Ba-Ba

Thursday Sasha and I took Chloe and Zane to the play area at the mall. Zane had a lot of fun - mostly watching the big kids run around. (I was a nervous wreck hoping none of them would step on him) We found out he LOVES Chuck E. Cheese. There's one behind the play area, Sasha and I were sitting in front of it. Anytime Zane would get upset and start to come over to us, he'd look up and see Chuck E. Cheese's picture and start laughing. Every single time.

At the Dow play area in the mall

When we were leaving Sasha and Chloe walked us to our car. They said bye bye and Zane said 'ba-ba' and gave a little wave - first time ever to say it and to wave - never done either, much less at the same time, AND to say it back to someone.
Later Thursday evening, at home playing in the living room, he stood up from sitting all by himself several times in a row. He's done it a couple times before, but usually has something in his hand the he pushes off of. Now he rarely crawls over to something to pull up.

Saturday we went to Avaya's dance recital. Zane hadn't had a nap yet and was exhausted. We got in the car and I gave him a pacifier (he never uses one except when he's extremely tired or upset) and he started chewing on it. I sat in the backseat to feed him on the way. He saw the bottle, tossed the pacifier over the side, looked in the direction he threw it and said 'ba-ba' and waved!
Saturday night Charlie was playing tug of war with Sadie and her blanket. When they started Zane ran over right next to them to watch. Charlie was sitting on the floor and put Zane in his lap. After awhile it seemed like he didn't want to be there anymore, so Charlie stood him up on the side. Zane turned around, crawled over Charlie's leg and scooted back so he was right up against Charlie. It made us melt. This boy has NEVER done that before. Unless he's feeling really bad, he will not let anyone hold him. AT ALL. Several times Charlie put him on the outside and Zane kept crawling back in.
Later on, Charlie shook his head and Zane started walking around shaking his head. And falling. Stand up - shake head while walking - fall down. This went on for about 10 minutes. Laughing the whole time.

Outside fun

Where we live, on the coast-in the swamp, the mosquitoes are horrible. So bad that each city has a truck that drives around spraying some chemical several times a day to try to thin them out. Our neighboring city has a festival just for the pesky insects that has been running since 1981 - The Great Texas Mosquito Festival.
Zane can look at a mosquito and gets covered in bites. When they start to fade, they turn to bruises and he looks like he's been beat up. We've been trying to keep him away from them, but they're so thick that you can't even open the door without 10 more coming inside.
For weeks it's been extremely bad. Then this past weekend we got a little bit of cold weather (well, cold for down here in May) and it seemed like they were gone. It only lasted 4 days though. Today they were back, not as bad, but they were back.
We got Zane a sandbox and hope he'll be able to spend some time outside this summer without having all the blood sucked out of him.


Enjoying swinging on a cool, mosquito-free day.

Showing off his SIX teeth!

Calling his buds to come visit his playhouse.













Best bud Sadie came to play.













Another shot of the teeth.













So excited to be outside finally!













His sandbox (the umbrellas actually block the sun in the early afternoon, but didn't help too much later in the day).















Getting into it.













Loving the outdoors.













We've got a little baby pool we're going to try in a few days. He should LOVE that. He really enjoys bath time and gets upset when it's time to get out.

Update on the job search

Charlie's interview in Fort Worth was rescheduled for May 18th. We drove up to Rob's on Sunday evening. The interview was at 9am and they kept him there for almost 2 hours asking a ton of questions. Charlie said they were really nice and seemed to like him. It's a government project and they have people dropping in on them unexpectedly. The reason she had to cancel last time was because she had a 3 star general show up and had to do what he wanted. We left Forth Worth to drive back home about 2pm. Yes, a 10 hour trip in 24 hours. Zane is so great in the car. He never got fussy the entire trip. I on the other hand was very cranky. I wish we could have stayed to visit, but Charlie's been working for his friend Matt who owns a tree cutting service and they had a job to do on Tuesday morning. As I'm writing this, Charlie is out camping with Matt. He just sent me a text that the company called him and it sounds like they want to see him again!
Charlie has also been called by some friends he worked with on the road who have a job for him in La Porte, a little over an hour from home. They've called him 4 days in a row and seem pretty desperate. Then on Wednesday Charlie got an email from one of his managers from Dow asking him to call asap. He called today and she said they are covered up, she's writing a report to get permission to hire help and Charlie's the top of her list. It would be a higher position than he had before at Dow, but again, would be in their Houston office, about an hour from home. She asked about his prospects and told him not to accept anything until she has a chance to counter. How crazy is that? No jobs since February and now companies are about to be in a bidding war for him? God definetly works in amazing ways. The week Charlie was laid off I had a seizure and he was able to stay at home with Zane and I until I was feeling better. Then he was able to take care of his dad. And now after taking care of everyone, he's had some time for himself.
He's very interested in the Fort Worth job because it would get him out of the chemical/oil plants and add some variety to his resume. It's a 6 month trial for them to prove that they need a scheduler for the next 10 years of the project. But, the whole moving thing...Whatever happens, God is obviously in control of it all.

