Juergensen Family Blog

A lot has happened in the last 4 months, which seems like an eternity ago. (Broken record playing in background. ) Zoe has now passed the 18-month milestone! Here are the developments:

• Hugs and kisses are by far the best new trick. Daddy taught her this, and now the good night ritual now involves kisses for Mommy, then Daddy, and sometimes family and guests. It’s a wonderful end to a day. Kisses from Marge & Frank, the gargoyles, are also a favorite game.
• Zoe has mastered her ring stackers, shape shorters and puzzles. We were so impressed (which happens often and easily) with her ability to stack 7 rings in the correct size order. For awhile this provided endless entertainment for her, but sadly that was followed by boredom. Now begins the quest for the next toy for her to play with. We’re hoping a sand box/water box will do the trick.
• Zoe finally holds her own bottle, though if others are around she will happily let them do it. We joke that the twins are going to surpass her on this front, because they will undoubtedly learn self sufficiency early due to necessity.
• Mommy finally took the plunge and left Zoe at the nursery at church for a 2-hour service. The wonderful staff says she cries for 60 seconds, but then moves on and is fine. In the first few weeks, she actually napped for an hour, which means she must have been reasonably comfortable. (The other kids told me not to wake her when I came to pick her up.) In recent weeks, she was known as the Goldfish champion for chowing at snack time, and has even been playing when at pick-up time. What a relief!
• The game of chase has been greatly expanded, first around the couch and then to cover pretty much the entire house. Daddy walking through the door is the trigger. She often doesn’t go over for a hug, but starts running because it’s time to play! Daddy also gets a musical fanfare when he arrives home, from her music table. Sadly Mommy is not quite so exciting – as a friend said, “there’s no music when Mommy walks through the door.”
• While we were very eager for her to walk to the car instead of being carried, we soon learned this brings new problems. Once the weather finally became nice, Zoe quickly learned that if running indoors is fun, running outside is doubly fun. Teaching her not to go on the street and where to stop on the sidewalk can be a tiring process. She listens most of the time, but the times she doesn’t can pose big problems.
• The park has become a lot of fun, but not in the expected playground area. Zoe loves wandering along the jogging path, and can even do most of a mini-loop. She also loves hunting for acorns and other treasures in the dirt. We’re hoping this will translate to fun in the sand when we go on vacation in a month.
• Terrorizing the kitties has evolved into head butting the kitties and giving them body hugs. They’ve slowly started to view her affections as not harmful, though sometimes a nuisance. In some instances they even welcome the attention, recognizing they aren’t getting as much from the parents.
• While Zoe was previously unable to sit through more than about 15 minutes of TV at a time, she is now glued to the TV when we put the Backyardigans on, her favorite (and only) show. It’s actually a little scary, because she sometimes whimpers when it’s over. I can see how convenient it is to plop kids in front of the television. It provides a nice break for the parent, and fun for the child. Things were much easier when she didn’t like it, and therefore it wasn’t a temptation.
• We’ve had a few great break-though events, which made parenting seem like a breeze. One was a brunch in NYC which lasted an amazing 1 1/2 hours before I had to take her out. We’re still not sure how we pulled this off, but all the adult attention from a round table of admirers, coupled with blueberries doled out one at a time, seemed to do the trick. Last night we took her to her first movie at the drive-in theatre, and she fell asleep in Mommy’s arms about 15 minutes into the movie, giving us the ability to actually watch it! The hour of running around the play area beforehand, definitely helped tucker her out.

We are still eagerly waiting for Zoe to start talking. For awhile it seemed like their was progress and that it was just around the corner, but we’re now prepared for her to be two before words start flowing. She does babble quite extensively, as if she’s speaking her own language. English is a skill not yet attained. Fortunately she understands quite a bit, starting with a toy that says “spin me again”, and other words like kiss, gentle, careful, and come back.

As for listening to something other than disco in the car, Mom has come to the conclusion that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. After a few unhappy outings without disco music, we put the CD back in and saw ear-to-ear smiles on her face. Now we’re focused on expanding the disco choices to more than one 20-song CD, rather than introducing her to better music in the car.