Thanksgiving 2008

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope everyone had a great, relaxing holiday! Zack spent his first Thanksgiving in Florida...he was thankful for many things...
*for all his family and friends who love him so much
*the gorgeous weather which allowed him spend lots of time outside
*his first trip to the park (he loved the big boy swing)
*for meeting his great-grandparents
*for chicken and rice baby food (much more filling then the usual fruits and veggies!)
*for the Gators killing the 'Noles on Saturday

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! YUMMY!

FAMILY PHOTO

FIRST SWING RIDE

MEGS, BRUNO, ABBY, AND Z (Bruno is his new bff)
GO GATORS!

Z and CHASE (new friends!)

Thanksgiving with Gramps

Christmas card preview

Updates

Since Zack is our first baby and we don't have many friends with kids out here in SF, we don't really have anyone to compare Zack to in regards to his temperment and his development. We rely heavily on guidance from our pediatrician and from the emails from Babycenter.com. Everyone always tells us "wow, he's so mellow" or "wow, he's so strong" or "oh my, he's crawling already?" and we just smile politely and say thank you. Then this week a few things happened that made us realize Zack might be little bit ahead of the gang ...disclaimer (straight from babycenter website)...

Remember, your baby is an individual. All babies are unique and meet milestones at their own pace. Developmental guidelines simply show what your baby has the potential to accomplish — if not right now, then soon.

Having said that, here are the week's funnies:

*Lucas's Mom saw Zack crawling at daycare and was shocked that he was only 6 months old, because Lucas is 1 and just started crawling.

* the Babycenter email I received today said " Your baby can now roll over from his tummy to his back and vice versa." ... meanwhile Zack has just crawled over to his exersaucer and pulled himself up and is standing there looking at me while I read this email

*Pam, the daycare director said "We call Zack Hercules" and I chuckled a little bit, and she said "no, Im serious, he is really strong and pulling himself up on anything he can".

Jeff is so proud! He wants to enter him into a Strongest Baby contest...um, okay Jeff!

Other random pieces on info:
Thanksgiving is coming up so soon...when did it become mid November? Now I know what people mean when they say time flies....I can't even believe we have a 6 month old and that the holidays are fast approaching! We are headed to Florida on the 22nd for a week...can't wait!

Florida is in the SEC championship in Atlanta Dec 6th and we just bought plane tickets to Atlanta for the weekend! We are hoping to find some affordable tickets to the game in the next couple of weeks so we don't have to scalp them the day of. But, we are thrilled to be headed that way to cheer on our team!

On Halloween weekend, I ran a half marathon. It was a goal I had set prior to having Zack to try to lose some baby weight and to get back into the whole running thing. Well, the training was next to impossible with a new baby and a demanding job, but I did the run and it was amazing! I have never done a run and felt so great about it. When I was getting ready to cross the golden gate bridge, around mile 5, I looked up and there was a beautiful rainbow up in the sky overhead...to me it was just a sign of how great our life is and how lucky we are! As the run got tough, I was able to reflect on the last year of my life and think about how amazing life is now that we Zack is a part of it! I didn't break any records, that's for sure, but I jogged the whole thing, and when I got to the last quarter mile towards the finish, I looked up to see my amazing husband, my adorable little boy, and about 9 other friends standing there cheering for me...I have never felt better...so loved, I seriously smiled so big, and was overwhelmed with tears of joy. I wish I had blogged that weekend when it was still fresh in my mind, but as usual our busy life got in the way, and then I was off to NY but that was a very special day for me so I wanted to share it with all of you!

Here's our crew of runners after the race and the best cheerleader ever, Zack!

And here we are on Union Street after celebrating with a couple of mimosas (notice the happy napping baby!)

The Quintessential City Mom

Maclaren stroller-check
Designer clutch inside designer diaper bag-check
Designer jeans-check
Designer sunglasses-check
Banana Republic Shopping bag hanging over stroller-check
Starbucks iced soy latte in hand-check
Old Navy white tee covered in baby spit up and nothing to change into-triple check!!!

hahaha...thought that was good for a giggle or two...reminds me of a card lauren and greg gave me right after zack was born...gotta laugh!!! i know abby is cracking up right now!!!

YouTube Sucks!

So Zack is totally mobile and now we have videos to prove it. We figured we'd upload them to YouTube and then post them to the blog. Sounded like a great idea. I mean, how can you go wrong with the web site that made the Star Wars kid, the Numa Numa chunkster, the Chocolate Rain geek, and so many others with no talent famous?

Here's how you can go wrong...it's not as easy as you'd think to upload videos. It's a total process and takes forever! So we decided to post to another site because it was far easier.

Saturday morning I took a few videos of Zack's crawl. Let's just say he has a unique style and it's really all upper body. We also took a video of Zack playing King of the Foster and have the videos from the 1st time we fed him "real food".

It's pretty obvious that he wasn't a fan of the rice cereal at 1st, but tonight, he had about 4.5 tablespoons of rice cereal. Zack is turning into a regular Porky Pig. In fact, today I got another amusing status report from daycare. Zack finished his lunch, started screaming, and then started trying to grab the other kids' food. I figure we may need to send him with bigger lunches.

So here's the link to Zack's videos. Hopefully it works. Enjoy and try not to buckle over laughing.


http://www.dropshots.com/jessgoz

The Difference Between Mom & Dad

I'm sure we'll have plenty of other disagreements over how Zack should behave or what he should do, but this was the 1st time we didn't see eye-to-eye.

So every day when we pick Zack up from daycare he has a report card of sorts that says what he did. Yesterdays report was normal, "talking" to the care givers, playing with toys, liked his stroller ride, smiling...and then I saw the last comment. "Zack kept taking the toys away from the other kids." Of course we had also watched him the night before grab Sydney...and he had done it that morning at daycare too.

I sent Jess a text and let her know that our son was a bully. So here's where we have differences. Jess was all worried and asking what we should do because he can't behave that way. My reaction...I laughed. I'm totally cool with him being a bully. Seriously, I think it comes from his curiousness and being aggressive will just help him get what he wants.

Aside from that, with Jess NY for work, we miss her, but at the same time, I am really enjoying the single dad routine. So Zack stays up later than normal. And Zack was probably the only baby at Jillians watching the election results (but we had to meet up with Matty Cakes). But I really enjoy getting him ready for school, taking him, picking him up, feeding him, and hanging out before bed time. It's probably the most responsibility I've ever had...and I was nervous, but this week has been great (although it is only 2 days in).