Zoe's Summer Fun

I know posts have been few and far between lately. Seems that it's been one thing after another since returning from our trip out of town a few weeks ago. The largest issue that seems to overshadow everything is this deck project that seems to be taking forever to get done. We've also had some distractions with another growth suddenly and mysteriously showing up on Zoe's finger. It's the same finger that has the original growth, but this one is on the inside of the hand. I couldn't get the orthopedist to see her inside of three weeks, and the family practitioners don't know what it is. So we've had no choice but to wait three weeks to see if the orthopedist can help us find some answers. Her appointment with him is Monday, so I will keep you posted.

Then we've had a scare with Old Man Frederick who suddenly wasn't acting right. An emergency trip to the vet and a couple follow ups has brought us to the conclusion that his kidneys, which we've known for 3 or 4 years, are failing and his potassium is low. Also, he may have some arthritis setting in or some other cause of inflammation in his muscles or joints, and borderline high blood pressure. The vet says he is still very healthy and in great shape for his age. Eighteen cat years is equivalent to 86 human years, after all. The vet thinks Frederick still has some good years left in him yet. We'll see. For now, he's on a pretty good medication regime, if we can get him to take them. He seems to be back to "normal"...such as "normal" has been for him for the past couple years.

In addition, for those of you that I have not personally told yet, I am nearing the twelve week mark in my second pregnancy. My intentions to tell family personally have been good, but I just can't seem to get around to getting things done these days, including making any extra phone calls or writing letters. I've been in that thoroughly exhausted phase for the past several weeks, but I think I'm finally coming out of it.

As a Medicaid provider in my counseling practice, I've been bombarded with new stringent guidelines and a ridiculous amount of documentation in order to obtain approval to bill for services. For one particular family I see I had to produce no less than 50 pages of documentation in order to get approval. That has consumed a large portion of my time in the past couple weeks.

And if all that hasn't been enough, the photo blog provider I've been using has been making constant changes to their site and their programming. This means every time I log in and want to upload photos, I have to relearn their requirements to get the job done. Then I run into an endless array of "bugs." The current one seems to be that I cannot post multiple photos to this site using their system unless I want to post tiny thumbnails. That's why this post and the previous post contain separate photos.

In short, Lately I've been tired, frequently overwhelmed, tired, frustrated, tired, annoyed, and did I mention tired?

But, this site is supposed to be about Zoe, not about me...so now that I've vented mostly about my own issues, I'll at least include a line or two about Zoe. I'll try to say more about Zoe next time I can steal some moments.

The weather here has become warm and beginning to enter the muggy phases of summer. Until today I would have described things as relatively mild. Today was sticky. We got Zoe a new swimming pool since the last one spent time in the living room last winter and developed some air leaks. This one is a bit larger, and Zoe is more than excited about it. She also loves to spray things with the garden hose and fill up her little watering can and water anything she can find (that was the best $1.50 I've spent on Zoe in awhile!) Most afternoons following naptime, she dons her new Winnie the Pooh swimming suit, hat, and waterproof soccer sandels and runs around outside, in and out of the pool. It gets interesting when she dips in the pool and then, still dripping wet, dips into her Crabbie sandbox. She looks like a little breaded chicken strip when she's done. But she loves to be sprayed with the hose, so I just hose her down good before letting her back in the house.

Poop Bag Revisited

Wal-Mart bags have many uses in our home. When cleaning out the refrigerator, they are great for dumping modly leftovers in before throwing them in the trash. They work for packing material to fill up those extra spaces when sending a box through the mail. They are great for cleaning out the chunks in the cat litter box. They are just the right size to line small bathroom wastebaskets, and even the somewhat larger wastebasket in Zoe's room (hence the oringal "poop bag" reference a few posts back). Zoe continues to holler "Honey....poop bag!" down the stair case from time to time. The other day I brought many Wal-Mart bags full of groceries into the house. They were strewn about the floor as I worked on putting the groceries away. Zoe approached one of the bags and tried to lift it, while stating matter of factly, "Poop bag." Apparently Wal-Mart bags will always have a reputation for alternative jobs around our house.

Slide

The trip to Great Grandpa's funeral was a long one. One the way home we found a great place for Zoe to stretch her legs and climb and slide. She LOVES to go down the slides.

Going up the ladder Zoe says, "Here comes Zoe!"

"Wheeeeee!"


We must have repeated this over and over about 100 times!

Visitng Great Aunt Pat and Great Uncle Ron

Zoe thought the clock was awfully neat when it spun around and made "songs" She still talks about clocks "making songs."



I'm not sure we ever got the whole story on the gaudy Las Vegas light up sign, but Zoe thought it was pretty neat.

Mother's Day

This was Zoe and I on Mother's Day. She is wearing the adorable purple outfit complete with the "purple princess shoes" which, unfortunately, she can no longer comfortably wear. It's not the best shot of me, though I love Zoe's expression. We had just learned of Zoe's great grandpa's death the day before and were scrambling to run errands and pull things together to leave town for the funeral.

I've had some trouble the past few days getting photos uploaded and posted to this blog site. My photo blog site did an upgrade and now I'm having to re-learn everything. Also, I am noticing that the previous post has much poorer photo quality. Between Zoto's upgrade and Brian wiping my laptop and re-installing everything to fix some other problems I was having, this has all been a royal pain in the you-know-what. I hope I'll get it all right again soon.

Please remember that you can click on any photo posted to this blog site and it will take you to my photo blog site on Zoto. While I post many of the photos from there to here, I don't post all of them. After a couple weeks, I try to organize the newest photos into subcategories, so you will then have to click on those directories to see photos.

Sunglasses!

Zoe is enjoying her own sunglasses these days, thanks to Great Aunt Pat. But she doesn't like to put them on and leave them for long. They have to go on and off and on and off and on and off. When she puts them on she says, "Cool girl!"

She is also entertained by the odd lightsaber spoon that Great Aunt Pat's friend, Donna, sent and the "rubber duck" (which Zoe is saying quite clearly) that G Aunt Pat sent.

Zoe also loves the new puppy and puppy carrier that Uncle Jowell and Aunt Lisa gave her on our recent trip to visit family. She likes to put him in his "house" and feed him the bones and cookies.

Thank you for the fun gifts.

I think Zoe got the connection between the priority mail boxes and G Aunt Pat and G Uncle Ron on our recent visit to see them. At least she remembers them well since we got back home, as she point to their picture on the wall and says, "Pat and Ron." She also points to both Great Grandma's pictures and clearly states, "Great Grandma." She hasn't figured out Uncle Jowell's picture yet, though. I think she still isn't sure what to think of him.

There's been a couple of times at bedtime that I told Zoe that Daddy and Mommy and everyone else were going to sleep too. Now at bedtime she says, "Daddy sleeping...Mommy sleeping...Pat and Ron sleeping...Grandma sleeping...Freggit sleeping..."

Zoe is also able to point at Grandma and Grandpa M's pictures and say "Nana and Papa." She recently found a bear that Nana and Papa sent her for Valentine's Day when she was four months old and I told her that Grandma and Grandpa M gave that to her, and now she picks it up and says it's from them and then points to their picture.

I just wanted family who live at a distance to know that Zoe knows who you are.