Tearing it up

Zach was fussy one night so in a moment of somewhat desperation Melissa gave hime one of the many catalogs she gets to play with. Like all kids who prefer the box to the toy that came in it, Zach loved ripping the catalog to shreds. He spent over a half hour tearing it into increasingly small pieces.

These are the best photos I could get of him tearing pages in half. He was too fast for the camera.

He clearly enjoyed himself.

Unfortunately, now we have to keep all magazines out of his increasingly mobile reach.

8 Month Pictures

Clearly another growth spurt when compared to last month. They are as different as the 5 and 6 month pictures.

That chair is definitely getting smaller.

Crawling

Two weeks ago I said Zach hasn't made any progress crawling. Until this past week that was true. Once or twice during the week, we caught him pulling himself forward. He'd only do it once and it was only when he had something to pull on, so we didn't think too much of it.

That changed yesterday morning. I put him down to grab something in our bedroom. The cat was sitting across the room. Out of nowhere, Zach starts crawling toward Izzy.

Naturally, the first thing we did when we got home last night was get him to crawl again and take video of it. Notice how excited the little guy is and that Izzy is clearly the target.

Bravo Mom

Melissa took this set of pictures. I don't know when they were taken or the story behind them, but they are outstanding. I think the first one is my new favorite picture of Zach.

Just Playing

Some random pictures of Zach playing.

It don't mean a thing, if you ain't got...

Borrowing an idea from our neighbor, we picked up a swing at Toys R' Us and hung it out on our patio. Zach loves it. To the point where if you walk by the window and he sees the swing, he cries for it. Also, if you take him out of the swing before he's tired of it, he'll let you know he wanted to swing more.

Another Portrait Set

We went for another set of portraits the other week. We specifically wanted a family portrait as well as a couple more polished shots of the Z-man.

A guy I work with pointed out that Zach has pretty much the same smile in every picture.

If anyone wants to order prints, they can do so from the Kiddie Kandids site. I also have the full resolution originals which I can email to anyone interested.

7 Months

I figured I should post these before I take the 8 month versions later this week. Not as drastic a difference as last month, but he's definitely a growing boy.

Back To The Park

We finally got the weather to cooperate and made it back to our local park.

I wish I had the flash on for this picture because the look on Zach's face is priceless. I tried boosting the lighting, but it just doesn't work. Oh well, it's still a cool picture.

Zach is still mesmerized by grass.

Another what could have been. Next time I take my sunglasses off. I especially like how it almost looks kinda like Zach is taking the picture.

Progress Report

It's been a while since I've had time to work on The Zach Blog, so I thought I'd catch everyone up.

Zach is sitting up independently now. You have to watch he doesn't whack his head reaching for something, but he's more or less fine sitting on his own.

Despite my claims of "any day now" over a month ago, Zach is still not crawling. In fact, we've seen little progress on the crawling front since Memorial Day. This is not to say Zach isn't more mobile than he was a month ago. He figured out how to rolls around at will and does so all the time. Since the rolling discovery, crawling has been on the back burner.

During the past week, Zach has finally had some teeth start coming in. It's his bottom two teeth and the tips are currently just through the gums. Melissa and I were excited about it until he started waking up at 3am. How quickly we got spoiled sleeping through the night.

The summer is flying by so far. Basically, when we haven't been running around to various summer get-togethers, one of the three of us has been sick. We figure Zach is bringing bugs home from day care, but can't prove it. The three of us have all been nursing sinus infections, Zach had pink eye last week, and we think he brought home Rotavirus for Father's Day (fortunately Zach was immunized, unfortunately we were not).

In other news, Zach's Uncle A.J. is now a high school graduate. If you'd like to congratulate him, he can be found doing his best David Hasselhoff impersonation on a Cape May beach for the summer. This fall, he's headed up to Northeastern University in Beantown.

Shrimp Kippers

Melissa and Zach have been taking a swim class for the past month. Swim class is a generous description. It's really just to introduce Zach to water. They walk around in the pool and sing nursery rhymes. We figured Zach would enjoy it since he normally splashes away in the tub and we haven't been disappointed.

 

 

Towards the end of each class, they generally get a couple minutes of free play. At this particular class, Zach liked chasing the football. So Melissa would throw it and then they'd go after it. Reaching for the football, Zach got so excited that he managed to squirm free, simultaneously dunking himself and scaring the crap out of his mom. The picture on the lower right shows the immediate aftermath.

Footprints continued

I finally made time last night to go through our picture backlog. As promised here is the finished, painted, and placed footprint cast that goes with the earlier Footprints post.

It resides in a little herb garden off our patio. The sage, basil and parsley in the picture are currently overgrowing the cast.

Father's Day Card

Below is the card that was waiting for me at day care when I picked Zach before father's day weekend. He is without a doubt a ham for the camera.

We've been running around as usual and I'm behind again (obviously, since father's day was 3 weeks ago). I downloaded all the photos of the camera last night. Hopefully, I'll get the keepers uploaded and start posting again in the next few days.