Zoey Diary

Kate has been creating little scenes with Zoey’s toys and figures. She sets them up at night, and Zoey sees them first thing the next morning when she wakes up and comes out to the living room.

Kate also brings sesame street characters and animals when we go to restaurants. At first we bring out just a few, then gradually more animals appear one by one. We place them on the table so they’re peeking out from behind a glass or some other object. Then help Zoey to spot them. When she finds one a smile slowly creeps onto her face and she says the name of the animal.

She’s taking a long time to go to sleep so I go in and lie down on the bed next to her. She’s talking for a long time. At one point she says “Happy birthday Jackson. Happy birthday Zoey. Happy Birthday Me. Happy Birthday comin’ up” Tatu had been talking to her earlier today about how her birthday is coming up.

Kate found a projector with cartridges to show movies for lots different of Sesame Street and golden books and other stories. We project it on the wall and on the ceiling lying on our backs.

We’re having milk after a trip to the grocery store Ideal where I let her walk around and she’s dancing to Sting “we’ll be together tonight”. We didn’t bring the stroller, walked all the way there. When we get back she’s getting tired and it’s nap time, we’re having milk on the couch and I take out two hair clips. One of them is a tortoise shell, one of the shorter ones, it’s shorter than the long ones with various black and white patterns and shapes. I used it because it was there. Normally I would always use a black and white long one since they catch lots of hair easily. But this time she somehow got hold of the clip after I take it out and she’s holding it, then eventually starts holding it up to my glasses, which are the tortoise shell ones, and I realized she’s comparing or matching up the patterns. I loved that.

She has a wonderful pronunciation of “octopus”. She keeps repeating the animals in the book Brown Bear. Blue horse, yellow duck, white dog, black sheep, purple cat, brown bear. She made a beautiful crayon drawing today, filling in areas with different colors, and some interesting lines and marks with variation, squiggles, circular shapes, and meandering lines, amongst the masses of color. She colored a moon in black. A black moon. This is a radical idea. I made some hands for her in sculpt yesterday, one holding a dark gray tree branch, the other pointing with index finger. Kate has made three small stuffed dinosaurs lately with a beautiful kind of stitch where the stitch is very prominent, with darker color red thread on pink fabric. In the others the thread matches the fabric. They are all soft felt fabric. Using only a few panels stitched together and stuffed to create the dinosaur forms.

We went to the carousel yesterday, Kate and Zoey rode while I stayed outside and waved. Lately we’re reading the carousel book over and over again. Brown bear, the Elmo/Abbey one, and carousel are some that we read over and over again. “Read it” and “again” she says. Always we remind her to say please and she does, then we read. Saying please almost always involves a forward head thrust since apparently it takes so much effort.

Calling any large bird “condor”

Saying “WALK” forcefully before she starts walking.

Saying “readit” like a monotone command for every book. Then we get her to say please.

We put glow in the dark stars on the ceiling in the living room and laid on our backs in the dark. Now all day long she periodically starts singing Twinkle twinkle little star and keep singing it for long periods, like when she played with tiles at night before jammies. But it sounds like she thinks the words are tickle tickle. And the part “how I wonder what you are” is sung as “high wun-nuh (or nut).. buh buh buh”. And the pronunciation of S and T is very crisp lately, like that T at the end of wun-nut.

This is old, from days ago, but Kate was trying to let her get her own shoes on and she was having trouble, so she backed up and leaned back against the railing and then it seemed like she tried to get a running start, to pounce on her shoe and get the foot in there.

Today Jane died. I got the call from Kate, I was on the way back from trying to go to NYC climate week, but I turned around because not feeling well. Turned out I had kidney stones. After passing them, I got Zoey out of daycare an hour early and brought her home, and had her stay in the stroller while I finished packing. I’d already done most of it before picking her up. Then we drove up. Lot of traffic, she let out some cries of being frustrated strapped into the seat with no one in the back seat with her. But we sang songs, I used the song “the wheels on the bus” and adapted it to other lyrics but keeping the same tune. Like “when Zoey sees a lion she goes..” And then wait for Zoey to do her rawww noise, in a quiet breathy voice, a great version of a roar. Or when Zoey sees a cat she goes.. and then Zoey goes meow. Then we counted the fingers on her hand, and I tried to tell her it’s her thumb finger that’s in your mouth now. She was showing some tiredness and sucking her thumb. But then, fast forward to bedtime and Kate and I could not get her to calm down, standing up, yelling, crying, jumping, and she bit my chin. Eventually we took her for a drive around Riverdale and she fell asleep. We’re staying at Riverdale tonight, that’s why she was so revved up. Dennis seems catatonic, not reacting very much outwardly. Molly looks, what’s the word, frazzled, a lot of crying and sunken-ness written on her face. Kate is devastated. I’m so sad, so is Mom. I told Kate we were having so much fun, and there was so much more fun to have, for her to interact with Zoey. It’s so tragic that that’s over and can’t happen any more. Zoey is too young to remember her well. It’s just heart breaking. I can’t really engage it yet.

She held a card one way and said “w” then she turned it upside down and said “m”. We congratulated her, then a few seconds later I again told her how right she was holding it both ways and saying m and w, wanting to reinforce it. I caught her saying Mutu a few times in an audio recording, but she’s alternating now between mutu and musu, or something with an s, so I think we’re catching the very end of mutu before she gets closer to moose. It makes me sad to see these inventive pronunciations, imaginative with made-up consonants, fall away with the “correct”. But at least Kate and I can talk about it and make these frowny faces that we do to signify the sadness over the passing of time, the progression, losing all these fleeting stages that we love all these things she does and says. In the recording we’re looking at the Moose in Woodland Dance.

