We've had two days of eating three meals each day!!  Zoe's doing great with her feeds.  She is still reaching for the spoon and not spitting anything out.  We are probably averaging a few tablespoons of food at each meal.  Today consisted of cereal, soy yogurt, sweet potatoes and bananas-  yummy!!  Hopefully she sticks with all this.  It could be a whole new world if she figure sout this eating thing.

 Zoe also got to go to a church picnic tonight with a gazillion other kids and she did great.  She only cried when she saw two of her uncles- go figure.  She got to play with another baby tonight who is about a month and a half younger than her, Lily.  Lily is the daughter of Jordan, who I used to babysit when I was in highschool.  The picture below is Zoe with my mom (Nana) and Lily with her grandma, Sindy Piehl, who I have known my whole life and is a great friend of the family and actually a distant relative on my dad's side. To make things even more confusing, Sindy's daughter, Carrie, used to babysit me when I was a kid.   Crazy small world- this Bainbridge Island!

Zoe finally did it!!!   She ate almost the equivalent of a breakfast.  After weeks and months of gradually trying to get her to take little bites of food, this morning she took many.  It started by Zoe actually getting excited when I put her in the high chair and getting even more excited when I started mixing the cereal.  She was actually grabbing the spoon and putting it in her mouth with cereal and yogurt on it.  She then stuck her whole hand in the bowl and covered it with food and then licked it off.  She also was leaning forward for bite after bite of food.  This is HUGE!!!  Usually a good feed she'll take a few tiny bites and bubble it all back out.  Hopefully she'll keep doing this and be able to do whole feeds soon, I'm trying not to get too excited or optomistic for the moment. 

On July 1st Zoe cut her first tooth,  She hardly was fussy at all and so it kind of caught me off guard.  A couple days later she cut her other bottom tooth.  Except for a lot of drool and a slight fever and lots of binky chomping, you'd never know she was teething.

 It's hard to believe that she is 11 months old now. I was looking at pictures of her first few days the other day and it's hard to imagine that this smiling, rolling, engaging baby is the same little one who was hooked up to so many tubes and wires you noticed them before you saw the baby.  We are so fortunate and blessed to have Zoe in our lives. I can't imagine not knowing her, no matter how things might have turned out.  She is the most amazing being I've ever known, and the way her eyes light up when she sees Jason and I and the may she smiles makes everything all worth it.

Another fun pool day!