it was her recent and frequent exposer to the Sesame Street character named Zoe, or maybe it was the fact that we say her name a hundred times a day, but whatever it was it took only eight hundred twenty six days for Zoe to say her own name. We’re now working on having her memorize all forty-four presidents.

Zoe also acknowledged that there is a ‘three’ and a ‘four’ on the way to five. Previously she would count one, two five. And sometimes skip the one. Two has always been her unofficial favorite number, and one could almost always count on it as a response. Ask how many cookies she wanted and she would always answer ‘two’. If we ran into someone on the street and they asked her how old she was, she could always be counted on to answer correctly. And if I asked her to tell this someone what the square root of four is, bam, she would nail it first time. Anyway, we’re now counting to five.

Thursday Zoe got her first bloody nose. I don’t think I was completely at fault, but I did contribute. See, she was riding on her shopping carriage, which, as its name might infer, is not really a riding toy. In fact, I suspect that the packaging came laden with warnings against such an activity. Anyway, she climbs on and says, “Push, Daddy.” So I give her a push around the room. Then I thought it would be a good idea to tickle her exposed back. I get the expect reaction of her arching her back, but that upset the equilibrium and the whole kit and caboodle (kit being the carriage and the caboodle being her) toppled as if it were on a pivot. It happened so fast her hands never made it out in front of her. Lots of crying, ice and Elmo videos later she seemed to recover. I’m not sure I’ve recovered yet.

But the really big news for the week is that Zoe is now sleeping in a real bed (aka, big girl bed). For months we have been rearranging the bedrooms and had set up a new bedroom for Zoe. Whenever we walked by we would tell her it was her new room. When the new bed arrived we would take our naps there and, more importantly, jump on it at every opportunity. But when, during a recent doctors visit, it came out that Zoe was able to climb into her crib with ease we were pretty much ordered to move her to her new bed immediately. Last night was the fourth night in a row in her new bed. We have not, however, been able to break her of the habit of calling for us in the morning, instead of just climbing off her bed and walking into our room. We haven’t decided if this is a good or bad thing.

I got a little behind on photos in Picasa, but I am getting caught up. Check in at picasaweb.google.com/dbglass to see recent photos of Zoe and Calder.