Kate and zoey went to riverdale for jane and owen’s birthdays. I walked with them to the car and helped pack. Kate put Zoey in the car seat. When I’m done packing I lean into the car and get close to Zoey to give her a kiss, she opens her mouth and holds her breath as if waiting to see what happens. I kiss her on the cheek.

I had Zoey all day, after Kate got up with her and spent an hour with her before she had to leave for work. After a good long nap I took her to the prospect park zoo, kate’s idea. I let Zoey walk around while I pushed the stroller and parked it so we could look at stuff together, I love that I can trust her to walk now. The best part was when we got into a building with animals in environments behind glass. The ceiling was like dome and there was an amazing echo if you go to the very center and make noise. Zoey joined a group of kids stomping, clapping yelling and especially jumping, and she had a great time jumping and shrieking with these kids. They were older and they seemed really wonderful, welcoming her into the group and encouraging her, really having a ball, imitating her movements letting her lead the action like a dance. One kid was doing cartwheels, Zoey did her rendition which was basically lying down on the ground. Eventually another little girl ran into her and nocked her down, and two of the kids who had been dancing with her in the center, an older taller girl and a slightly older boy, both immediately started to help her up (there’s a video and it stops at this point). I went over to help, and Zoey had just been helped up and was about to get upset about having been handled by strangers, but I explained that they were helping, and I thanked them, and said they were nice, and the upset was averted, it seemed she understood nothing scary had happened but instead something good.

Today Kate had to work, a project wrapping fabric around hangers. I took Zoey in the stroller to the studio, then we left the stroller at the studio and took the ferry to 34th st, then went to the playground that’s right there. Zoey did some excellent hanging from high bars with me having my hands on her at all times, but not putting any pressure to hold her up until she lost her grip, then grab her and let her drop only a couple of inches. On the way walking down that long road toward the ferry with an inlet on the right as you walk out, there’s a huge barge, very wide and flat and the front comes up out of the water and juts very far forward as it rises, and underneath that overhang three ducks were swimming. Had a great time at the playground. On the ferry back she laughed while watching the water, as we hung out on the back of the boat, lower level, looking over the edge at the water being churned up and twisted into these channels and spouts and waves and ridges and grooves and the water rejoined shortly behind the boat, really powerful motors reshaping the water like sculpture. She laughed when we were inside the cabin looking out the window and that was the best spot to see how fast the boat was going. Inside the studio where we hung out for a few minutes before going to the boat, she tried to pick up many Dr. Martins watercolor dropper bottles all at once and kept dropping some as she tried to pick up more and more. Then picking them up again still trying to get them all. Then handing all kinds of things to me. She tries to organize and collect and move things around a lot lately. She seemed sleepy before we got back to the studio, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to stop her falling asleep on the stroller ride home, but she stayed awake eating crackers, puffs and a bar, and singing the whole way home.

Last night we had a big “developmental” night where she’s up all night until 6am. first Kate had her 3 hours then me. She was bouncing all over the place and climbing on me, I was lying down because I was tired. I tried to play a game where she’s sitting on me and I’m a boat, and the ground is water, so you get wet if your feet touch it. I said now we’re passing an island, and there’s a Mutu (Moose) on the island. And I said there are eyes in the trees, like this part on the Jaro Hess map that we’ve been looking at. One new thing she did was, on that vintage toy with the yellow shapes that fit into holes on a sphere, for the first time she found the right hole for some shapes and oriented it right so it fit through, instead of me showing her the right hole and orienting it right and letting her push it through. The plus sign piece was one.

Trying to record how zoey pronounces Mutu:

She was sick last night or had allergies and had a big throw up in her crib in the middle of the night Kate and I cleaned it up. Today she's subdued but doing fine. We walked all the way to Stroud and then played for a while. It was a calm day and I was able to sit on one of the benches next to the fountains and watch her from there instead of following right behind as she flies around. At one point I saw her sit at the little table which was a ways away, with another girl about her age and I could see the back of Zoey's head through the square openings in the backs of the seats, the walls of the enclosure. They were having some interaction just the two of them. It was very cute.

Trying to get her to draw an S, she did the squiggle in black centered on the page. She drew the black lines coming down from each letter which I thought was really interesting. That was actually yesterday. Today Kate worked at AO office and we went to Manhattan and walked down the highline and met her there. Then we went to Little Island.  Kate brought some things that are like thick rope but made of soft stuffed fabric tubes but they were really long and zoey could trail them behind her or walk with them wrapped all around her. Then on the way home I let Zoey stand while we rode the subway and she liked it, bouncing around and dancing. Kate showed me a hilarious video where she turns the camera away from Zoey to show that mouse is right next to her and mouse let's out a breathy feeble meowing sound.

The way she says “camouflage” is camo-cama. We took a video.

In the little enclosure with seats and a table at Stroud Zoey started pretending to eat food, picking up invisible morsels from the table and pretending to put them in her mouth with gusto. The first time I saw her do it was right after she'd sat down with a kid and their dad who were already sitting there. She may have picked it up from them or maybe at school today. Never seen her do it before.

We drew letters on a paper, I put the crayon in her hand then I held her hand and moved it to draw Z and O. She wanted to do it again. At the top I had written all the letters we know, Z O A T E L N S. This happened late just before getting her jammies on for story time. She had found a picture of the cow jumping over the moon in a book. We took it in with us to change and we compared it to the cow jumping over the moon on the "map" over the changing table. The moons are very different, one is an arched crescent with the face facing sideways. The other is full and facing forward. She always recognizes the moon it seems to me in all different contexts and styles and portrayals.