Hello!

I plan on updating the ZAH Things list sometime soon. It's going to take some concentrated time and there are a lot of other things that I would rather do right now, like watch Top Chef. So if I have an hour that I can do whatever I want, then I'm going to watch Top Chef.

Zoe went to her 3rd Year Check-Up. She really likes doctors and going to the doctor. The night before her appointment Pete was playing with her and she knocked her head against the wall and started crying. He asked if she was ok and Constance & I heard her wail "I need a DOCTOR!!!" It was funny. She was ok.

The pediatrician said that Zoe was fine. She was 38 1/2 inches tall and 37 pounds, I think. I answered the barrage of questions which always makes me feel like I'm doing everything wrong because yes, it would be awesome if Zoe ate raw vegetables and played all day with other children and never watched tv and lessened her dependence on foreign oil. But instead we're going to eat fruit roll-ups and watch Wall-E [again] and then drive around aimlessly just to get out of the house. It did lessen the bad-mommy-pain when the doctor gave Zoe a sticker for being such a good girl and Zoe said "look mom, a sticker!" and I said "what is it a picture of?" and she said "It's planet Earth." and the doctor just stared at her.

She did have to get a flu shot & 1 immunization in each leg. It was awful. She wanted to know why we were hurting her. And then her legs hurt for.. 2 days... she couldn't walk or move and it hurt when we carried her to the potty. And then at 2am she had a 101 degree fever that luckily Tylenol knocked out really quickly. Finally the pain subsided and she was able to use her legs again and take the little band-aids off and now she's fine. While she had a fever and was in so much pain she kept whimpering "help me, mom. help me, mom." Doesn't that just break your heart?

Today we are learning the names of different dinosaurs. Zoe invented a game where she brings me a book that I put on her shelf called The Encylopedia of Dinosaurs. It's a thick book, like the Peterson's Bird book, and has "pictures" of all of the dinos. I have several small dinosaurs around the house. Zoe has me find one in the book and then she goes searching for it. She can fully say Stegosaurus and Brachiosaurus. It's really exciting.

She is, like, 97% potty trained. It seems like it took a really long time, but then she mastered it in the past 2 weeks. It is such a relief to not have to buy pull-ups/diapers/wipes at costco. She is wearing "big girl underwear" and doing an excellent job of yelling "I go potty, I go potty, I go potty mom, I go potty mom, I go potty!!!!" whenever it's time to go. I was putting the groceries away this afternoon and she ran in to tell me "I go poop!" and I said, ok, let's go! And then she turned around and she had poop all over her butt, so I was totally prepared for it to be.... on the couch, on the floor? But I followed her into the bathroom and it was in the toilet! Hooray! This is the first time she totally went all by herself. She just needed some help with the butt-wipe.

Before we went to Costco today she came in the bedroom and asked what I was doing. I told her I was putting my clothes on and then we were going to the grocery store. And she said "ok, I'll go to the grocery store" and ran out of the room. A minute later I heard her yell from the front door "mom?" "yes?" "I don't know where the grocery store is."

We went to this awesome place in Issaquah called Kidz Bounce. It's one of those faceless, warehouse-office park buildings but on the inside they have two giant rooms filled with giant amusement-park style bouncey-things. It's $6 for 90 minutes per kid and parents are free & encouraged to play & bounce with the kids. Otherwise, there's really no supervision. Zoe was scared for a little while and then when I got in one of the smaller bouncey things with her she had the best time. I have 3 more passes so we will definitely go again soon. I took some shakey photos that I will post.

We are still doing puzzles and painting pictures and building castles with the magna-tiles and the blocks and the marbles. We play with the Calico Critters and read books and continue to feed her rocking horse apples. She loves to play and learn new things every day. Hopefully this year you will all get a chance to spend some time with her at this age. I think it's going to be super fun.