She is a very accommodating baby.  She is happy to go wherever Ted and I are going during the day or wherever we are all going during nights and weekends.  She does have a thing about red lights though.  She hates them and lets us all know about it.  She is also rather fussy in the mornings when I have to get ready for the day instead of holding her.  She also frequently is fussy in the evenings when Ted is getting ready for bed. In the evenings no amount of holding her stops the anxiety.  But (so far) she is not the type to scream without stopping.  There is generally some intense arm waving and loud heavy breathing punctuated with yells.  Then we calm her down for a few minutes with walking her around and singing and then repeat the whole process over and over.  Overall she is a pretty calm happy baby though.

Something else worth mentioning is Zoe’s overwhelming need to sit on this baby.  She is quite crazy about it.  Like a duck determined to hatch an egg.  I let Zoe sit with us but that is not enough.  She is constantly inching closer trying to get on top of Sarah.  I have to hold her away and if I move my hand she is instantly moving in.  It is quite comical when Ted joins in and I have Ted, Sarah, and Zoe all on my lap at once.

And then here he is playing games on Gram’s iPad.  He’s got his “thinking-eyebrows” in full effect

He’s pretty lucky, born into an age where the user interface can be controlled directly by digits, rather than through an intermediary (like a mouse).  There’s no learning curve.  In fact, he gets pretty mad when put in front of a non-touch screen (and so do we, having to wipe off fingerprints galore).

Ted’s not always glued to a screen though. He does occasionally read to cats:

Since Pat’s monthly post last week, Ted has added “Zoe” and “kitty” to the six words he was saying last month.  He says Zoe clear as day.  He seems to be starting with the harder words first… He could say teeth before he could say mama.  And he says, “ticka ticka ticka,” while tickling his own belly.

He is also starting with the harder, more obscure animal noises, llama, monkey, donkey, and of course sheep, but he finally says, “moo!”  I mean to me, moo seems way easier than hee haw.  For the rooster he says, “cock-a.”  He doesn’t quite have the -doodle-doo yet.   And occasionally he will tell me that the dog says, “arf, arf, arf.”

He will tell you that a car says, “beep beep” and the train says, “toot toot.”  He loves pointing out cars.  I took him to Marbles Kids Museum, which is in downtown Raleigh and let me tell you- there are a lot of “cars” in the city.

He also loves playing the drums and loves drumming all over the house with anything that resembles a drumstick.  Or his bare hands if a drumstick isn’t handy.  I don’t know if it is just an intense phase or if he is going to be a musician.  Every time he hears a bit of music or someone says the word “dance,” he starts dancing.

Also new this week, he knows where his knees are, as well as my knees.  And when I pointed to my arm tonight and told him the word he repeated it like three times, trying to get the sound right.  I didn’t add it to the list of words he knows because that was the first time he said it and sometimes he will just say a random word once and never repeat it.

His newest sign this week is “help.”  Unfortunately he mostly only does the sign when I say “help” instead of just making the sign to actually get help.  Hopefully he will figure it out quickly that signing help is going to get me to help him much faster and happier than his previous method of whining in frustration.

Another thing Ted loves is feeding Zoe cat treats.  We had to put a child lock on the drawer where we keep them.  He will give her a whole bunch and we will tell him she is all done, but he keeps signing, “more, more.”  Zoe is definitely enjoying this new skill.  Also Ted seems to know that they are just for the cats and never tries to eat them himself or feed them to Pat or me.

Lately I have been looking at our cookbooks, Deceptively Delicious and The Sneaky Chef, just to get ideas for healthy things I could cook for our family.  Really Ted loves vegetables and fruit, so right now I don’t have to worry about hiding them in other foods… its the other foods he is more suspicious of.  One of the key ideas in both books is that toddlers don’t like trying new foods.  I decided I had better start upping Ted’s variety now, while he is still accepting of them, so that there will be less “new” foods for him when (and if) he hits that phase.  So this week he had olives, summer squash, quinoa, salsa, zucchini, and whole wheat crackers with cheddar cheese.

We got a lot of Trick or Treaters, though I don’t think we got as many as last year because many of our neighbors weren’t giving out candy this year.  We did have a hay wagon pulled by a tractor bring a ton of kids.  We tried to take a picture of them but it came out really dark.

Then we felt the need to get Zoe involved in the festivities.

Other goings-on this week included a first carousel ride and kiddie train ride.  We went to a fancy park in Raleigh with a few other moms and babies Ted’s age.  He seemed to really enjoy it all.  He fell asleep immediately after the train ride on the way to the swings.  Tired him right out.

His latest food is applesauce.  I was thinking I would make most of Ted’s food, but I quickly have succumbed to the ease of buying it instead.  So far we have been getting him organic, but they unfortunately don’t seem to have as many different kinds as they do of the regular.

Here’s a video of the cats, hopped up on catnip and cat toys.  

What a thing to do…. pack up and head off into the country with nothing more than a Craigslist handshake and a couple of disgruntled cats.

It’s been great, though. And sad sometimes. And awesome other times. However hard or silly or non-Yankee its been (and sometimes it was all three at once), it’s all been worth it.

To say that Zoe is happy I am home would be a large understatement.  She would glue us together if she could.  Ted is starting to notice her too.  The first day we were home he watched her walk by with his mouth wide open, like -wow, what in the world is that amazing thing!  Since then he has been keeping an eye on her.  Yesterday Ted napped on my stomach while Zoe slept on my legs.  I think they are going to be good friends.