Christmas

Zoë hand painted most our gifts this year and she had a blast doing it!

We traveled to Georgia for Christmas, it was delayed by a day due to a 24 hour stomach bug that Zoë and Derek had.  While in GA we got to visit a lot with Aunt Misha and Uncle Stephen and of course with Nana and Pop.  On Christmas Eve we went to Aunt Robins house and Zoë had a blast hanging out with her cousin Zeke.  He is 9 and was so sweet to her.  Zeke helped Z open her gifts from Aunt Robin and set them up, then he went to his room and found a lot of toys he did not want and gave them to her.  We left with a Santa size bag of toys!

That night we set out cookies and milk for Santa.  Next year we will be home for Christmas so we will make Santa some eggless cookies, dealing with a vomiting Z the days before we left I could not get my act together on making some.

Zoë had a hard time sleeping that night and finally settled in around 3 am so we had to wake her at 8 am.  She was so excited to see he had brought her Blue Candy!  She tore through her gifts and wanted to open more when they were all done.  She looked under the empty tree and said:  "Santa no bring no presents."

reading books to her Cailou doll, whose tucked into her new sleeping bag

We were all so tired Christmas Day and had to drive home, which was very sad.  Zoë slept pretty much the entire drive home and still went to bed at 8 pm about an hour after we got home and slept through the night until 7 am.

Christmas Sing along

We had our annual Christmas sing along at school.  I was a little sad I could not get good photos since I was trying to watch over a class of 3 year olds while Zoë was on stage.  Her class sang Jungle Bells while shaking bells, while  Z just stared out at the crowd like a deer in headlights.  They did have to wake her from her nap to get to the stage so she was pretty sleepy.  But she did not cry or try and run.

My class did really well and they were all so cute.  Ms. DeAnna had a major coughing fit while they were singing Joy to the World.

Holiday

Time is flying by this December at the Robert's house hold.  Zoë is gaining more opinions each day and learning new words.  She loves to sing the ABC's and Itsy Bitsy Spider songs (only the first parts of each).  She has for some time really liked to count mostly to two, but when she sees two of something she will count them.  When we count together she will say the even numbers and I will say the odd numbers.  She has not counted to 10 all by herself yet but I think she is super close, we get to 5 together and she can finish to 9 most of the time and sometimes to 10.

She has been referring to herself as Zoë instead of Wowie, and also likes to name her dolls Zoë.  I am not sure if its her age but she loves to look at herself in the mirror.  When she gets dressed in the mornings she will say: "Look mirror".  She will dance in front of it, make faces, and check herself out.  Another thing she loves is looking at photos and videos of herself.  Not sure if I should be worried about it or not.

Zoë likes to use "It's everybody's" when she sees something she likes.  So if its everybody's then of course it is okay to play with it.

Z also likes to say: "What this about?" or "What is (fill in blank) doing?" and of course she still always says: "What the noise be?"

We have talked about how we are going to Nana and Pop's for Christmas and that Santa will bring her a gift.  I first asked her about it just before Thanksgiving and I ask what she would like for Christmas and she said "Candies" and I said "What kind of Candies would you like" and she replied "Blue Candies".  I have asked her many times and still the same response, with only "Red Candies" recently added.

Zoë learned to climb out of her crib on Thanksgiving day, so about a week later we decided to upgrade her to a big girl bed.  She has been doing awesome in her big girl bed!

She wanted me to take a photo of her in her big girl bed, pretending to sleep.

Holiday Outings

For those of you who have not been to our little town of Bowling Green KY it has a very adorable downtown square with a pretty park and giant fountain in the middle.  A lot of old southern towns have downtown squares.  The week after Thanksgiving each year they turn the Christmas lights on and have a party to celebrate it, followed by a parade the next morning.  So like we have every year we have been here we went.

Thanksgiving 2012

Derek and I got up early on Thanksgiving and headed to the park.  We both ran the Turkey Trot 5k, I came in at 37:38 and Derek at 41:58 (The best overall time was 16:05, this is my first 5k but that seems insane to me).  This was our first 5k and I am very proud, the course is very difficult as for more then half the course it's a steep incline.  I only walked once for about 2 minutes, if it wasn't for Brandy I would have walked a few more times.  We are looking forward to more races and possibly an attempt at the Bowling Green Marathon next November.

We had a late dinner that night and had a great time visiting with Derek's family.  Zoë got to play with Aunt Misha's makeup and got her finger nails painted.

Date night with Tripp

A few Saturdays ago Tripp came over for a few hours to hang out while his parents went to dinner.  Zoë was very excited and kept wanting to give him hugs, but he wanted to check out all the toys.  They played really well together.  When we had dinner Zoë and Tripp kept giggling and it took me a minute to figure out that they were playing footsie under the table.  After dinner they just ran laps through our house and laughed.  It was a really fun night!

Shanty Hollow

We have had some warm weather here in Kentucky the last few days and today we took advantage of it.  We drove out to Shanty Hollow Lake and went on a short hike.  It is so pretty and I had not been there since I was pregnant.  Z did most of the hike on her own and was very busy moving leaves to try and find sticks.

Halloween

Olivia came for a visit before Trick or Treating

This was the first year that Zoë actually got dressed up and went Trick or Treating.  Last year we were hanging out with my parents in Nashville before they flew back home, and the year before that she was 2 days old.  We wanted to avoid our house at all cost as we get a ton of kids in our neighborhood.  

We went to Sean and Sara's house and Zoë got to hang out with Gracie.  Just down the street from their house is Pumpkin Ally, they close the street off and lots of house participate.  I was a little worried that Z would be scared of all the costumes, as she saw the Cat in the Hat once and freaked and every time she sees WKU's mascot Big Red she get so scared I worry for her health.  She did great and only got scared of two people.  (In my proudest Mama voice)  The two people she got scared of you ask:  Mitt Romney and then she saw someone dressed up as a Robot and just said "Zoë scared of Robot"  but old Mitt totally freaked her out.  The Dad to the kid dressed up as Mitt asked him to take off the mask to calm her down.

Once we hit the road Z was a little confused and thought we were just going on a walk.  Then when she found out you get "candies" if you take your bucket up to houses she was so excited and we could not get to the next house fast enough.

We had a great time and next year I know we will have to go to more houses as we only ended up with a handful of candy.  At that time I was happy with that so Z would not eat so much candy, but the next day when I was digging though her candy and I did not have much to steal I was kind of sad.  Also we will need to pack the stroller with more wine, one glass was not even enough.

The Party!!!

We had Zoë's Birthday Party on the Saturday (27th) before her actual Birthday.  I did not do much planning until well the day before so I was a little stressed with the amount I needed to get done.  But thankfully my wonderful Mother was there to help and Derek's parents were on their way.  We started the morning making rainbow eggless cupcakes, which both the rainbow and eggless were a first attempt for me.  They turned out pretty good, they could have come out a few minutes sooner but all and all not to bad.  Zoë got to lick each different colored spoon before each bowl got washed and got very upset when she wanted the next spoon to be a different color then she received.

Zoë went down for her nap and it was a good 3 hours, once she got up she was in a lot better mood and so was I.  When she woke up NaNa and Pop had arrived and she got to see what Derek and I got her (Tricycle) and what NaNa and Pop got her (car).

Within the hour Aunt Misha had arrived with her gift which was hands down Zoë's favorite and it was the hit of the party too.

I set up a photo booth but then only got photos of about half of the kids who came.

Melanie

Sylas

Gracie

Zoë

Dempsey

Tripp

Larkin

She had a lot of fun and so did we!