Zola, silly Zola

Zola has grown up so much these last few months. She really can be quite pleasant and has such amazingly complex thoughts. I'd love to get in her brain for a few hours just to be three again. Ok, she's not three yet, but almost! December 8th is coming up fast! Here is an update on what Zola has been up to.

Pirate Zola at Kaya's bday party

Preparing for haircut, w/tractor, of course

Blue lollipop tongue

Zola's big girl bed is being modified to fit into her closet. Why bother when we should be moving into the "new" house by the end of Spring? For some reason I'd like her to be in her big girl bed before she is three. This way when we give Zadie the crib she hopefully won't be too attached to it. We don't really use Zola's crib like a crib anyway. We leave the side down so she can climb in and out. She is amazingly compliant about staying in here. We have already bought her a new comforter for the new bed and here it is below. We folded it in half and she gets in between the layers at night. We call it her sleeping bag. Thankfully it is about 10x warmer than the baby blanket she previously used, and it keeps her toes nice and toasty!

All tucked in her "sleeping bag"

Zola's friend Violet came over the other day to play. These two were indescribably cute. They are old enough now to really play with each other and need no intervention from Mom. They had great little conversations with each other on their phones, had a picnic with their babies, and did a surprisingly great job of sharing. It was a wonderful day to play inside. It was nice to have Violet around to distract Zola from her sister.

Hanging out in our bed

Play picnic

Humidifying her cinnamon roll

Boots and convertibles @ Steak-N-Shake

Zola playing/posing with Uncle Lindsey's road runners

Zola's cousin, Arabella, reading a book to her

We decided to break out the finger paints today. This is something we haven't done in quite awhile. Last time we used the entire pink. Today we decided to open blue, purple, and black. In the end we had one brownish black color. She also decided to paint her hands and the car. Thankfully she is such a good listener and we were able to transport her to the sink for a wash down with little trouble.




It is that time of year again, Thanksgiving, you ask? No, it's flour time! Zola loves to play and squish in the flour. She has great fun. I think she secretly knows that I fear big messes and therefore inherently likes to make them!



Notable Quotables:
Not really throwing a tantrum for treats, actually being quite nice about it:
"I'm throwing a tantrum for the treats!"

In reference to a car she plays with, a mix between old fashioned and old timey:
"This is the old fashioned racing time car."

In response to not being able to feed herself:
"Can you feed me the watermelon. My batteries are broken. My arm won't work. I only have enough for talking."

After I had told her that I had just gotten of the phone with my dad, her grandpa. Imagine teary and dramatic:
"Your daddy? I miss MY daddy!"

After I asked her why she couldn't take a nap after she tried for one hour:
"I'm freakin' out. My brain's freakin' out so I can't relax and go to sleep."
(I must tell her to relax and go to sleep. Turns out she couldn't stop thinking about this Boots the monkey we saw at the book store. Really, seriously.)

Others:
"Daddy, can you make me some popcorn 'cause I'm starvin'."

"I can do it my own self."

"Verticals." (what she calls convertibles)

"Humidi-fire." (Zola thinks humidifiers are humidi-fires. We have one ultrasonic cool steam and one hot steam. I told her that she could not turn on the hot one when Zadie is awake because Zadie could get burned, as she likes to stick her hand down the steam tube. I think Zola thought there would be real fire coming out of the humidi-fire. We are still working on explaining the whole concept, but should get it by the end of winter!)