This is heavy

As I look back on this blog in 20 years (assuming that in 20 years I have been wise enough to back up this content which is about a 50/50 chance in my estimate) will I be mad at myself for missing three months of blogging? Or will I be confused and think that maybe there was some mistake with Google Blogger in the dating of these blogs? I bet you would guess the first one...you'd be wrong though. I won't even notice. I'm way to lazy to notice something like that. (Note to self: edit out this paragraph before archiving)

Anyway, the last few months came and went. Days are getting shorter, but Zach is getting larger. Back in September we all made the trip back to NC for Penny and Matt's wedding. The plane ride out was [expletive deleted] interesting. He was actually very well behaved. We were completely ready with Yo Gabba DVDs, food, toys and the thing that ended up taking up the most amount of his time was an empty plastic Sparkletts water bottle. No major incidents on the plane other than some small yells of discomfort so we were very happy. The wedding was great and it was great to see all the family on the East coast and for them to be able to see Zach. He was walking well (not quite well enough to prevent a fall and bump on the head requiring a trip to urgent care) and he even danced at the wedding with Remy.

All I do is Party, ha ha ha ha, so bounce low.

The wedding was really nice and my parents took Zach back to the hotel so that Kelly and I could stay and dance the night away. The plane trip back was pretty much just as uneventful except for the part where I messed up on the seating so that we weren't going to be able to sit all together. Fortunately, a really nice guy switched with me (for which I owe Karma a huge debt) and we had a relatively peaceful flight home.

Kelly got us matching ties....so cool

Kelly went off track at the end of October so she's been spending more time with the dude at home, the mall, the park, Molly's, etc. Although she's mad because even though she's the one that greets him every morning (now that I can sleep a little longer) the first thing he does is ask for Daddy. What can I say? The kid loves me...

They have been traveling a lot this last month around town visiting the grandparents, friends and other fun places. His favorite/only friend is Molly.

"Molly, I'm not sure if the centrifugal force will permit the ball to remain within the confines of this vortex."

After the busy election season, Kelly surprised me and Zach (but Zach doesn't really count because everything surprises him) with a fun weekend trip to Santa Barbara. We went to the Zoo and stayed the night (not in the Zoo) then walked the pier the next day.

The missing link

Zach and dad lookin at Magilla

It happened to be Veterans Day weekend, so we got lucky enough to see the Parade right by the Pier. We saw some cool airplanes fly over and Zach got a flag and a cool picture:

Patriotism swells in the heart of Zach

Zach has been very active recently. He's walking/running of course but he's talking a lot too. Most of the words he says are unintelligible but Kelly can translate some of them. We have him saying "Please" when he wants something and that has translated into him yelling "Hel-peas!" (Help please) continuously when he needs something done like removing the safety gate from the top of the stairs, or unscrewing the life threateningly small cap from a wattle bottle. He definitely knows mommy/mama and daddy although Daddy has now progressed to "Daddyo" We think it's due to Kelly asking him if Daddy is home when I'm at work. i.e. "Is Daddy home?" = my name is now "Daddy0." He's also really good at saying "more" and "all done" when he means it. The animal noises are pretty good too now with new animals being added to his repertoire all the time, except that he probably thinks a sheep is a "bah." What is pretty exciting is that he really understands a lot more than he can say. That being the case, we can tell him to do things and he knows what we mean (i.e. "time for night-night?" or "bath?" and "let's go to the car", or "put your toys away please") There are a ton of other key phrases that he understands and it's cool when he learns new things to say or do...although we are not happy that he has learned how to say "no" and uses it liberally when he does something he is not supposed to do (like when he tries to turn the burners on the stove and says "no-no!" or when he grabs the remote and explains to Kelly "Daddy; no-no" as in "this is daddy's and it's a no-no")

Tier two on the food pyramid: Corn dog

He is also eating pretty much everything we eat. The only thing he still hasn't tried is peanut butter which apparently we are supposed to withhold from him until 2 years. He is really good at dipping things like chips into guacamole or fries into ketchup...or fries into milk, or anything into anything. Except he enjoys the dip so much that he usually licks it off the item being dipped and goes back for double, triple and quadruple dips frequently. He tries to practice with a spoon too. It's coming slowly. Right now it's hard to get the spoon to scoop; he thinks it's more like a dipping motion. We have noticed that he prefers his left hand for eating, so Kelly thinks he'll be left handed. I think he just uses whatever hand is closer to what he wants.

