Our Winter Wonderland

Well, it's in the 40's here in Olathe today, but it feels like it is about 60. Usually I'm freezing in 40 degree temps, but now I feel like I can go out without a coat (which I did earlier today). It's been extremely cold here recently, as in the high was around 0 for several days. That was the high meaning that the low was well below 0. I know you are thinking that I've lived in Detroit and St. Louis before, but we never had temperatures and windchills this low during my 3 winters in Michigan. And I'm a southern girl at my core. I grew up with subtropical weather, and that is what my body expects.

Luckily I didn't have too many reasons to go outside on those frigid days, which was nice in some ways, but sad in others because we never really got to get out and play in the snow! Somehow building a snowman when it is negative 5 isn't really satisfying. I'll just drink some hot tea and gaze out the window, thank you very much. Kansas City has gotten about 2 feet of snow since Christmas Eve, and it hasn't started melting until this week. That means at least half of the good parking spaces at the grocery store are out of commission due to being filled with snow banks. At least they will probably melt most of the way before the next snow comes. In Michigan, there would be snow piles in parking lots as tall as 2 story buildings.

Here are some pictures around our house in the snow:

See that shovel? Krzysztof had some really good bonding time with that little tool in the past couple of weeks.

Here is our deck. I was lucky that the snow didn't just collapse into the house when I opened the door. As you can see, the snow went right up to the seats of our chairs.

Here's another deck picture. Yes, yes I know we shouldn't still have our herb pots outside. I know they will probably not come back to life and the pots might crack. Hey, at least we didn't leave our baby outside.

Grilling is something we like to do year round, but I'm not about to shovel a path to my grill. I'll just bake my chicken.

Here's our little snow baby! This snow suit is huge on him, but I bet he wasn't cold. Actually, this was taken today when it was 40 out, so I'm pretty sure he was hot. I just had to get some pictures of him outside before the snow melts.


A great smile, but eyes closed...oh well!

More Christmas Pictures

These pictures were on my parents camera. I received them after making my last posting, so they didn't make it on that one!

Here is our silly, laughing boy! Brandon laughs so much more frequently now. He even laughs at my silly faces and noises instead of always needing to be tickled in order to bring on a laugh. I read in a book about motherhood recently that your baby's laugh is like a drug - you'll do almost anything to get it, and you just want more and more of it. How true! It is the best sound I've ever heard.

Here's Brandon at his Mimi and Papa's house. He loved watching the fire. This little rocking chair was my dad's when he was a baby, so my sister and I spent a lot of time in it too.This is my parents dog, Biscuit. Note that Biscuit is in the rocking chair. A lot of effort (mostly by my dad) went into making sure Biscuit knew that this baby was not replacing her. By the look on her face, I'm not sure she's buying it. I guess my dad thought Biscuit deserved a picture in the chair too. I didn't even see him take this picture. They call Biscuit my little sister, and she definitely thinks she is a person because she is treated like one. For instance, my parents give her their leftover filet mignon - actually they make sure they cook a little extra so she can have some. When I'm home, I always try to get them to save the extra steak for KZ, but the dog usually wins out. Biscuit wasn't too interested in Brandon. She downright ignored the fact that he was there for the first few days. Towards the end of our time there she would wag her tail slightly and give him a little sniff, but that's about it. Brandon wasn't too interested in her either, so it all worked out. It will get really interesting next year when he knows about dogs and wants to touch her and play with her.
Here is Brandon (and Biscuit) with his cousin Drew. Drew is my sister's 17-year-old son.

Another cute rocking chair picture.

And here's another picture with Biscuit. Doesn't she look happy to be there? :-)

Welcome to the world of Real Food

The day after Christmas we had our family Christmas brunch. It wasn't on Christmas morning because all of our family couldn't be there that morning, so we opened presents and then had brunch on the 26th. We thought this was the perfect time to introduce Brandon to his first taste of real food! Not that Breast milk isn't "real food," as it is supposed to be about the most perfect food you can have, but you know what I mean. I had planned to wait until 6 months to introduce solids, but he met all the criteria in all the books for solid food readiness, and he has been showing intense interest in food for several weeks. He looks at us with awe as we eat and smiles as the food goes in our mouth. He tries to grab at the food on our plate. He smacks his lips and makes munching motions with his mouth as we eat. If that's not a kid who wants some food, I don't know what is! So, at 5 1/2 months, we gave him this first taste of solids - rice cereal. Here is a video of his first few bites. It is 2 minutes long with a lot of commentary from the 10 family members gathered around him, so I understand if you want to just skip it and view the pictures below, but the video is pretty cute...

