A New Camera!

I haven't been posting very much lately because I haven't had a camera but I just got a great new one for my birthday so hopefully you will be seeing many more pictures. The picture loader was going VERY SLOW today so I am going to try again tomorrow, but for now I did manage to get up a short video of Zach crawling around in the pool during his first swimming lesson. He is doing great! It has been a hard week as he is getting all 4 front top teeth in at the same time, but he's a trooper! You will see in the video that he has ditched the army crawl and is up on all fours and moving fast. We can barely keep up with him these days and we have spent the weekend baby proofing some more. He has started to climb stairs now and is interested in mostly just the dangerous things around the house so we are trying to stay one step ahead, but its certainly becoming tougher :-) 

Taking a Stand!

It's amazing how quickly Zach is changing these days. Just when I think I have baby proofed the house according to his new abilities he is doing something else. Its so much fun to see. He is still doing his version of crawling which is using his knees and forearms. Everyone who watches him crawl his amazed at how quickly he zooms around using this method. When he sits on the floor to play he prefers to kneel rather than sit on his bottom. When I go into his playroom and see him sitting on his knees and playing with his toys I am amazed at how much he looks like a little boy and not a little baby. His new thing now is to pull himself up from kneeling to standing. He wants to stand on everything. This is especially true since his play group friends came over last week and he watched some of the older ones standing and even walking around his house and using his toys to climb up on. I think he thought it looked like fun and decided he wanted to try it to. Now if I leave him for one second I come back and he is standing up and hanging on for dear life to some piece of furniture. The funniest is when he stands up using his Tonka truck to hang on to and the truck slowly drives away. Poor little guy!  He is doing lots and lots of talking. His favorite things to talk about are Da Da, Pla, Pla, and Ba Ba. Whenever Maggie comes near him he reaches to pet her or climb on her and starts saying MMMMMM so maybe MMMMMM is Maggie! We actually had a great break through on the communication front last week. He started signing back to me using the sign for more! He will be stuffing handfuls of food into his mouth and suddenly look down and see that is tray is empty and he will quickly give me the sign for more. 

He had his 9 month check up last week. All is well, but he is definitely a little guy! His height was 28 3/4 in (50-75 percentile) his weight was 18lb and 4.5oz (10-25 percentile) and his head was 18 1/2 in (90-95 percentile. So that means he is just like his dad, thin with lots and lots of brains! The doctor wasn't worried about his weight but mentioned that since he hadn't been real excited about eating the blended up baby food anymore that we should let him mostly feed himself with his hands. That has been lots of fun, especially for Maggie who gets to clean up after him. He loves feeding himself and we like it too, but that means that instead of 15 or 20 minute meals we now have meals that last about an hour. Thats life with Zach for now. We're having so much fun and its hard to imagine what life was like without him. 

Zach and baby Elsa

He is always very interested in other babies. 

I just can't get enough of the kneeling-It's too cute!

Feeding himself bananas

This is the game he likes to play with us when he is in the high chair. He tips his head one way-we copy him and he tips it the other way. This can go on forever and he also likes to play it in restaurants with other people sitting at tables around us and the waiters. 

MMMMM Delicious 

Reading-Zach loves being read to and is always climbing into his book box and handing me books to read to him. At this point Andy and I have most of his books memorized. 

Drinking from his sippy cup. 

It takes lots of concentration

Hanging out at Starbucks with mommy...

...and daddy. 

GO BRONCOS

Standing up in his crib

He's pretty proud of himself

He loves when daddy plays the guitar for him

Zach likes to play too

Doing a puzzle

The superbowl at Bryan's cool house in DC

Pretty into the game...or the electronic equipment. 

Chatting with Ryan

The handoff

Yay for the Super Bowl!

Christmas

WowI truly can not believe that it has been over a month since the last post. That doesn't mean that I have not been taking pictures or that nothing exciting has been going on in Zach's life. Really it has been the exact opposite. I have been taking so many pictures that it has felt like a huge endeavor so start going through them and getting them posted, and there has been so much going on lately that I have just felt way too busy to do much with the blog. But hey, we're back! Usually all new years resolutions mean to me are that there is suddenly never anywhere to park at the gym and I can no longer get my favorite bike for spinning class (that usually only lasts until February), but maybe this year my new years resolution should be to keep Zach's faraway family more informed about his life! 

