Activities, Part 1

At around nine months we discovered that Zoe was anemic and we started a campaign to increase her iron intake. Up to that point she was eating very few solid foods, actually not much more than breast milk. I was tired (lazy) of trying to find things that she would eat, or at least tired of the effort of pureeing everything. But finding that she was anemic changed everything, and the next thing I put into her mouth were chunks of liver, albeit very small chunks. Next was steak (rare, au jus). That she had no teeth I never gave much consideration. I figured if her food was cut up small enough she would simply gum it a bit and then swallow. Then last week Zoe went through an extreme teething episode. The amount of drool that poured from her mouth exceeded the amount of water passing through the Panama Canal locks in a twenty-four hour period. She also ran fever, developed hives and had a loss of appetite. What this means is that she now has more teeth, which in turn means that I will no longer have to cut her food into microscopic specks. Of course she’s still going to choke on the food, but now I get to say, “I told you to chew your food.”

We all hear horror stories of parent’s getting their kids up at 3:15 AM to head off to swim lessons. We may be a couple of years away from that extreme, but the seed is being planted. Here is how Zoe’s week is currently divided. Monday is East Bay Dads (EBD) day. EBD’s are a group of slacker’s stay-at-home dads who meet three days a week ostensibly for various kid-centric activities such as playground time and Zoo visits, but really it’s a thinly veiled excuse to drink beer in the middle of the day (the dads, not the kids). Tuesday is Babygym. Babygym is an hour-long YMCA pay-as-you-go indoor playtime, with fifteen minutes of group activity stuck in the middle to justify the $7 fee. Basically it’s a large room filled with oversized padded things that the kids can jump on and fall off of. There is always at least one child crying because they whacked their head on something. Wednesday is Music Together. You can read what I wrote about MT here. Thursday is Zoo day with the EBD’s. Unfortunately there is no beer at the Zoo. Saturday (at a humane 9:30 AM) is Zoe’s swim lesson. So far she has failed kicking and spitting, but has excelled at choking. Sunday we rest and Zoe will sometimes let us sleep in until 6:00 AM or so.

Zoe has learned how to hold her own sippy cup. She could hold her own sippy cup before, but she hadn’t figured out that she needed to tip the cup to get the liquid to come out. She would often stand there sucking air until one of us would lift the bottom of the cup (at which point she would release it and we would have to stand there holding it while she drank). Now, for the most part, we can hand her the cup and she will drink from it correctly. The first time she figured this out she was so pleased with herself that she drank the entire cup (creating one very wet diaper). This of course has freed up a huge amount of my time, which I can now use toward scraping mashed peas off the floor.

See the world’s cutest bonus video below.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass
Buy the book at http://blurb.com/bookstore/detail/193034