happy 18 months!

Zane celebrated his one and a half year birthday yesterday!!  It's hard to believe we're already halfway between his 1st and 2nd birthdays. We took him in for his 18 month check up on Monday.  He weighed in at 25 lbs 14 oz (51%) and is now 33 and 3/4 inches tall (88%), and he got one more vaccine.  I took a few dozen t-shirt pictures in order to capture a couple of him on it...

He's got two new teeth that I forgot to mention.  His top two canines poked through the weekend that Larissa was here to visit, and they're continuing to move into place oh-so-slowly.  His bottom ones are still giant bulges in his gums... poor Zane!  And poor teddy - he gets chomped on a lot more at bedtime these days!  Zane has also been sticking his fingers really far back in his mouth, so he might be getting his second set of molars in too... I'll have to be brave and check somehow.

Zane's new 18 month self has been really getting into brushing his teeth (chomping on his toothbrush).  We finally got him a little step stool for the sink in his bathroom.  He can now reach his toothbrush into the water coming out of the faucet, and that is really exciting for him!  Another one of Zane's big things this week has been to pretend to talk on the phone - he picks up toy phones/my cell phone/the Costco card, puts them up to his ear and says "hello." 

I started the new job on Monday... here's the awesome view from my temporary conference-room-for-an-office:

hi, plane!!!

Last week was pretty hectic... I accepted my offer from the new firm and gave my two weeks notice on Wednesday, only to find out that it was going to be my last day since I had already scheduled vacation on Thursday and Friday for a girls' weekend. I did not expect that I'd be packing up my office and saying goodbye when I got up that morning!

Then we got much sadder news when we found out our cousin Rosemary passed away on Wednesday. :( So I rearranged my original flights for the weekend to go to NY to be with family...

And Zane came with me. I'm proud to say we survived the airports and flights just the 2 of us! Unfortunately it wasn't due to happy circumstances, but Zane got to meet a lot of the NY family for the first time, and he got in some good Uncle John time. He even said "Unc-Joh" a few times :)

Zane seemed like he could be headed toward a potential melt down while we were waiting for our flight home on Sunday, but there was a big window sill for him to sit on and wave hi and bye to all of the planes and trucks that saved the day. I think Zane's highlights from the trip were the airport window, the giant moose head at the restaurant Friday night, and the pool in Rosemary and Rob's backyard. He was very undecided about the bagpipes at the funeral.

Then Zane took his single longest nap of all time on the flight back to Seattle - 4 hours! I was starting to go numb by the time he woke up (he's pretty big to share a seat with!), but I was thankful to have only just over an hour to entertain him before we landed. He was thoroughly excited to see Daddy and Molly when we got back home.

visitors

The weekend of August 6th, we had some good friends in town visiting from Houston. Even more exciting for Zane, they have a 2 year old daughter! Larissa and Zane weren't quite sure what they thought of each other at the beginning, but it wasn't long before they were having a good time together. It was so cute!

We did a few touristy things while they were here, like the Ride the Ducks tour... which Zane managed to sleep through most of. He slept through the whole part on Lake Union where we saw one of the boats from the Deadliest Catch, the Horizon:



And a bunch of float planes landing and taking off:



Since it was the last weekend of Seafair, the Navy's Blue Angels were in town, and we went down to watch the air show from the edge of Lake Washington.
Ear plugs!


2 up, 2 down:


All 6:


Zane was an excellent host, and he even gave his guest a ride in the stroller:



We did hear "mine" at least a few times over the weekend, but I was impressed with how well they played with each other overall.

catch up

It's been a really busy few weeks, and I've fallen behind on blog posts.  I'm going to try to get a few short posts out this week to try to catch up...

The weekend of July 30th, Zane had another gym class and totally had a blast.  We may have to keep up the classes through the fall and winter for him.  Zane proved what a little monkey he is by hanging from one of the bars all by himself.

Right after class, we took him for his first professional haircut.  It turned out much better than our first attempt. :)  Zane did pretty well, and just kept trying to flick away her hands when she was working around his ears.  Otherwise, he had fun spinning the steering wheel of the tractor he got to sit on and all of the toys he got to check out.

Later that day, Zane got to hang out with Kevin and Amy while we had another date night - this time it was the Torchlight Parade 8k.  It was lots of fun running along the parade route, and Zane had a good time with his big friends. :) The run was good stress relief too because things were just shaken up at work for me - the 3 partners I work closest with all announced they were leaving the firm, and I'd just found out that Friday that I was going to be interviewing at the new firm the following Wednesday.

More to come...