Zoë: My Baldest Baby

Okay, Crystal, this post is for you! I took pictures of Zoë while she was eating because that was the only way I could get her to stop craning her head around so she could bat at the camera.

We seriously go back and forth about what colour this girl's hair is everyday. Sometimes it looks light and other times it looks dark. She's still super bald on top—so perfectly bald, right up to about the middle of her head. And then her hair is so sparse that it looks lighter than it actually is (at least, that's what I keep telling myself because I'm on Team Brown (though we'll love her with whatever colour of hair she develops)).

Happy New Year

The older girls stayed up until midnight reading, watching shows, and playing games.

Quick Trip to Raleigh

We went on a quick field trip to Raleigh on Saturday, first picnicking in front of the State Capitol Building and reminiscing about our first trip to the capitol when Benjamin was just ten months old. We had to take a picture of him sitting by the cannon, just to show how much he's grown.

It's still weird to me that we're still here. We're able to say, "Look at my little boy sitting by this cannon in 2013. Now look at my little boy sitting by this cannon in 2016." All of that and not a single move in the middle. We've lived here almost twice as long as we've lived anywhere in our whole married lives. I suppose it won't technically be twice as long until August. But still. This is a long time for us.

Teething

Zoë and I spent an impressive twelve hours sleeping last night. That twelve hours was punctuated by a nursing session every couple of hours, but we spent the bulk of that twelve hours sleeping. Zoë didn't wake up screaming...and stay up screaming for hours on end. It was lovely.

We've spent several consecutive days screaming until all hours of the night. Two o'clock. Three o'clock. Four o'clock.

We've done teething gel.

We've sucked on ice cubes.

We chewed everything in sight.

Nothing really seems to help for long.

She's got four teeth trying to come through simultaneously. On the one hand, at least we'll get four out of the way at once. On the other hand, that's four times the pain, four times the screaming, all at once.

Sitting up

Zoë's getting so close to crawling that I'm sure she'll be speeding around the house in the next couple of days. For now she remains frustrated that she can't get where she wants to go. However, she seems to have mastered a different trick this evening—sitting up.

For the record, I left her on her back after a diaper change. I returned after taking care of her diaper to find this:

All her siblings are sleeping (let's not talk about Zoë's sleeping "schedule," okay?) and Andrew said he didn't help her so she somehow managed to sit up by herself.

I almost doubted whether I left her on her back or not until she tipped over onto her stomach...but then ended up back in a sitting position a few minutes later. I've been watching her to see how she does it but so far she's just been spinning circles around the living room and backing herself into corners and then crying about it because she so badly wants to control her whereabouts. Sitting up on her own is a pretty cool trick, though, I guess.

New Year's Eve, take 1

I'm sure we'll take more pictures of our late night festivities as well (then again, we might not), but here are some pictures of the day from before 9:30 (when we rang in the New Year with King Benjamin).

The first thing we did today was sleep in, big time. I woke up just before 10 am and everyone was still sleeping. It was eerie, but I'm not going to complain about it because I think we all needed a good wake-up-when-ready day.

Once we were all up and at 'em, Daddy took Benjamin grocery shopping while the girls and I took down the Christmas decorations. I had to take a picture of this branch:

Miriam's 2015 Reading Report

Since we’ve had so much fun tracking all the books Rachel read in 2014 and 2015, this year Miriam decided to join in. At the beginning of the year, Miriam decided to read 100 books—an ambitious goal considering she was still in the middle of preschool and was only dreaming of kindergarten. After a few months, though, she realized that 100 books was too easy, so she changed it to 200 (twice as ambitious!). Because we put a sort of data dashboard on the desktop of our media computer, she was able to track how far ahead of Rachel she was throughout most of the year (and delighted in reminding Rachel that she’d read more books than her).

Starting kindergarten in July (and skipping to 1st grade in August), though, was rough on her—probably a little more difficult than we thought now that we can see the data. As you’ll see below, she curtailed her reading significantly once school started and has only recently (i.e. just this week) returned to pre-1st-grade levels (albeit with much more difficult books now).

Here’s how great she did this year:

Rachel's 2015 Reading Report

Continuing our tradition of quantifying and measuring all our children’s achievements, we once again tracked every book Rachel read this year. At the beginning of the year she decided to set a goal of 400 books (given her success last year at reading 382 books). However, we didn’t take into account the fact that the books she reads now are longer and more complex—she started 2014 reading 60-page Junie B. Jones and Cam Jansen books that she could fly through. She’s also taken to Doctor Who and spent nearly Friday night—and most evenings during school breaks—watching an episode or two (she finished all nine seasons from the modern show and has watched most of the older episodes available on Netflix). Because of that (and because we never got around to revising her goal), she didn’t come anywhere close to 400. But that’s totally okay because she read a ton of fantastic books this year and Doctor Who totally counts as literary acculturation so it’s all good.

Here’s how she did.

Vinegaroon

One of our favourite exhibits at the zoo, collectively, was the desert biome. I think part of the reason for that is because it seems so impossible to the children, especially lately. The hill leading to our backyard is so muddy that Benjamin was unintentionally using it as a slip'n'slide this afternoon (when it was, mercifully, sunny for a few hours). He slid down it so many times, always by accident.

"Now that's a slippery slope!" he kept saying.

I think he's only ever heard that term used metaphorically.

kookaburras inside the biome

Zoë at seven months

Zoë is now seven months old. Technically she's seven months and one week, which means she's quickly approaching the eight-month mark, which hardly seems possible. Time is, once again, moving far too quickly.

At seven months, Zoë is much more interested in moving than in staying still. Unfortunately, she hasn't quite figured out how to crawl yet and is stuck rolling and scooting and it's driving her bonkers. We catch her planking quite a bit and have spotted her rocking back and forth on her hands and knees a couple of times. So don't worry, Zoë! Crawling is right around the corner! I promise.