Happy Birthday Zadie

Zadie turned one year old last Saturday 1/31. Happy Birthday little one! Zadie really is a charmer and quite out going once she gets used to you. She brightens my day and is really quite a ham. Zadie now can roar like a dinosaur (or bear), gives her bear her binky, cleans things with rags/washcloths/swiffers, imitates everything we do (she even delinted my pants the other morning), loves to bring me her shoes and go to the door as if to say "come on! let's go outside", play hide and seek, get chased around the house, dance with her happy feet, and walk backward to name a few things.

A few days ago I caught her playing with her shadow. She would walk forward and backward and watch her shadow get bigger and smaller. This was quite entertaining to her for at least a minute. I find it odd to see Zadie running around the house, using her arms to make herself go faster, when she just turned one. She is already running like she is much older. In fact, I think she really thinks she is three years old like her sister. She really just wants to do everything that Zola does (& eat everything that everyone else eats, this includes strangers in restaurants).

Here are some latest and greatest pictures.

Happy Birthday! With her new best friend Rachel (my cousin)

Kiss me

Hiding head scarf girl

Post vomiting in the car (stomach flu)
PJ's in the daytime!

Cleaning the sink

Just cute with lots of boogers

Mowing the grass

Happy girl!

Zola has matured more in the last month or two than I thought humanly possible. She has garnered this sense of humor from somewhere (her Dad) and is quite the comedian. I know I will jinx this by writing this, but she seems to be cooperating more than normal. I think partly this is because she has stopped napping so bedtime is no longer a struggle. The girl is tired and goes right to sleep. She sleeps about 12 hours at night now and only wakes up about once a week sleep talking. Her recent sleep talkings were:

1. "This finger is dirty, can you wash it off? This finger right here." (this happened after we planted the grass - see pic below)
   
2. "Spaghetti! Spaghetti!" (Woody had read "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" to her before she went to bed)
   
3. "Did you get the small one out with the tweezers? The small brown one? Can you use the tweezers?"(not sure about this one, maybe having to do with taking things out of her play pet carrier)

Zola is super mouse and computer savvy. It blows my mind. She has completely mastered the Photo Booth program and can play a multitude of computer games because her mouse skills are so wicked (takes after her Dad, eh?). She also has become quite savvy with the IPOD touch. On the bus today she saw a guy with an IPOD touch and said, "Hey, he has an IPOD. Is his all jiggly?" Jiggly refers to how she rearranges the icons on the screen by pressing and holding one down, it then proceeds to "jiggle" and then you can arrange your icons as you please. The guy laughed.

Self portrait, Zola-on-fire

Hot chocolate morning ritual

What? Me? I'm not licking the frosting!

"Bird" on my head

Princess Zola

Zola's grass terrariums, all grown up