Zina Stories

January 2009

We were eating spaghetti and Jacob was holding Zina on his lap and feeding her. I noticed that she had dripped a little bit of sauce on his arm so I took a cloth and wiped it up for him. Zina looked up and me and then very deliberately slapped her sauce drenched hand down on his arm and began to rub it up and down. That’ll teach me to clean up her daddy before dinner is over!

February 2009

Zina is so good at sharing. At dinner she spends half her time feeding her Grandpa Jim. He is so good natured about it that he will even eat the broccoli that she feeds him! He fondly refers to it as hay. The other morning Zina was eating grapes so I sat down next to her and opened my mouth and she obligingly popped one in for me. She then proceeded to alternate between eating a grape and feeding me a grape. Then she got to her last one. She held it for a while looked at me then grinned and ripped it in half. One for each of us. Ah I love being a mom.

February 2009

I passed Zina to Jacob, leaned in to smell her bottom and got whacked in the head as his arm came around to secure her. He felt bad for it, but told me that it was silly of me to try to smell her while she was being transferred. While he was explaining my folly she reached for grandpa so Jacob turned and passed her over. As he did I heard a “Whack” and saw Jacob staggering back holding his face. Jacob had thoughtfully realized that I probably hadn’t had much of a chance to check if she smelled and leaned in as Grandpa reached to take her. He was right; that is a bad time for a smell check! He got a great big grandpa arm in the face for his pains. We laughed so hard it took several minutes before any of us got enough breath back to actually do that smell check. She passed.

February 2009

I was sitting in the kitchen with Zina when she glimpsed a bag of frozen peas on the counter. She darted right under them and reached up and pointed insistently babbling the whole time. I wondered why in the world frozen peas would seem so desirable. I gave her a handful and she ate a few before turning away and going off to do something else. Then it dawned on me that the peas came in a purple and white bag. Exactly the same color as the bag of marshmallows. Zina loves marshmallows. She had obviously associated a purple and white bag with a yummy treat! Smart girl. I wonder if she will grow up liking the color purple? 

May 9, 2009

Jacob and I watched our niece and nephew for several hours so their mom and dad could go on a date. They dropped the kids off with a large pizza about noon at the field where we were playing soccer with several friends. Zina was very intrigued by  the pizza and sat there on the grass holding the box open and picking off bits of pizza to eat. At a break in the game I announced that there was still plenty of pizza and anyone who wanted some was welcome to it.

I turned to pick up the box and Zina slammed it closed and dove across the top of it. She lay there holding it closed and started hollering when I tried to pull her off. Evidently she figured out what I had just said and she did not want to share her pizza!

May 2009

Zina is a little chair thief. If you leave the room she will get up from what she is doing and insert herself wherever you had been sitting. Sometimes she will even splay herself across the couch to try to take up as much room as she can. I guess she hopes that this will force people to pick her up!

Zina especially likes the big blue chair in the living room. The other day she woke up from a nap and she cried and walked right past me and climbed up into the blue chair and right into Luke’s lap. Luke picked her up and handed her over to me. Zina immediately wiggled back out of my lap and crawled right back up into Luke’s. I really don’t think she was quite awake because she has never gone to him before. Luke then picked her up again and carried her over to Grandpa in the other room. I think she then became a little more coherent because this time she stayed.