happy Cinco de Mayo!

doing the Mexican hat dance

five months old today!

our little gal in a big world

A few musings on Zor as she currently stands (or lays, really):

She is really into rolling over, although she doesn't just roll and roll. It's once over from back to tummy and sometimes back the other way. She's taking her time on it, along with laughing. She still hasn't fully laughed. Just her big smiles, screaches, deep breaths, and other indications that she's happy.

Loves to suck toes! Her own mostly, but anyone else's that get in the way.

Has been enjoying teething biscuits, and reaches for beverages when people are holding her and trying to take a drink. My mom gave Zor her first biscuit one evening when we were at a concert. These are shots from that:

Loves to pull blankets and clothes over her face and lay there breathing strangely, like she's suffocating. Naturally, I pull the blanket off in a high state of agitation, and there she is underneath, smiling. The other day, she was lying on the floor beside me while I worked at the table, and I heard her doing that breathing. I looked down in alarm, and there she lay watching me - with no blanket in sight. Then she smiled big. What a pickle.

For the most part, sleep is okay. She alternates; one night she'll sleep for long stretches, and the next she'll be up every four hours to nurse, or more often to fuss. The last couple of nights have been real sketchy for sleep, but I know the problem. Two nights ago I succumbed to a billboard advertisement for a coffee frosty at Wendy's. I split it with Jason, so come on - there shouldn't have been THAT much coffee in it. I drank it about 8 p.m. Zor went to bed around 9 and slept great, but when the coffee hit the breastmilk for our midnight feed, boy, howdy. She was up on the hour, and from 3 - 5 a.m. she was plumb awake and sociable. This wasn't good since I was leading worship the next morning at church and had a practice at 8:00 a.m. I hadn't lead worship in awhile and was anxious over it, so this didn't help. Needless to say, it took us the rest of Sunday to recover, into the night last night, and some today. I won't be making that mistake again soon.

She has started smiling for the camera, though that isn't any wonder, as many pictures as we all take of her. I try to be somewhat discreet so she doesn't get a big head.
She is interested in any one toy for less and less time anymore. We only have a few for her, which is intentional, but I might have to break down and make others out of household items or something. I dunno - she seems a little young for tupperware and pots and pans and whatnot. She isn't even sitting up. I remember when I was still pregnant and looked over at her up-and-coming toy basket. It cracked me up real good, because, gee whiz, talk about toy deprivation for a little kid. Now she's got a few more, so don't worry. Zoralee likes to watch the animals on the lawn. She especially loves Molly the Schnauzer and reaches for her, but Molly doesn't pay her much attention. Murray the Chihuahua, playful as can be, wishes she'd hurry and grow up. The horses are curious about her, and I have to keep the chickens from pecking her little worm toes.

conversations THROUGH babies (?)

I'm curious about this thing we adults do whereby we use babies and pets as conversation mediums. For example, the following conversation took place a couple of mornings ago while Jason was playing with Zor and I was cooking breakfast. (Rated PG)


Jason, to a fussy Z: Zoralee, what's your problem?
me: Be gentle with her! She's just tired.
Jason: Mama's trying to do attachment parenting with you. I'm doing dis-attachment. She's yin and I'm yang, because she has a yin and I have a yang.
me: Oh, Papa's not trying to do dis-attachment with you. That's ridiculous. Anyway, it was Papa's yang and Mama's yin that got us into this predicament.

I mean, we were talking to each other through our 5 month old daughter. I remember doing the same thing with our dog, Beth. I guess we only do this with people/animals who don't have a voice of their own. It would be a little loony to use a perfectly conversational fellow adult as our medium, with them sitting right there.

Other times, we'll put words into Zoralee's mouth, as though she's backing us up on some point, like, "Papa, Mam's really thirsty and could use a glass of water." Do we really think that a baby's supposed opinion lends credibility to what we're saying? If anybody has psychological insight into this phenomenon, do tell.

hellooo, ladies

Cock-a-doodle-doodle-doo-ster

You're our one and only rooster

If the hens had only knew, Sir

They'd have practiced shoo-a-shoo-ster

You'll take any hen to do-ster

Even though you're nothin' to her

They might wish for someone tru-er

But that's the nature of a rooster

We got ourselves a rooster last week! A friend had three, and begged us to take one off of his hands...for $6, so maybe it wasn't a total beg. Evidently, his hen to rooster ratio was too small, so the roosters weren't acting kindly toward one another. We got the trouble maker of his batch, whom J has named Six Dolla' Roo. We introduced him to the ladies at dusk when everybody was roosting, and we watched in the shadows for any drama. There wasn't much. The hens pecked at his bright red waddles and combs, an anomoly in their otherwise black-and-whiteness, and he explored the coop slowly, making small hesitant vocalizations. We left after 10 minutes, because nobody seemed too concerned with each other. Well, Jason peeked in about 3 minutes later, and who was on the top roost, with three hens on either side of him, and all the rest of the hens relegated to the bottom roost? You guessed it. Old Sixey.

looking the new guy over and cackling amongst themselves

Old Sixey might be my name for him, a blend between the fact that he was $6, is old compared to the hens (he's a year, and they're like three months), and that he's supposed to be sexy. Reminds me of this Jack Handy deep thought:
*

For a while there, instead of calling Grandpa "Grandpa," I started calling him "Grandpappy." But he didn't like that, and asked me to go back to Grandpa. So I did, but I changed it a little. I put an "e" in instead of an "a," so it became "Grendpa." At first he didn't notice, but then he said, "What did you call me?" "Grandpa," I said. But then I went back to calling him Grendpa. Finally he just said to go ahead and call him Grandpappy, which I did, only I changed it a little bit to "Grendpeppy."
*
Today, a bunch of us sat out on the lawn, watching how the dogs would respond to the chickens free ranging. They are behaving themselves, so we left the chickens out for the afternoon and evening. Near dark, Jason went out to see how Six Dolla' Roo had done in rounding the hens up into the coop. That's one of a rooster's main jobs, see. He was inside alright, settled in for the night on the top roost, with five hens. The other five were huddled together near our back porch, apparently waiting for Jason to come out and lead them home. Old Sixey better get it together. Jason figures he's so un-used to being top guy on the totem pole that he thinks having five hens is good enough.


If nothing else, I've got to say he is a quite stunning addition to the flock. He's huge compared to the hens, and it keeps surprising me how perfectly he MATCHES them. They are the same breed, so I don't know what I expected. It's like we special ordered a water pitcher to go with our dinnerware, and they all look perfect together.

Old Sixey and the coming storm