Zoe hit her 17th month 6 days ago. It still amazes me how fast this is going. Geez. It was like she was born yesterday. She has changed so much. No that you would know since i haven’t posted a pic in 7 months! I was looking at her just yesterday and i told Kris that she is no longer a bay, shes a little girl. She is getting quite advanced with her use of sign language, signing multiple words in a single expression, like “more fish” when she wants me to kick on the screen saver on my computer or “Daddy help” when she wants me to help her do something. It’s really neat. She isn’t talking much but I’m sure that will come along soon. She still has a few words like dog, cat, duck and my personal favorite ” eeeeeuuuwww!” when she smells something bad. She now even says that when she has a poopy diaper. Not that we need her to, she stinks enough that we say it too!

She loves the water, loves the splash parks and shows no fear of it whatsoever. We take her over to a nearby waterpark and she just can’t get enough. We have a little white trash style 4″ diameter play pool out back that she splashes around in and loves. On Monday, I took her out back for a swim.
When she was done, which she lets us know by getting out and grabbing our legs, I took her inside. She seemed to be done rather quickly this time. I dried her off and got her dressed in her shorts and a nice tee shirt. About half an hour later, I went out back to check something out (we just sodded the yard) and she followed me out. I went left and took ten steps, turned around and she was sitting in the pool fully dressed. I couldn’t believe it. She was having a ball in her clothes. I undressed her and took off her 1000 lb. diaper and she played for an hour in the pool.

This is really fun!

Categories: Milestones
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I just got back home from a training conference in Maitland, Florida. It’s about 30 minutes north of Orlando. It was a two week training course. The thing that sucked about it (cause the training was great) was being away from Zoe for that period of time. Whilst I was away, she turned 16 months old, stopped drinking bowies and got really sick.

I was able see her via web cam sessions and Skype, a great free internet phone program. Kris and I just coordinated our sessions and I got to see Zoe, and she got to see me. It was weird because I had these horrible thoughts of coming home and Zoe not recognizing me. Yeah, yeah, I know….stupid.

During my absence, Kris had Zoe help her throw away all the bottles in the house. She sent me a picture on my phone of the trash containing all the bowies. I was a little upset not to be there for that. Another milestone. Zoe has been bottle free for two weeks now and there doesn’t seem to be any going back. Kris told me that she thought it was gonna be really hard, but having Zoe help her throw them out seems to have helped. She said it was tough for a day and then it was like she never had them.

The Friday I got back, Kris flew to Little Rock, AK to visit Kyle there. She meant to fly the weekend I was gone but got the dates mixed up. We ended up missing each other by 12 hours, her leaving and me arriving. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Zoe did fine in the cage Kris left her in. Just kidding, Kris’ mom, “Ya-Ya” took her for the day. Zoe was on the down slide of some crud that left her with blood in her stool and a temp of 104. By the time I got home, she was doing much better and it was a BLAST just hanging out with her for the four days. We did everything together and she was an absolute dream. A lady friend of my brother saw her when I took her to dinner at his house and inquired, “does she just run around and smile like that all the time?” Before I could answer, Fred exclaimed “Yup!” How true.

Anyway, I’m back home now and don’t plan on leaving her anytime soon.

Categories: Rantings
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