Well, I can't seem to get the video to load. I guess the file is too big. Oh well! Enjoy the pictures anyway...

Why is everyone looking at me like that?

I'm a little concerned about this stuff, mom. Where's the breakfast casserole you got to eat?

Is it over yet?

Ok, that wasn't so bad! I'll try it again tomorrow!

Here is avocado boy! He got to eat avocado for his 2nd food. This was taken New Years day in Charleston at his aunt Kiki and uncle Andy's house.

Brandon is now onto his 3rd food - bananas, which is definitely his favorite so far.

First Christmas

It's almost been a whole month since we've updated the world on the Z family happenings! Somehow the holidays always seem to be more busy than relaxing...

I flew down to Hilton Head Island on December 15th with Brandon to help my mom after her surgery. Yes, that means I flew by myself with an infant. Despite my anxieties, everything went relatively smoothly, mostly because the flights were not full, and I had a whole row to myself on both legs of the flight. There was one small issue called a diaper blowout while the plane was in line to take off, so I couldn't get up to do anything about it. A few loads of laundry later (mine and his), we are no worse for the wear.

KZ flew down on the 20th to join us. Because we were not at our Kansas home for so much of the holiday season, we decided not to get a tree. We both love having a live tree and enjoy decorating it, so it was a little sad around our house. In order to have some sparkling lights, we decided to decorate a Christmas lamp.

Festive, huh?

We were in South Carolina until January 2nd, but we surprisingly took very few pictures. We didn't realize until we got back that we didn't get many pictures of our family members holding Brandon. I guess we were too caught up with enjoying him and seeing our family enjoying playing with him. Brandon loved meeting his aunt Kiki, uncle Andy, cousin Drew, great-uncle Tim, mom's cousin Devin, and many other family and friends. And he, of course, loved spending lots of time with his Mimi, Papa, Babcia, and Dziadzia.

Here is Brandon on Christmas Eve in the cute shirt mom's friend Shelley gave him!

Our mischievous little elf!

The "wrapping" elf. :-)

Brandon and his Daddy on KZ's birthday, December 22nd. Those little figurines on the cake have been on his birthday cake ever since he was little. I wonder what traditions we'll start for Brandon on his birthdays. (side note: do you think my husband likes superheros? Check out the guy behind the tree on the cake and KZ's shirt)

Here we are on a walk on Pinkney Island with KZ's dad. Brandon is sleeping in the Ergo baby carrier.

Here's Brandon with his Papa. Papa makes cool hats, huh?

This is on the bluff behind Valerie's parent's house. Brandon is (again) sleeping in the Ergo. We can't keep him awake on walks when he's in that thing!

The flights back home were a little more eventful and difficult than on the way there, even though there were 2 of us to handle the baby! We were held on the runway for a long time at the beginning and end of the first flight, and Brandon didn't sleep at all, so he became overtired. He fell asleep the minute we put him in the stroller in the airport, mostly because we were walking very very fast, so he was getting a nice bumpy ride. We had less than 30 minutes to change concourses and get to our gate in Atlanta. Why is it that you only ever have to change concourses when you are running late!? We made the flight (and our luggage did too amazingly), but Brandon had a hard time getting back to sleep on the plane, so he fussed most of the time.

We finally made it to Kansas City only to find that it was 8 degrees and snowing. Wait...it gets worse. KZ had parked in the uncovered economy lot. Kansas City had already gotten about a foot of snow under what was currently falling. And I hadn't yet put an ice scraper in my car for this year. After about 45 minutes and a few broken CD cases, KZ picked Brandon and I up at the baggage claim area and we made it home by 1:30 am (which seemed to be 2:30 am for us coming from the Eastern time zone). I didn't realize how easy I had it on my flights down to SC. Maybe I won't be flying with the baby any time again soon.

So now we are back home and trying to re-condition our son to realize that someone does not have to be paying attention to him 100% of the day! And we are on to another baby adventure called "solid food" as you'll see on another posting!

Bushman

Not the best picture of the San Francisco wharf, you might be thinking. Look a little closer at the bottom right...there he is! The Bushman! This guy scared me half to death while we were walking down this sidewalk. There I was walking fairly close to a plant (not thinking, why the heck is a plant in the middle of the sidewalk...), and all of the sudden it growls and a face pops out between the branches laughing. I screamed and jumped, and both KZ and I were thinking, "what just happened?" Luckily I didn't trip over the stroller (Brandon remained peacefully sleeping by the way).

