Holidays 2010

Happy Holidays!

Now that the holidays are over, we can all finally relax, breathe, and blog.  Zoey had the best Christmas ever!  Well she only needed to top 1 Christmas, but we did try to make it awesome.

The Wingler family packed up on December 22nd and headed down to Humble.  This may be our last Christmas ever in the Suson house since Zoey's Lolo and Lola are retiring to the Philippines.  Zoey had an excellent time with her cousin Gabriel.

Zoey and Gabriel got to go to the community playground that me and Mark used to go to when we were little.  Fortunately it's much cooler than back in our day!

On the 24th we all went to Rick and Lorena's beautiful wedding in Beaumont.  All the cousins, young and old, had a wonderful time.

On the 25th Zoey and Gabriel opened their presents together!

The Daddys had to put together tricycles!

Yeah ... neither of them can reach the pedals.

Lolo and Lola held a lovely Christmas lunch at the house.  We had a wonderful time eating and hanging out.  I made everyone watch a marathon of Cake Boss: the Next Great Baker.

Bah humbug.

On the 26th we rushed back to Austin to attend Shawn's extended family Christmas party.  Zoey got to see even more cousins!!!  The girls made a fort out of some large cardboard boxes in the living room of Aunt Mimi's house.

Tarin

Josie

Lula

Jillian

We opened tons of presents for the kiddos and even had a white elephant exchange with the grown-ups.

Here are a few attempts of getting 6 little girls on 1 couch.

Zoey was clearly more interested in this stuff pony than participating.  We'll just have to try again next year!  Thank you everyone for a memorable holiday season.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

More photos ...

"Wait!!!"

"Wait!!!"

Zoey's vocabulary is growing daily.  Today she screamed "wait!!!" for the first time as Daddy tried to take her juice cup.  Earlier today I taught her "elbows".  She now throws up her hands, palms upward inquisitively, when she wants to know where something is or what just happened.  Last week when sitting in my lap, I sneezed, and I swear she said (approximately) "bless you" and patted my arm.

It won't be long now ... soon she'll be correcting my grammar ... as she fetches things for me that are on high shelves.

18 Months!

18 Months and Growing!

Not sure where my baby went and where this little girl came from!  Zoey always amazes us with how fast she grows.  Now, at 1 1/2 years old, our daughter is energetic, spontaneous, and creative.  We're still struggling to make sure she eats her veggies, but she loves cheese, apple sauce, and, like always, milk.  She enjoys playing outside, tucking acorns in to her pockets for later.  She definitely lets us know when she's ready for bed and goes down easy.  Zoey is comfy in her 18 mo. old clothes, sporting a size 6 shoe, and even has enough hair for some pigtails.  She's repeating simple words back to us and building her vocabulary, which is roughly 25 spoken words at the moment.  Her diapers are size 6, and she helps us out by letting us know when she needs a fresh one.  If she "tinkles", she'll point down to her crotch.  That's the only sign so far, and if we miss it, she doesn't seem to mind marinating for a little while longer!

Today we witnessed something really neat: she actually played a game with a toy and expressed happiness in success and disappointment in failure.  We have a Rubik's cube toy that we got last Christmas.  It's not really a Rubik's cube, though.  It's shaped like one but doesn't have moving parts.  It is electronic and lights up a colored square on each side of the cube.  We've let Zoey play with this frequently, but this was the first time we've seen her actually play the game correctly by herself.

She searches for the lit square to press the button.

She can get several in a row correct.

Oh no!  She didn't press it in time and it beeped at her!

Ha!  She even pulled her hair in frustration.

Don't worry; she has fun playing!

More photos here:

What Zoey has spoken so far:

• Daddy
• Mama
• no ("NO!!!" + extended index finger)
• doggie ("doddie")
• meow
• up
• hi
• thank you
• ball
• bubbles
• I did it!
• that
• baby
• Zoey
• bye / goodbye / bye-bye
• shoe
• ears
• nose
• mouth
• belly
• Anubis
• horse
• mess
• moon
• box

Zoey still uses some sign language too:

• milk
• more
• all done
• pumpkin (daycare taught her this for Halloween!)
• bird

Zoey's Halloween

Halloween 2010!

This is the first year for Zoey to actively trick-or-treat!  We decided on family costumes based off the Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender.  We absolutely loved this animated series (but we heard the live-action M. Night Shyamalan movie sucked).  Mommy and Daddy worked on the costumes for weeks and it all paid off!

Zoey is dressed as Aang, the main character from the cartoon.

Mommy is Katara, Aang's water-bending sidekick.

Daddy is Prince Zuko, the angst-ridden teen enemy.

On Friday, Mommy & Daddy took off of work early to take Zoey down to Nana's Fall Festival.  Zoey enjoyed meeting everyone and playing on the playground.

On Sunday we went over to cousin Keira and Tarin's house to visit.

Keira was little orphan Annie and Tarin was an elephant!

Cousin Jillian is Tigger!

We went to Nana and Granddad's house for dinner.  Spooky punch!

Zoey and her parents tried to go trick-or-treating but didn't make it very far.  Zoey didn't really want to walk down the street.  Instead she wanted to chase some cats.  We only made it to 2 houses before we called it quits.  Zoey scored 3 pieces of candy!

Back at the house, we watched The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and Garfield's Halloween Adventure. 

Zoey had a great weekend and hopes you did too!

Zoey vs. The Pumpkin

Zoey vs. The Pumpkin

On Monday we bought us a pumpkin to carve for Halloween!  This is Zoey's first time to gut a pumpkin.  She wasn't terribly thrilled about it, but we believe she had a good time.  Mommy and Zoey took turns tasting different parts ... ICK!  Daddy did most of the work.

More photos here.

Hi

Hi, I'm Zoey.

More September photos here.