Zavoral Villa!

 (froggie pictures are from beg of January) This past week, Tanner has gone through a major growth spurt. And why shouldn't he? After all, he turned SEVEN months yesterday! His appetite has increased- eating 5-6 ounces at each feeding instead of his usual 4 ounces. He's also been eating wheat or oatmeal cereal at lunch with his babysitter and then a veggie like avocado, green beans & carrots, or peas in the evening with me. I make the baby food fresh for him and he loves it. We also let him try a lot of what we eat from our own plates (thanks to the ideas that Chelsea has shared with us!). He has tried mashed potatoes, stuffing, cereal, string cheese, baby cracker things, and the yogurt melts. (I personally love the yogurt melts!) Now he opens his mouth really good when we feed him and he is getting more and more coordinated at putting things in his mouth on his own. It's really fun to watch him try putting smaller pieces of food in his mouth cuz it gets lots inside tho...

I didn't have to work on Martin Luther King day, so I spent the day with my friend Marci and her son Rockford. We went to Mile Square Park. It's a beautiful park with bike routes, golf courses, baseball fields, a rec center, playgrounds and ponds. It's huge-exactly a square mile of land. To give you an idea of how big that is, think of the size of Disneyland. Now multiply that size by 4.  Yep, just google it if you don't believe me.  This is Tanner's second time in park swing. He loves it!!

 Thank you Gramz and Grampz for the bike trailer. WE LOVE IT! Yes, this is what our neighborhood looks like in January!  So far, we've ridden to the park, starbucks and Target as a family. Next stop: the beach! It's only 2.5 miles from our house, about a 20 minute bike ride.

We often compare Tanner to various animals depending on what he looks or sounds like- even since he was in the womb. So here is a list of the ones that I can recall in one sitting. Tanner has looked like: mouse ears mole face monkey face monkey butt (the patch of hair above his bumb is very ape-like) puppie face duckling fuzz birdie lips, er... beak piglet rolls peanut shape (okay it's not an animal, but still) rollie pollie shape chimp face gorilla hair, esp as a newborn bucking bronco strength cheerleader doing "ready? ok!" teddy bear cuddle butterfly flutters (in the womb) a basketball (in the womb) jello jiggling (in the womb) Tanner has sounded like a: bird screeching monkey howling horse braying cat meowing toad croaking (when he lost his voice from crying too much) piglet snorting dinosaur roaring cat hissing dog whining dolphin clicking whale singing seal barking (when he had croup cough) dog panting

Here's a video I made with footage over the past 6 months. The first clip is Tanner when he was 6 days old. The last clip is when he was 6 months old! And the video is 6 minutes long. 

Tanner's First Christmas was the best one yet!! We drove up to Sacramento and spent 8 nights and 9 days there. We were only going to spend 5 days there, but our trip kept getting extended so that we could enjoy more time with the family. All of Jeremy's siblings were home for the holidays, including two new brother-in-laws, so it was super, super fun! On Christmas Eve day, we watched the Raiders game. Tanner got his first sports aparrel from Uncle Zach. By the end of the week, he was given enough sports gear to represent every major sport team in Northern CA.   Later that day, we went ice skating. It was DadZ's first time ever, so that made for some very entertaining moments around the rink. MomZ didn't skate because she broke her ankle during the week of Melissa's wedding, but she still watched from the sidelines with Tanner.   Then, we  joined the Davidson relatives for the traditional Christmas Eve dinner and games. Each year, the family reserves the relief s...