Later that day we walked back by there (on the opposite side of the street, mind you), and there was this man taking a picture of the scary bush guy. KZ asked him about it, and it turns he is THE famous Bushman! He's a legend. He's even had lawsuits about his little act.

Here is a You Tube video of the Bushman in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cbBdydQlrk

One of the you tube comments mentioned that the Bushman makes something like $60,000 in tips doing this all year. He didn't get a tip from me. I don't like people in masks (I used to walk around Disney World as a kid praying that we wouldn't see any of the characters, and especially that they wouldn't talk to me, or touch me!), people jumping out at me, and being scared in general. However, I do kind of feel honored to have been scared by the world famous Bushman.

California Part 2: San Francisco to Sonoma

So after Monterey we drove up to San Francisco. We met up with my Babcia, Dziadzia, and cioci Kalina there. Here I am with Mommy on one of the piers overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. I was more interested in chewing on my Ergo baby carrier.

Here we are on another pier. The wood floor of this pier was so bumpy. I laughed while I was pushed in the stroller over it!

This was one of Mommy's favorite parts of the city...Ghirardelli Square.
We all loved riding the cable car!Is this not the cutest picture of me you've ever seen?! After San Fran, we drove up to Sonoma county. We rented a house in Santa Rosa for 6 nights. This picture was taken on Thanksgiving.
This picture is pretty cute too, huh? It's so hard to capture my smile...It takes like 3 people...one to take the picture and 2 more to make me laugh. We spent Thanksgiving with a lot of Daddy's family in Sonoma.
This was taken on the way to Thanksgiving dinner. The vineyards are so pretty this time of year.On Friday we went to some wineries with the whole family.


This is at Ferrari-Carano with my cioci Kalina (I was sleeping in my stroller)

This is at Geyser Peak.

On Saturday Mommy, Daddy, and I went for a long hike in the redwoods, which was really cool. The camera battery died after taking a couple fuzzy pictures, so we don't have anything to show for that day. We also stopped at a winery on the way back from the Redwoods, and I had to keep being brought outside because of my squawking. We didn't feel so bad because the wine wasn't great and the service was terrible, but maybe taking a baby to the wineries isn't such a great idea afterall.


On Sunday we drove to the coast. Here we are with Dziadzia, Babcia, and my great Cioci Halina.

Me and my Daddy!
It was a great trip, but it is good to be home in my own bed and with all my toys!

California Part 1: LA to Monterey

Hi everyone! We just got back from California. Let me tell you all about our trip! We flew into LA on Friday, November 20th. I did great on the plane! I even got compliments from neighboring passengers. In LA we met my mom's friend Allegra for lunch, and she gave me the coolest little lion blankie/toy that I just love! I played with it every day of the trip. Unfortunately we forgot to get a picture with Allegra.

This was my first time seeing the ocean - this is in Malibu. We drove through here on our way to Santa Barbara.

In Santa Barbara we stayed with mom's friends Shelley and Chris. The night we got there, I achieved a milestone! I rolled from my tummy to my back very easily! I have done this occasionally before, but this was the first time I was really good at it.

The next day we went to some wineries near Santa Barbara. Mommy and Daddy couldn't stop talking about how pretty the vineyards were with the fall colored leaves!

I didn't mind being in the wineries. There was all kinds of cool bottles and glasses that looked fun to play with. Maybe if they take me back next year, I can get my hands on all that stuff, although I think mom said this was my last trip going to the wineries for a while...

We had a picnic by this fire pit in the cute little town of Los Olivos.

Here we are with Shelley and Chis in Santa Barbara before we left on Sunday.

I am so good at drinking bottles now! I can even hold them by myself sometimes, and I don't mind drinking them in the car. We drove up the coast towards Monterey along the Big Sur Highway. Mom and Dad think this is the prettiest drive ever! I couldn't see what they were talking about because I can't see out the window from my carseat, so I decided to cry most of the day. I'm pretty happy here because I am OUT of the carseat.

This is their favorite place along Highway 1. Unfortunately we didn't get here until after the sun set, but it was still nice.

We got to Monterey Sunday night and ate dinner at Fisherman's Wharf (well actually I slept through dinner). On Monday we went for a long walk around the town and along the water. Then we went to some wineries in Monterey county. Wineries again, you say? It gets worse...check out California Part 2.