Flat Twists and Practice Dress

Saturday night, I made another attempt at a fancy hair do on Zoe.  This time we tried flat twists.  Flat twists are kind of like a cornrows except that they are twisted instead of braided.  They are supposedly much easier because you only have to hold two strands of hair instead of three.  I kind of figured that if I can get them down then I can move on to cornrows.

Every time I do her hair, I realize how much more I have to learn.  I guess it is good that I am starting now.  I still can't part straight for the life of me and my sections are never even.  I am having a hard time finding the balance between tight enough to stay in, but not so tight that it hurts.

So although they weren't perfect, I was still pretty happy with them.  They were a little loose and fuzzy, but they stayed in.  I put most of them in on Saturday night and finished up Sunday morning.  She wore them to church on Sunday and then all day on Monday.  They may have been able to last another day or so but they were getting a little shabby looking.  All in all, not too bad for my first try.

My other big project lately has been working on Zoe's dress.  I am sewing her temple and blessing dress.  I decided to make it out of fabric from my wedding dress.  My dress had just been taking up space in the closet and I know no one is ever going to wear it, so I thought I might as well do something useful with it.  The thought of cutting into my wedding dress to sew a dress for my baby girl when I am not exactly (or even kind of) a seamstress though, was a little daunting, so I decided to make a practice dress too.  It is out of the same pattern, but with an easier fabric to work with.  I just wanted to make sure I could handle the pattern and that it fit.  I finally got it done and it turned out nice.  It fits, it doesn't look horrible, and I managed to sew in my first zipper (with a lot of help from my mom.)  I actually don't like the dress.  I think I will really like it in white for her blessing, but I don't like it in this fabric (I think she looks like a little pioneer baby.)  The funny thing is, I think I got more compliments on this dress at Church on Sunday than I have in anything else she has ever worn.  Who knew?  I guess everyone likes the pioneer look.

I didn't get any great pictures of the dress, but you can kind of see it here.

I now have just over a week to finish the real dress.  I will keep you updated on the progress.

Court

Well, it's official.  Friday we went to court and Zoe is now legally ours.  It was a great day.  We had a good judge and everything went very smoothly.  We are planning on having her sealed to us and blessed on Saturday, February 7.  It will be nice to get it all taken care of so we can just go on with life.

6 months

I can't believe that it was over six months ago that we picked Zoe up at the hospital and welcomed her as part of our family.  It seems like only yesterday, but I can hardly remember life without her and cannot even imagine our family without her in it.  She is one of the greatest blessings of my life and I love her with all of my heart.  Tomorrow we have our court day to finalize the adoption and then we will be blessing her and having her sealed to us in a couple of weeks.  I am just so thankful for her and for this amazing journey.

Over the last few weeks Zoe has changed so much.  She is so much more aware of the world and so much more active.  She always wants to be doing something and is learning new things to do every day.  Zoe loves to eat.  She will eat anything that is put into her mouth and be thrilled about it.  She loves every kind of baby food she has tried (even peas, yuck!) and will devour them and cry when they are gone.  It is impossible to eat anything around her because the second she sees you putting food in your mouth she opens her mouth and basically begs to have some.  She definitely loves her food.

Zoe has gotten over some of her aversion to her carseat.  She tolerates it a little bit more and usually does a pretty good job of staying calm when she is in it.  We moved her out of her infant seat into a regular rear facing seat and that seemed to help a lot.  She still has her moments though, and if she decides she doesn't want to be in the carseat, nothing will stop her from screaming.

Zoe still will not roll over.  She is perfectly capable of it, but has absolutely no desire to do it.  We have tried everything we can think of to motivate her, but she will not budge on that one.  She is however, an expert at sitting up.  She has been sort of sitting up for about a month now, but over the last couple of weeks, she has become a pro.  She now adjusts herself if she feels like she is falling over, catches herself with her hands and pushes herself back up when she starts to tumble, and can handle almost any distractions without losing her balance.  She will sit and play on the floor all day.  She loves it.  Unfortunately, now that she knows she can sit, she has no desire to lay down and throws a fit whenever we lay her down.  It is going to be even more of a challenge to get her to roll over now.

Zoe is very vocal; she is always making noises and letting us know what she is feeling.  She is a very happy baby.  She smiles and laughs a lot.  Her favorite time of the day is when Robby comes home from school.  She thinks he is the greatest thing in the world.  She is a great kid and we all love her to death.

This is how Zoe spends most of her day now, sitting on the floor, surrounded by toys, totally enthralled.  Life is good when you are six months old.

Here is the month to month slide show updated.  I can't believe how much she has changed.

Fancy Hair

The other day, I decided to try to do something fancy to Zoe's hair.  Right now, fancy to me means anything other than the typical headband with her cute little baby 'fro, or a bunch of little pony tail puffs.  It was a weird day to do it since we didn't even leave the house at all that day, but it was good practice for both of us.  Her hair is perfectly fine now just moisturized and combed out, but I know that one day it isn't going to be fine and we are going to have to start actually doing it.  I know I am going to need a lot of practice and Zoe is going to have to learn how to sit still and let me do it, so I am trying to spend some time doing simple styles every once in a while, just to get our feet wet.  My idea of fancy will definitely change as time goes on.  I am sure when I am spending hours at a time cornrowing her hair, I will laugh at calling this fancy.  But for now, a quick 15 minute veil style is about all either of us can handle, and I am kind of proud of it.

