Harpers Nest

It's Halloween time again!  I can't believe it!  We went to the Harvest Carnival at church on Saturday.  Zaida was a cat.    She actually kept her ears on the whole night!  Hopefully she will do that again on Friday when we go trick or treating!!  We think she looked very cute!  She was given some candy fairly early on in the evening and she kept taking it out and showing everyone that would stop to talk to us!  She was so proud.  I don't know what she's going to do on Friday if she gets much candy! 

She has started to say "cheese" when we take pics now…  this was at the pumpkin patch a couple of weeks ago! 

We've had to experience some change for Zaida's life recently too.  This is the beginning of her 3rd week at her new daycare.  Debbie was in a car accident a couple of years ago and her doctor finally said that she had to quit her daycare job (after 20+ years!).  She was heartbroken and so were we.  Debbie's entire family helped out with the daycare and they treated it as their extended family and we miss that for Zaida!  But Debbie recommended a friend of hers that has also been doing daycare/preschool for the last 20 years and so Zaida is going to Gloria's now.  Apparently she is fine all day at daycare…and then she comes home…that is after a battle with her to get her to leave!!  She has been having a rough few weeks at home.  Not to mention the terrible two's have come and she is getting to be a champion tantrum thrower!!  YEAH!!  So excited for this stage of life!  Hopefully she will start to get better this week as far as the daycare change goes…we are hoping because she's not sleeping real well either!!  We are all tired now!  Look for more pics after Friday trick or treating!

We took a trip to Sea World on Labor Day!  We had fun…until the afternoon when it was hotter and there were more people and Zaida hadn't really taken a nap and we were cranky!  Of course that is when we decided to take in the Shamu show, which wasn't the best idea!  But then we went back to the cold places and watched the penguins again and ended the day happy!  Sea World has the Bay of Play now with the Seasame Street characters so Zaida got to meet Elmo. As you can see from the pic. she clung to Steve for dear life!   so we went to the pretend Elmo and gave him "5".

She did enjoy watching the animals though.   and we rode some rides…the up and down one…  and the spinning one…  I'm not so fond of that one!

Earlier in August Zaida got to meet a few of her great aunts and a great uncle for the first time.  Steve's mom has a lot of brothers and sisters (she's one of 10!) and some of them came out to CA to visit Uncle Mike.    Uncle Mike has a pool and that is where Zaida was at 6 or 6:30 in the morning!!   She's pool crazy now!  And this month Zaida went to Adalynne's 1st birthday party, which was a pool party!  Adalynne is the newest member of the family I work for.     we picked up some cool shades at the party!  

And then just the other day Zaida helped me vacuum for the first time, she actually pulled out her vacuum first and I thought, "hey, good idea" so we vacuumed together!      That's our adventures for August for you! 

We made it back from our road trip to OR.  My brother Darrell got married last Tuesday and we drove up to Sisters, OR for the wedding.  Zaida played hard with her cousins and had tons of fun!  We forgot to take a lot of pictures during the week, but we have a couple.  Zaida is going to miss all of them this week!!! 

So we put Zaida in the pool this weekend. She whined, but didn't cry! She clung to Steve when they were out in the middle of the pool, but she loved splashing in the water when they were sitting on the steps…

We went to a LA Galaxy soccer game for the 4th of July - they have a pretty good fireworks show after the game!  Zaida wasn't too interested in the game, but she enjoyed the fans yelling and beating on drums.  The Galaxy lost the game, but David Beckam did score a goal so I think everyone was still happy!

Oh, and that's a ponytail Zaida's sporting…she finally has enough hair!!! 

Zaida got her 1st shiner last week!  Somebody was in her way at daycare so she attempted to just go over them and ended up falling on a table.  We tried to get some pictures to show how good and blue and purple and red it was, but she wasn't feeling like cooperating.  The outer edges are now normal in color but there is still a small spot on her eyelid that is just going to the green/yellow color!  So it was a good shiner…lasted for more than a week!

In other news about Zaida…she is learning lots of words.  Loves the word "no" of course, but she also knows many others!  And she is in constant motion unless she is asleep!  Steve & I are very tired now!  Let's see…she also has all 8 front teeth (4 each on top & bottom) and then she also has 4 molars and she is finally growing out of her 12 month size clothes!  Basically she is continuing to grow up!!

I'm beginning to think Steve & I are not the most attentive parents!!  Zaida has a molar…we didn't even know it was trying to come in!!  I thought she had some food in her mouth this weekend, but when it was still there on Sunday night, we looked a little closer and it was a tooth!!  So she has 6 teeth completely in and 3 more almost in (those 3 are in the front so we know about them!!)  They are all appearing at once!  Maybe we'll just say we didn't know about the molar because Zaida is so good and doesn't fuss when getting new teeth?! 

This year has started with a bang! Actually it was a fire…the building I work in had a fire just after midnight on New Years. They just started demo of the burned area on Monday! We have been working with the aroma of campfire for over a month now, but we think with the demo the smell will begin to go away. And hopefully within the next 3 or 4 weeks we will be back to normal!!  Zaida started out the year with a fever!  But it was gone by her birthday!  Here are a couple of pictures from her actual birthday (10th) and then from her party!

It was exhausting for everyone by the end of the day! And we've been wiped out since then!  We haven't taken pictures in almost a month!  Pretty sure that's a record for us!

Christmas has now come & gone!!  I think we are relieved!  Zaida did pretty good opening her gifts, she just had a few too many (and a few too many that make noise, thank you everyone!).  We think she started to get a little overwhelmed!  I'll put some pictures here, but there are MANY more to check out on the pictures links. 

Our Christmas actually lasted for a couple of days because on Saturday we did Christmas with Chris & Vicki…

  (Yes, she got a giant size hungry hippo)

and then we had Christmas Eve services on Sunday night.  Then we did some Christmas Eve shopping on Monday…

we bought a new forward facing car seat for Zaida, which she proceeded to use as a climbing chair until we installed it in my car on Christmas day.  We think she is enjoying that she can see more when we are driving now. 

  Elmo was on the Today show…this is Zaida dancing!

   And after opening of the gifts was over, she slept for a couple of hours…she was completely exhausted!! 

Then we went to Natalie's house for Christmas dinner, where Zaida received even more gifts!  So basically Christmas was all about Zaida and the start of her extremely spoiled life!

Next is New Years and then will be her 1st birthday…I'm beginning to think it will never end!!

 Wow…time is going so fast right now!  We are keeping the pictures updated for everyone, but the time to actually write is just not available!  So keep looking for new pictures…there are lots of reasons to take lots of pictures during the holidays and Zaida is so cute right now!