We have also noticed that he's getting more into television. He always has loved Yo Gabba Gabba and other musically driven stuff but he's starting to be more interested in Sesame Street and other cartoons. We are really trying to make sure that it doesn't become a baby sitter by limiting his watching and being sure that we are there when he is watching; however this translates to us memorizing every song and singing them often when Zach is not around.

Just a minute dad, I've only seen this Phineus and Ferb 18 times.

Well I guess that's enough catch-up for now. I'll leave with a kissing shot and a video of rainy day Zach.

Ah mom, right on the lips?

Since dad didn't do the yard work because of a little rain, Zach took it upon himself.

Fun Facts:

• Zach can tell us what he wants to hear in the car by telling us "Holy?" (Praise Baby), "Goodbye?" (Yo Gabba) or sometimes he just makes crazy noises when he's tired.
• He can "jump" which really looks like running in place in a really spazzed-out way.
• He can almost climb into the bath by himself. He gets most of the way, but does realize he has to flip his legs over....that's going to be a fun trick for us. (Sarcasm)
• Zach is now 16 months old.
  

-pf

Now I have a machine gun. Ho...ho...ho

Well, unfortunately Zach didn't get his Red Ryder carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and a thing which tells time. He did, however, get a bunch of other really cool stuff that he likes [to chew] a lot. Christmas was pretty typical for us. We woke up early, opened stockings at home then headed down to Burbank where we opened presents at G&G Fros, had brunch and visited with the family. The Hechts (and the Matts) were in town, which is always awesome. After that, we went over to N&P Fields for more presents, family and remote control helicopter awesomeness. Here are some pictures from the day (including Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning is here!

The Fro-Hecht-Bowman-Deckelman-Taylor Family on Christmas Eve

Penny, Heidi, and some kid

Grandpa Jack and Baby Zach...no more rhymes, I mean it......

Mommy, Baby, Nonie

We took some "Christmas family pictures" (other than just Zach's Santa-pic)..they are really cute...and here they are:

I...think...I'm....going....to...start....crawling....soon....OOP, pooped m' pants

This is my family...minus Token who was probably too scared
of the photographer to be in the picture

Here are a couple more pictures from Christmas...

This one shows off Zach's cool Santa jammies...also featured are Grandpa Ralph and Auntie Beth

Zach loves his new chair from Nonie...."Zachary Froelich on, 'The Casting Couch'"

Hanukkah was a lot of fun too because Zach got to see his cousins that are closer to his own age. It's hard enough to describe Christmas to him, so we figured that we would wait on describing the awesome technicality that allows him to celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah. He got a lot of toys which, again, he loves to eat at this point, but which will serve him for many many months....I mean his play and learn activity house says 6 months and up....so I guess technically he can play with that forever...that would be.....weird.

Zach, Josh, Noah, Talia, Ryan.....but they're cousins,
identical cousins all the way.

New Year's Eve was less-than exciting for us. We didn't really have anything planned and we didn't feel like going in to Burbank (Kelly was a little sick too) so we just ordered dinner and stayed home with Zach. He did not make it to midnight....and neither did his parents. However, he did wake up minutes after midnight to let us know that we had missed it...and that he had pooped his pants. Over the New Year weekend we had a visit from our Aussie friends Kristen and Michelle. They were on a huge "holiday" (vacation) throughout California and even Vegas. We visited them in Santa Monica for a lunch so they could meet Zach.

They got him a Kangaroo and Australian flag along with an Aussie Christmas book...he thinks the Kangaroo tastes very similar to his Donald Duck

I guess Christmas officially ended yesterday because I finally took down all our lights and yard jund d'I mean, stuff. It's cool to know that next year, Zach might actually get a little more out of it.

In non-holiday related, but still Zach related news, Zachary has TEETH! There are currently three popping out as we speak. We didn't expect them this early and with Kelly going back to work this last week, it's not great timing. He's pretty irritable at night and has decided to discontinue his normal "sleep through the night" plan and replaced it with a "scream your brains out at midnight, 2am, 4am and 7am" plan. We are not fans of this plan. We were planning on sleep training him soon and this might hurt our chances of this working. We are giving him nightly doses of Tylenol and Orajel, along with his Mylecon (for gas). It's like baby-sized cocktail for future dependency problems. It was really hard to take a picture of his teeth because he moves around so much, so until next time when I can really get in there, here's as close as I could find:

A face only a Chunk could love

Also, he's on a new schedule now. The grandmas are watching him while Kelly is at school. Grandma takes a couple days a week, Nonie takes a day, and daddy takes one day a week. It was really tough on Kelly going back. She loves her kids at school, but she loves Zach slightly more. She's already talking about team teaching next year so that she can be home more. We both think that's a great idea...and I have a feeling the grandmas are going to think it's a good idea too after the first couple weeks. Zach isn't doing very well with the bottle, (probably because we didn't really ween him onto it) but we have seen some small progress in the last week. Although the look on his face when he gets that first sip of milk and realizes it isn't Kelly is priceless. It's like when you take a huge swig of Dr. Pepper only to find out it's actually Diet Dr. Pepper....it's like poison.