Christmas was a very exciting thing for us this year. Zach liked the tree okay, but was most excited by a sparkly ornament hanging in one of the doorways. Since we

 were doing lots of Christmas shopping and therefore spending lots of time in the malls he got to see Mr. Knick Knack do lots of performances. Mr Knick Knack performs in the malls in this area and dances around with his guitar. The babies and the toddlers love him. Zach loves him because he sings BINGO, his favorite song. My mom came out for Christmas and we 

had a wonderful time with her, she of coursed spoiled Zach like crazy. In keeping with the tradition of being too excited to wait and breaking into the gifts early she gave Zach a "rocking dragon" on Christmas Eve which you will see from the pictures that he loves. We also got him the Puff the Magic Dragon Book and we sing the song to him while he rides the dragon. Andy, Zach, and I were instructed to dress up like Jesus, Mary, and Joseph for the live nativity pageant at the Children's Christmas Eve Service. Zach was a great baby Jesus and spent most of the time trying to pull the pillowcase and the belt off of Joseph's head! You will notice that there are no pictures of that event in the slide show! We spent Christmas morning at

 home and we had a wonderful first Christmas with Zach in our wonderful Christmasy home. You will see from the pictures that he was really able to open his presents and got very excited being able to tear up the paper. Tearing things up is one of his favorite things to do so he thought Christmas was a blast. We spent the afternoon and evening celebrating with lots and lots of my extended family. We are so thankful to be living so close to such wonderful family. The day after Christmas we flew out to Colorado. Zach was as usual, a super star on the plane as long we we changed the activity at least every two minutes. We had an especially wonderful visit with both of our families in Colorado and even got a few days up at the cabin in Winter Park with Andy's family which is always so so much fun. Zach got a little sick while we were there, but was quite a trooper and remained in  a great mood despite not feeling great. 

Now that we are back home again we are starting some new th

ings in our schedule. His Grandmom and Granddad bought him a music class for Christmas so we have started doing that once a week and he loves it. We sing songs that the babies love, and they clap sticks together, shake egg shakers and play little instruments. Its so cute to see. We also have the music class CD so we listen to it at home and in the car and he starts giggling when he hears some of the songs come on that he recognizes. Very cute! Andy's church has an all afternoon and evening event for the children on Wednesday nights and Andy and I are "table parents" which means we come in and eat dinner with a group of kids. We did this last year while I was pregnant, huge, and waddling around, but now that Zach is here he gets to come too. We pull a high chair up to our table and he has a blast. He loves being around lots of people and especially loves being around other kids. The kids love him too. Andy is the "dinner dean" as well which means he gets up and talks in the microphone (tells jokes, runs the dinner games, etc.) and Zach starts squealing and gets so excited when he sees Andy up there talking in the microphone. So Wednesday nights have become a definite highlight of our week. We are still very involved in lots of activities with our playgroup and I have been making more good friends with other people who have babies so it is fun to get together and go to lunch or make a target trip or something like that. I have even found a friend with a baby Zach's age to start running with so we can take the boys out together in the jogging strollers, although I don't think anybody could ever replace my great running partner from Princeton.  

As far as milestones go, Zach is now feeding himself Cheerios by the fist full which is very cute to watch. He also speeds around the house doing a inch worm, army crawl, breast stroke combination that he has invented. Its very precious. I love to watch his little butt pop up as he moves around the house. We started a new game where I crawl around the house and hide from him and he chases me and looks for me. That brings lots of delightful squeals. He is getting so close to the formal crawl though. I think it will be any day. Also I am so happy to report what a wonderful sleeper he has become. Now that we are back on his schedule and he is in his own crib, it is such an amazing feeling to be able to read him a story, give him a kiss, and put him in his crib for a nap while he sings himself to sleep. That little humming is the sweetest sound in the whole world. 

Well thats life in Zach's world for now. Instead of doing the long list of pictures I decided to do a slide show since there were so many from this month. Thanks Laura for teaching me the tricks! Hope this works out. By the way I am open to feedback if you prefer the old method. 

Snow Day

Yesterday was Zach's first snow. Andy came home from work early and we had a cozy day inside. Towards the end of the day we bundled Zach up and took him outside to see and feel snow for the first time. 

Maggie likes snow too!

Zach has learned how to get up on his knees and tip the toy bin over so he can pick out his toys. Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to get the on the knees picture. That was the cutest part. 

Looks like his winter jacket is still a bit big. 

Playtime

Here are just a few pictures I took when we were hanging out in Zach's playroom. There are definitely some cute ones in this batch. (7.5 months)