Months 10 & 11 and Gabe & Zara’s 1st Birthday!

by Amy ~ March 26, 2011

We’ve had a busy few months and the photographer was a little slow in getting the pictures ready for publication. Sorry to keep you waiting. There are 4 new albums below!

It’s hard for me to remember everything that happened over the past 2 months and given that I don’t remember what happened two minutes go, I’m sure I’ll leave something out.

January started off as a good month. Rita came back to help us after Christmas when Willow went on vacation. We had a nice New Year’s Eve dinner and as always enjoyed her visit!

On a very sad note, we found out in mid-January that Roller had been taken by his owner to another town and when he was left outside, he never returned home. Roller was a great cat and we both loved him very much. It’s strange to pull into our driveway and not to see him or walk past the front door and not see him standing on his back legs looking in. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him as I pull into the driveway. I keep holding out hope that he’ll find his way back here but it’s been several months and he was a 3 hour drive away so it’s unlikely that he’ll ever return. I just hope that he found another home that loved him as much as we did.

We found more month 9 photos on our other camera that we didn’t include in the initial 9 month post so here are the missing month 9 photos.

In February, Zvonimir had another work trip this time to Europe so he was able to extend and visit family. While he was gone, our friend Judy and her mother who live in Portland visited for a long weekend. It was so much fun to catch up and especially great to have extra help while Z was out of town!!

Here are some highlights on Gabe and Zara from the past few months. Gabe and Zara have been cruising around the furniture and exploring everything. They’re especially fond of our computers and phones! Any time the computer is within reach, they’re pounding on the keyboard or trying to tear the keys off! They aren’t walking yet but they will stand on their own from time to time. Zara is more interested in trying to walk than Gabe is. Sometimes she’ll take a step or two but most times she just dives towards you. Gabe is too busy to consider walking!! They both continue to do the army crawl. I think it’s just more efficient for them. They know how to crawl the right way, but it’s much slower on the wood floors.

We started spending more time at the local park swinging and going down the slides. We have an amazing park that was just renovated at the end of our block so it is very convenient! Zara now has 6 teeth and Gabe has 4. Gabe still loves to give big open mouth kisses but ever since he bit my cheek mid kiss, I’m a little worried about receiving his kisses!! Zara learned how to blow raspberries and spent the good part of a week blowing raspberries every time you looked at her. Zara has really come into her personality and although she’s still the more serious one she has started giggling more recently. Zara likes to study things and figure out how they work. She’ll sit with a shape and try to figure out which hole it goes into for a long time. Gabe on the other hand cannot sit still. He is the goofy super-explorer. He’s almost always smiling and always getting into something. He has this geeky/nerdy laugh that makes you laugh too!

They both still have reddish hair and Gabe’s hair is getting super curly (I think it’s time for a cut soon!). They both eat well but Zara is becoming a little more picky. They have a lot of fun feeding themselves. We bought them bibs with pockets to catch the food and they love to pick food out of the pocket. Their favorite food is blueberries. We go through a pint a day!

View Gabe and Zara’s month 10 photos.

View Gabe and Zara’s month 11 photos.

We recently celebrated Zara and Gabe’s 1 year birthday. We rented a large room so the kids had lots of space to move and play. The kids enjoyed pushing their favorite lion toy across the room and playing with their friends (ok, stealing toys from each other is playing at this stage!!). The kiddos ate their first piece of cake and they weren’t as excited about it as we had expected. They liked it but they weren’t stuffing it in their mouths like some kids do.

It’s hard to believe that a year has gone by already. We love you Gabe and Zara. You make us smile!

View Gabe and Zara’s birthday party photos.