That's Odd....

Zoe is an odd kid. Maybe I should call her "unique" or "independent" or "quirky" or something slightly more PC or whatever, but the truth is she's just odd. There's no getting around it. How do I express in words how truly odd she is? I don't know, but I'll try. And maybe I'll throw in some pictures too.

Zoe LOVES to play by herself. Sometimes she tells me (or James) to go in the other room if we try and play with her. Seriously.

About one minute ago she came upstairs, went in the bathroom, grabbed our squirt bottle and said (mostly to herself), "Squirt bottle's going to go play with those jingle bells." Then she headed back downstairs. She is meticulous in using the words the, those, that, and these in front of her objects. "Let's go watch that robot movie," "Want the swimmings." Please don't ask what a swimming is. I don't think there is any way to explain.

She is absolutely OBSESSED with the movie Wall-e. It is the only full-length film she will watch. We attempted Kung-fu Panda a few days ago and she wouldn't even come downstairs. When she did, she stayed in the kitchen until we turned it off. We watch Wall-e every day while Owen takes his am nap. The rest of the day she runs around the house shouting "Wall-e," "Evah," and mumbling things about the Axiom, spaceships, and robots.

Zoe is still enthralled by her large collection of plastic bugs, snakes, frogs, and dinosaurs. She will pick out a couple of favorites every few days and they become inseparable. She calls them her "friends" and carries them around everywhere. If I ask her or tell her anything she echoes it to her toys - "Do you want a sandwich Zoe?" "Do you want a sandwich snake?" It's incredibly endearing yet absolutely annoying to me as she never actually answers my questions. Is it healthy for a 2 and a half year old girl to sleep with praying mantises? I guess we'll find out.

Zoe has absolutely NO social skills. Her first reaction to other people is to be slightly scared and then to ignore them completely. One day I picked her up from nursery and the teachers were so excited because she actually spoke. Meanwhile at home she talks non-stop. To herself or her toys, mostly, but nonstop nonetheless.

Zoe shows no interest in potty training. She could walk around in a poopy diaper all day and not care. Recently I've been trying to encourage her and while she is intrigued by the concept of underwear, she flips out if I try and get her to sit on the toilet. Almost as much as she continues to flip out over the vacuum.

The list goes on. She loves to jump and sing. She has several Dr. Seuss books memorized. She wouldn't drink juice to save her life. Every day she comes up with new ways to be weird. But every day I find new reasons to love her.

How He Rolls

Owen started rolling over about two weeks ago. It only took him days to master it and now he does it all day. The second I put him down he rolls over, then continues to roll until he can't roll no more. It makes diaper changes interesting.

Here's another milestone from the last couple weeks - he laughs. For as smiley as he is, he doesn't laugh much, and I would describe it as more of a shriek than anything, but of course it's dang cute.

The Devil Himself

Our Holidays were not completely void of traveling. We had a friend getting married in Logan so we decided to make the trek north for the reception. The roads weren't too bad and we couldn't pass up an opportunity to hang out with the entire Biggs family. It was fun, despite Zoe presenting further evidence that children and wedding receptions do not mix. This time it was countless floating candles set in water-filled wine glasses on window ledges. Yikes! We even got to spend the night as there was an extra hotel room available. Good thing I packed the kids' jammies and extra clothing for everyone.

Oh, I'm forgetting to mention that our friend Nathan - Travis' younger brother - married Ester Ballam, daughter of Michael Ballam, who many of you may or may not know plays the Devil in a certain church film. So we can now say we met the Devil. That's almost worth a two and a half hour drive right there. That, and hanging out with this guy:

And let's not forget these handsome devils either:

Jason Wallace, Alan DeMartini, Nathan Biggs, Unknown Groomsman, Alex Green

Merry Popcorn!

This year, Christmas equaled "popcorn." Not that we ate any, but having white lights on our Christmas tree caused Zoe to call it a "popcorn tree" which then led to her replacing every "Christmas" with popcorn, ie popcorn lights, popcorn presents, popcorn "own-a-mints," and popcorn songs. Christmas was pretty low-key around here. We got ourselves a new tv and a blue-ray player after Thanksgiving. We got Zoe a little kitchen set and Owen a bouncy seat (although that was more for me). Of course the only toy that Zoe got remotely excited about was the $2 Care Bear in her stocking, even though she already has 2 others. Oh well. We stayed in our jammies, watched movies, and had a relaxing day at home. It snowed for the fourth time in a week, leaving us with about a foot and a half of powder all together. We would have loved to be with family, but it was nice not to worry about traveling. Plus it was Owen's first Christmas and our first Christmas in our house.

I didn't get to participate in the 12 Days of Christmas this year, but I did make a giant Christmas To-Do list and every day we tried to do something to get us in the Christmas spirit. Here's what we ended up accomplishing:

Decorating Zoe's Advent calendar from Nursery
Syncing the iPod with Christmas music
Decorating the Blog
Taking the kids' Christmas pictures
Making hot chocolate
Reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
Making paper snowflakes
Watching the Christmas Devotional
Checking out Christmas books from the library
Visiting Santa
Getting and decorating the tree
Attending James' work Christmas party
Seeing the lights in Spanish Fork
Making felt snowmen
Watching endless Christmas movies - The Christmas Card, Rudlof, Charlie Brown, Elf, Mr Krueger's Christmas, Christmas Vacation, and A Christmas story
Reading the Christmas Story from the Bible.

To save my sanity, I cut out sending Christmas cards this year. It was a hard decision but I really just had to let it go. 2008 was a crazy but wonderful year filled with new experiences and a few hardships, but we are happy with where we're at and where we're headed with our lives. We wish everyone the best of luck in the new year and hope your Christmas was as happy as ours!

Straight Shooting

Hello, is anyone there? I think I have some explaining to do. I am suffering from some serious STUCK at Home Mom Syndrome. We've had quite a bit of snow over the last month rendering James' car completely useless (it almost got impounded because we left it at the bus stop for a couple weeks...oops) so he's been using "my" car to get to work. Which is fine and I really don't have places I have to go during the week, but after nearly a month of being at home with 2 kids, not having a CHANCE of escape is starting to wear on me. I am completely unmotivated to do anything. I didn't realize how healthy it is to be able to go and get bread or milk during the day, or head to the library for story time. Beyond weekly laundry and cooking as necessary, I have pretty much let go of all other responsibilities.

I was thinking to myself that I should have an exceptionally clean home and finished projects since I have plenty of time to accomplish things. But, in reality, too much time has been my downfall. I thrive on deadlines. With the possibility of doing anything on any day that I am home, I find myself doing mostly nothing. James has been leaving the laptop at home so I don't even turn the computer on to edit pictures for the blog. I have two posts completely written, just awaiting pictures.

To make things worse, we just got a netflix subscription which has 1) given me slightly more motivation to check the mail and 2) given me more reason to sit around doing nothing.

I'm not trying to excuse my behavior, I'm just asking for your continued patience with my laziness and I wanted to let everyone know that we're all doing well....physically at least.