I really need to work on getting straight, even parts. I always start out good, but then it quickly goes downhill.

I just had to add this picture because it cracked me up.  Her veil style ended up in 3 very cute little poofs, but her bald spot is hilarious.  Robby had a bald spot too, and it was probably just as bad, but he didn't have much hair anyway, and the hair he did have was really blond, so you couldn't really tell.  Zoe's, on the other hand, is so noticeable.  She is completely bald in the back (as you can see) and mostly bald on the sides.  I am trying to help the hair grow back in.  I put a piece of satin in her carseat and will be putting some in her bed and under her when she plays on the floor, so that maybe she won't rub any more hair off.  But for now, I think it is kind of cute.

Having her hair up makes her look so much older.  It is adorable, so I love it, but it also makes me kind of sad that my baby is growing up so fast.

I still have so much to learn about her hair that it is a little scary, but I am sure we will figure it out.  This hairstyle didn't last.  I didn't do it tight enough, so by the time Kirk got home from work, part of it had already fallen out.  Every time I mess with it though, I get a little bit better, so one day, hopefully by the time she cares, I will be a pro.

Arizona

A couple of days after Christmas, we went with Kirk's mom to visit family in Arizona.  I was very nervous about the trip.  It takes almost 12 hours and the thought of spending that long in the car with a baby who screams the moment a car seat is in sight, was not a happy one.

The trip was awesome, and the drive was not nearly as bad as I expected.  Being crammed in the back of the car between two car seats for 12 hours was definitely not a lot of fun, but it was tolerable.  Zoe was a little trooper.  She did wonderful on the way, except that she screamed pretty much nonstop for the last 2 hours (I can't blame her though, all of us wanted to scream by that point, she was just the only one willing to do it.)  And on the way home, she really didn't scream or even cry much at all.

Arizona was wonderful.  We stayed at Kirk's aunt and uncle's house.  It was lot of fun because one of his cousins was there at the same time with her three kids, so Robby had kids to play with.

We ate a ton of good food.  In fact, every day seemed to revolve around what we were going to eat and how we were going to schedule it so that we could eat as much as possible.  The Mexican food there is unbelievably  tasty so we ate Mexican for almost every single meal.  In fact, the only time we didn't eat Mexican was the day we had Chinese food at my favorite Chinese restaurant.  The whole time we were there, I was complaining about the fact that we don't have food nearly as good here.  Now that I home though, I have decided to be grateful for our lack of to die for food.  If we had food that good here I would probably weigh 300 pounds.

The weather in Arizona was great.  The highs were in the upper sixties, which was just perfect.  It was a little tough to come home to our winter wonderland.

We got to spend a lot of time with Kirk's family.  It was fun to see his aunts and uncles and his cousins and their kids.  We don't get to see them very often, so it is always nice to be able to get together.  Robby had a blast playing with his cousins.  Zoe got a cold on the trip, so she had a couple of rough days.  I ended up spending a lot of time, where ever we happened to be, holding her so she could sleep, but I think she enjoyed the trip too, especially the sunshine and being able to be outside.

One night we went and saw the lights at the Mesa temple.  It is so nice to be able to go see temple lights without freezing your tail off.  They were beautiful and the weather was beautiful.

This is Robby with one of his cousins, Thomas.  They are only a few months apart in age.  They were so funny together.  They are so much alike.  They were always trying to figure out which one of them was the smartest and were constantly competing with each other.  They were pretty evenly matched too.  I was amazed they got along as well as they did, but they really had a blast together.

Zoe loved just hanging out in the sun.  She was so sick this day, so there was no way I could get a smile out of her, but she just sat there in the grass for a long time, just chilling.  She is definitely an outdoor kid so this chance to escape the winter was fun for her.

It was a really great trip and I am glad we decided to go.  But like always, it is really nice to be back home.

Christmas

So, I am a little slow getting this up, but here it is.  We had a really great Christmas.  The kids were spoiled, but they had a lot of fun.

On Christmas Eve we went to Kirk's parents house.  We ate tamales and opened presents.  We missed Gavin, Karena, and the kids, but it was a lot of fun.

Here are the kids with Grandpa Claus :)

Then we went home, put out cookies for Santa, and went to bed.  Christmas morning was great.  Again, the kids were far too spoiled, but we enjoyed it.

Robby opening a present.

Zoe absolutely enjoyed eating the wrapping paper.

They both enjoyed their presents.  Robby's favorites were a couple of wii games.  Zoe got a lot more practical stuff, but she did get a couple of toys she seems to really enjoy.

This was probably Robby's coolest present.  It is Snap Circuits.  It is an electronics set where he can build circuits that make things happen, like a lightbulb lighting or an alarm sounding.  Robby and Kirk have been having a lot of fun with it.

Zoe with her doll.  She really doesn't like it much, but I thought it was cute that they matched.

All in all, it was a really good Christmas.  I am thankful for this great holiday season and the time it gives us to enjoy being together as a family.