Congratulations Breann!

Breann (Zane's cousin) graduated from Brazosport College with a Bachelors degree on Saturday May 9th. We are all so proud of her!
Deke, Breann and Rowdy - the Lopez kids after graduation

YouTube

I never liked the fact that videos I upload on the blog are so small and really bad quality. I found that if I upload them to YouTube I can post them to the blog and it will be a larger video and better quality. So from now on that's what I'll do, even though I don't really like the fact that it advertises YouTube and puts random videos at the bottom after mine plays.

Here's a comparison. This one and the same video in the post below are from the same file, but YouTube must load it at a higher resolution than Blogger.

Ft. Worth 'vacation' continued

Charlie's interview was cancelled because 'the manager is having an unexpected visitor in her office over the next few weeks that will be occupying all her time with budget meetings, etc.' They said she hopes to reschedule for next week, so we may be making another trip soon.

We took Zane to get his hair trimmed because his bangs were so long they were constantly in his eyes. We went to a kid's salon near Ft. Worth - it was so cute, had awesome chairs for the kids that were cars, firetrucks and airplanes.

After his haircut Charlie let him play in the other chairs.


We wanted to take Zane to the Ft. Worth Zoo while we were there, but ALL the Ft. Worth schools were closed due to the swine flu - or more politically correct, influenza A (H1N1). We'll try to take him next time we go.

We started home after Z's haircut and finally made it home at midnight. After 5.5 hours in a car seat Zane was going crazy when we got home - crawling and walking all over the place. He's got the pivot down and loves going in circles. He's also getting more steady and faster. Every day he walks further without falling. It's amazing how fast it happens.
We didn't have real shoes for Zane until now and he doesn't like them at all. He's having a hard time crawling with them on and can't get his feet in the right place to go from sitting to crawling. It's like his feet are tangled up and he can't figure out how to get untangled. On the other hand, he has mastered walking in socks on wood floors. Just a few weeks ago he couldn't crawl in socks on the wood floors, he'd slip and do a face plant.

Today Zane started initiating peek-a-boo. While I was feeding him breakfast he put his bib over his eyes and pulled it down real fast. At first I thought 'what is he doing?' but I said 'peek-a-boo' and he laughed and did it again over and over for about 5 minutes. Then in the car on the way home I put his bib on to feed him and he started doing it again. And later in the car with his blanket. I know I keep saying this, but seriously - they learn so fast!!

Ft. Worth 'vacation'

I say 'vacation' because we were excited to visit with everyone but it was so fast there was no time to relax - we were constantly on the go.

Charlie decided he wanted to go to the Ft. Worth gun show last weekend so we planned to take a little trip this weekend. Then Thursday evening a company that had been talking to Charlie about a job called to set up an interview in Ft. Worth on Monday morning. How crazy is that? We already planned to be there and Charlie hadn't heard from these people in about 2 weeks so thought they went with someone else.

Friday evening we drove to Ft. Worth to stay with my brother and his family. Saturday morning Rob and Charlie went to the Ft. Worth gun show. After lunch Charlie, Zane and I drove to Stephenville to stay with our friends Robert & Christina & their daughter Kiley. Sunday evening we went to their church's crawfish boil. They had a volleyball and horseshoe tournament, bouncy houses for big kids and some for Pre K and under. We tried to get Zane to bounce on this ... I don't even know what to call it - it was about 2 ft tall and kind of bouncy? Looked like something that'd be used for gymnastics maybe. Anyway, Zane hated it. It may have had something to do with the fact that older kids kept running at him screaming. After that we didn't even try the little bouncy castle. But we did try the sandbox (er - baby pool filled with wet sand) and he seemed to be enjoying it until a little girl came over and pushed him out of the way. Can you see the empty sandbox in the background? But kids kept going to the one that Zane was already playing in - Charlie said it must be the cool sandbox.








































































We drove back to Ft. Worth Sunday evening so Charlie could be ready for his interview on Monday at 9am. It's with Tarrant Regional Water District for a job on the Trinity River Vision project in Fort Worth. It's only a 6 month job so we wouldn't be moving permanently - they pay perdiem so we could rent something temporarily.