dear penny

as of this minute, you are one year old.  i cannot even remember what the world was like before you.  though this year has flown by for me, it must have taken such a long time for you - you have already learned so much!  though my nickname for you is "tiny", your personality is oversized.  you are funny, beautiful and wise.  you are just as comfortable in a room full of people as you are sitting by yourself with a book.  your dad and i hope that today you will take your first step.  i am so proud to be your mother.  it is an honor to be raising you and it is a privilege to make you laugh.  i hope your smile never dims and your eyes are never less bright.  you love to eat grapes.  you are so musical - i have never heard a baby able to reproduce sound like you can, and for someone who can't stand up on their own, you have some killer dance moves.  i hope you did not inherit my: bad back, love for terrible food, terrible sense of geography.  i hope you did inherit my: patience, courage, craftiness.  i cannot express to you how loved you are.  you have an incredible family and massive circle of friends, all of whom are delighted to spend time with you.  it has been such a joy to spend your first year by your side, and i can't wait to see how much more is waiting for us down the road.

post #100!

this is the 100th post here at chez z!  so many exciting things are happening over here!  penny has decided to crawl for real, rather than the army crawling that's been serving her so well for so long.  she doesn't do it all the time, but it's still exciting.  we can now see her top teeth from straight on when she smiles.  she has started blowing kisses, though she still doesn't know how to give kisses.  

yesterday we celebrated chanukah with alex's side of the family - so much fun and so much food!

penny loves her family!

today we were reading through penny's book of colors, and on three different pages, she pointed to three different pictures i asked her to - a duck, grapes, and blueberries.
so this is it, penny's last week of being zero.  as of the next blog post, our baby will be the big 1-.0

happy 100th post, everyone!

milestones!

on thursday, when i started thinking about what i would post this week, i was coming up very empty.  penny still had her stuffy nose, she was kind of sleepy and out of it, and there were no developments to speak of.  but on friday, i got a call from alex - penny had gotten top teeth!  he could definitely feel one, and there was a tiny nubbin of a second!  well, that surely was enough to write about, no?  and it would have been, too - but when i got her to giggle with an open mouth to take a look in there, i saw not two, but THREE teeth looking back at me!  THAT'S got to be enough to satisfy you blog readers, right?
it sure would have been, except that as of today, penny has decided she's interested in walking!  the penny signal for "up" is slightly modified by flapping, and that means that she would like to hold on to our fingers and walk!  it's super exciting!  she has also balanced on her own two feet for several seconds!  it turns out to have been a VERY exciting weekend!

holidays!

happy thanksgiving week!  here at chez z, we have so much to be thankful for - we hope you all had a safe and delicious thanksgiving.  we sure did!

penny started getting a cold at our thanksgiving celebration, and we think it's on its way out now, but she's been sniffling and coughing and not sleeping a whole heck of a lot the past couple of nights.  we're lucky that she has such an even temperament, though - she's not letting it get her down!  we started off our thanksgiving day watching the parade on tv - penny was enraptured by both it, and a bagel the size of her head. 

what i'm thankful for.

 

we know five people in the parade this year (hi, mark, barry, kevin, mary & jen!)!  we celebrated with tons of cousins in brooklyn.  on friday, we went to visit grandparents and great grandmas.  penny is lucky enough to have three great grandmothers to celebrate with, and we are so excited that she got to see all of them this week! at grandma and grandpa zalben's house, penny opened early birthday and chanukah presents, and enjoyed an impromptu concert by uncle jonathan!

on saturday we had dinner in the city with a gr-aunt, a gr-uncle, grandparents, an uncle and a cousin!  fun!  more deliciousness!  then, today, we had an early chanukah celebration!  more family!  more food!  MORE COUSINS!

everyone in this photo is somebody's cousin.

is has been a very packed four days - penny has been quite a trooper through all of the travelling, and hopefully she's on the mend.  

oh no!

mary burke, stop reading now.  go to cuteoverload.com, and just pretend that you didn't even notice i posted something tonight.

penny likes tomatoes.  you guys, this might be the first time that i'm a little sad about something she likes!  what am i supposed to do with this?

pointing!

penny has now started pointing!  she will point to where she wants to go when she's being held, or what she wants - it's great that she has a whole new way to communicate!
at dinner last night, she was pointing at a photo of her that we keep on the dining room table.  she patted it for a while, then gave it a hug, THEN tried to share some of her dinner with it by putting food on its mouth.  alex and i almost died.  it was SO sweet.
she makes an "o" shape with her mouth when she points to the box of cheerios, she has started sharing her leaves with other babies in the park, and she knows that when she hands us the book with the chicken face on the cover, she should say "bok bok bok bok".

this is getting good.

how is it november, exactly?

so i was just wrapping my head around the fact that it's september already when, blammo!  it's november!  daylight savings starts tomorrow!  apparently baseball is over for the season?  i can't keep up.  all i know is, i broke out the knitwear because it's cold!  penny wore the one hat she can't rip off her head at the park today, and she's looking more and more like a kid and less and less like a baby all the time.

there's been a whole lot of screaming and not a lot of sleeping this week at chez z.  as usual, we're pretty sure she's teething.  last night, she ate pretty much a whole piece of chicken, and tonight she ate a major amount of chinese food.  she's started eating off of our forks, and she is so delicate about it, it makes me giggle.

after the jump, i need your help...