Zach's Blog: October 2007

Our Kitchen Helper

Zach has a passion. We really don't know how this obsession even came about since neither of his parents are even close to master chefs, but Zach is CRAZY about the kitchen. Jenny wonders if it is passed down from her own obsession and the fact that no matter how many times she begged, she was never given a play kitchen as a child. (Sorry, Mom, had to throw that in here.)

Zach refers to any kitchen as "Cook", and literally every time we mention any of his friends who happen to have a play kitchen, he immediately responds with "Cook". "Zach", we ask him, "do you want to meet Brady at the park today?" "Cook", he responds. "Yes, Brady does have a play kitchen at home. Now let's go to the park." We have located all the play kitchens on display in local stores where he is allowed to play, and we were almost banned from the nearby Pottery Barn Kids after we showed up 3 times in the span of 10 days. (Side note: since then, we have not been back in over 6 weeks, and yesterday as we briskly strolled by the storefront on our way to another store, Zach melted down pointing and yelling "Cook! Cook! Cook!"... He has an uncanny sense of direction for a one-year-old....)

Aside from the usual activities like getting his 'help' while we attempt to prepare breakfasts and dinners, we have come up with very clever ways to appease his need for discussing kitchens. We watch the Rachael Ray cooking segment regularly-- and we're really hoping that he's learning a lot so he can become the family chef in a year or two. We also have cut out and compiled some pictures from catalogs of play kitchens so we can talk about every detail of each kitchen.

We might need to chat with Santa about helping Zach explore his cooking abilities with his very own play kitchen. This way we can also stop begging out friends to let us come over and play with theirs!....

Dancing Fool

Let's dwell on the Oktoberfest events for just a minute longer... until next September, anyway. This video is for grandparents only (or anyone with 30 seconds of free time that they will never get back... and perhaps any dance scouts out there looking for a talented 1-year-old polka dancer).

This doesn't show off his best dancing moves even, but we can't figure out how to crop the video and it's the shortest one we have. Zach, in his lederhosen, managed to steal the show at all of these festivals. He'd start dancing the minute we arrived and we had to pull him away after an hour of nonstop dancing. He was typically the only boy in a crowd of 4 to 8-year-old girls....

Since then, often when he's getting dressed in the morning, and we ask Zach what he wants to wear, he points to his lederhosen and says "Par-tee". He's even been spotted directing his stuffed animals to dance while mumbling "Party" over and over again. Honestly, we couldn't make this stuff up.

September in Review (yup, just another photo montage)

In our efforts to get our blog up to date, here's a quick recap of September. We kept particularly busy in September throwing our first annual Oktoberfest party (with the help of some German friends to ensure its authenticity) as well as attending a few other Oktoberfest events throughout the Bay Area... We were looking for any excuse to put Zach in his lederhosen and enjoy some yummy German beer. We also managed a few day trips-- one to the Bay Area Discovery Museum and another to the Little Farm and Skunk train at Tilden Park in Berkeley. Zach enjoyed all the outings- he loved feeding the cows and goats celery, and he really enjoyed riding a real train (he's practicing his sign for 'train' in the upper left picture).

Towards the end of September we flew to Columbus, OH to hang out with friends Kurt and Dawn and meet their very sweet and beautiful 6-month old boy, Ben. We enjoyed a wonderful visit and even managed to attend the annual Columbus Oktoberfest party while there!

Phew! I think we're mostly caught up to date and can finally begin posting about some of the more recent and interesting aspects of our life out here on the West Coast... Hopefully we'll manage to post again before 2 more months go by.

Summer Vacation, stop 3: Connecticut

The final leg of our vacation was a long weekend in Connecticut where 2 good friends of ours got married. Meg, a college friend of Jenny, and Stacy, a friend of Kevin's from childhood, were getting hitched. Where did they meet, you might ask? At our wedding 4 years ago! Who knew that actually happens in real life? We were honored to stand up in the wedding and owe a ton to Kevin's parents for taking on most of the Zach responsibility (while we were doing things like getting pedicures and living it up in a limo!) We were so busy with wedding activities that we took zero pictures of the entire weekend.... Here's one someone sent to us.

Summer Vacation, stop 2: South Carolina

After a week in Michigan, we headed down to Pawleys Island, SC, for the Welde family reunion. It had only been a year since the last reunion, but this year was even more chaotic with the 4 members '06 Gang running about.

After the reunion ended, the three of us stayed an extra week to enjoy the sunshine and golfing. It took Zach most of the reunion to get comfortable with the beach, but eventually he loved it.

Summer Vacation, stop 1: Michigan

Very overdue postings (as always), but we wanted to post about our month-long trip in August to the East Coast. Our first stop was a Jarvis family reunion in Au Gres, Michigan, for Kevin's mom's 60th birthday celebration. We showered her with 60 gifts to open and dressed her up like we thought a 60 year old should dress.