chew toy

I don't know why Zoe likes to chew on my ponytail holders, but she does. I left this on the coffee table and now it's her favorite thing. I finally got a picture of her standing. She does it pretty often but I never have the camera ready. We played Dance Dance Revolution in the morning.

highchair

Sadly the Baby Bumbo did not fulfill all of our feeding needs, so we got a highchair. We tested them all in the store and this one is quite awesome. It folds up really small and is adjustable in a thousand ways, fully reclines, the seat can be almost on the floor or high enough for me to stand and feed her. Zoe wants meals now a couple of times a day and she eats really, really slow so it is certainly nice to have a place to put her. She's eating lots of different stuff now. I make her a one-egg omelette usually for dinner. She likes macaroni & cheese, cheerios and bran muffins.

zoe's star

I named a star for Zoe. I told you how Aunt Tammy bought Zoe a monkey and it came with a code that I used to log into a website that allows you to name a star. I named it Zoe Ann Hartman. I chose one that can be seen from Seattle on Zoe's birthday [I hope]. It's in the constellation Andromeda. The link below takes you to Google Sky where the star should be. It is located in the center of the page and if you move your cursor around you can find the approximate location:
0h 58m 47s 44degrees 31' 36.66"

Google Sky is pretty awesome by itself - look around!

zoe's star

http://www.google.com/sky/#latitude=44.52894419968026&longitude=-165.3061294555664&zoom=11&Spitzer=0.00&ChandraXO=0.00&Galex=0.00&IRAS=0.00&WMAP=0.00&Cassini=0.00&slide=1&mI=-1&oI=-1

keepin the art alive

It has been a real challenge for me to keep making art. Being at home every day makes being creative really hard. There are a lot of distractions because there is so much that needs to be done inside & outside of this house, there's a baby crawling all over the place, and I have a lot of "administrative" work to do to ensure that we all eat, have clean clothes, bills paid, non-sticky floors & bathtubs, etc. I also don't have a place that I can work on art stuff and leave it sitting when Zoe wakes up from a nap. So tonight while I was waiting for Pete to get home from work, which will be midnight sometime, I snuck into Zoe's room and did some 'gesture drawings' of her sleeping. It's a great way to stimulate some creative thinking without committing to a project. I think I might translate some drawings of her into paintings for our bedroom. We need some art in there desperately.

October is here

Isn't October the best? The weather gets chilly so we can wear fluffly clothes and snuggle up in blankets. I found this striped shirt at Target for Zoe. She already had these brown cargo pants. I thought she was so adorable in her October Ensemble until we left the house and everyone thought she was a boy. Most of the time I don't correct people. If we're in the grocery store and someone stops to admire "him" or tell me what cute hair "he" has I just smile and nod. But that day we went to the YMCA so that I could get my excercise and the girl in the nursery was telling me how great "he" had been and how much fun she had playing with "him" and I finally had to say "she's a girl" and Stephanie said "oh, I know, it's Zoe!" It's just weird because even though it's an orange shirt, I think it's pretty girly, but people just assume that if a baby is not doused in pink it must be a boy.

I need to take a picture of Zoe in the pumpkin hat that Nana Jo knitted. It is every bit as wonderful as you could imagine.

We are making plans to visit a pumpkin patch/corn maze this month with Jen, Mike & Rowan.

Also of note in the photos above --> my freshly painted red wall in the kitchen. I also painted some other walls around the house and our bedroom. I've been working on some landscaping in the yard, too. There's so much to do around here!

9 month check-up

We went to the pediatrician yesterday and Zoe is healthy and on-track. She seems to be doing everything that a baby her age should do. She is bound to be an early walker [in the next 4 weeks] as she is already walking along the furniture. She now weighs 19 pounds + 4 ounces and is 28 inches tall. She is little, only in the 50th percentile, but growing just fine according to her birth size. She eats just about everything that we give her [vegetables, potatoes, egg whites, fruit, cereal, cheese]. She is learning how to drink from a cup and take dry cereal out of a bowl with her fingers.