Here's a video to close this edition...it features Zach's "cute" (annoying) "little" (piercing) "laugh" (scream):

Fun Facts:

• As mentioned, Zach has a few teeth coming in...he is not a happy camper.
• Zach's pretty close to rolling over by himself. He can roll both ways but not really on purpose yet.
• He can sit in the "tripod" position for a while, but eventually falls over due to his massive, Tweedledum-style body type.
• He still wants to eat everything and the spit flows like the ocean tide...his favorite new thing to put in his mouth when I'm holding him is the Xbox controller...cool for him because it has colors and a light; not cool for my killstreaks during online Call of Duty play.

-pf

I found Palmolive had a nice, piquant after-dinner flavor

Merry Christmas!

Zach had his first visit to Santa! As you can see, he was stunned to see just how big Santa really is. He did a great job though; no tears, and no fussing. Although his smile was ruined by the lady taking the picture. He was totally ready to smile big just like dad taught him when the lady shook some can with rocks in it...obviously that caused a bit of alarm because his picture came out a little more surprised than happy. Oh well...it was a great first Santa Pic.

Speaking of Santa, we are in full swing with Christmas right around the corner. We had a little Christmas gathering as you can see below, mostly to test the limits of how loud we could be without waking Zach...the answer is not very...besides, he thought it was pretty lousy of us to put him to sleep right when we started to play games.


Last week, Zach got another visitor friend. Linda brought her son Aidan to visit. He is a little older than Zachy. In this picture, Zach wonders what that stuff is on top of Aidan's head and secretly hopes that he can grow some of that stuff...or at least put it in his mouth.


AND, segueing nicely from putting things in his mouth, Zach has started to eat rice cereal. This started from Zach not feeling good for a couple weeks after Thanksgiving. He was congested and went through his first cold...it wasn't fun for him, but he pushed through. However, during the cold, he decided that he was not about to further his frustration and eat from a bottle so he went through an understandably fussy period. We thought that maybe he would be more interested in the spoon (since everything is going in his mouth these days anyway) and what d' you know, he took to it like a zombie to brains.

We don't feed him very much, or every night, but it's a good way to try to get him to sleep longer through the night. He doing a pretty good job of that still (right now he's going from about 730-430 with the occasional "re-swaddle and comfort" sessions throughout). I'm still looking forward to his sleep training though. Especially with Kelly going back to work in January.

He's still growing and doing new things what seems like every day (see the Fun Facts below) but we're trying to keep him on a pretty consistent schedule.

He still gets his bath pretty much every night. He recently got a rash on his back and chest which could have been from getting over his cold, but I think it might have also been from putting bubble bath in his bathwater. I had pretty sensitive skin and since Zach is basically my doppelganger, we can only assume that he does too...so now my water/soap ratio is favoring the water side much more.

He is definitely laughing a lot more now. Apparently Token is hilarious because Zach can't stop cracking up when he walks by. The "super-secret move to always get Zach to laugh" is to put his arms up by his head and shake him around...raspberrys on the tummy also raise the hilarity ante.

Did I mention before that everything is currently going in his mouth? Well to him, this includes items that are in no way small enough to fit.

Well, bye bye for now...the next time I post, Zach will have had his first Christmas! ....or at my current rate, he will have had his second birthday.

Fun Facts:

• As mentioned, Zach eats everything (or at least tries to).
  
• Zach is definitely able to hold his body up when he is being held...when I pick him up and put pressure on his stomach, it looks like he's either flexing his tummy muscles like a body builder, or taking the dump of the century.
• He's "sort of" sitting up when we prop him...he falls to one side or the other most of the time...we blame it on t he sheer girth of his body.
• He JUST started really giving us good raspberries...he loves his tongue and uses it frequently.
• He is really responding well to people now. He definitely knows us and the grandparents (and he shows it in his face) and he gets nervous around big crowds.
• Zach is still as diabolical as ever, making sure to sleep the 4-5 hours that I'm up after him, but starting to cry the instant I get into bed and get comfortable.

-pf