Thanksgiving Family

This year, our family hosted Thanksgiving for the Zucker clan (Jen's family). We had Jen's brother Andy and his family, as well as Jen's cousin Daniel and his family. All together 9 people staying at our house, so lots of help with Alli.

Alli really enjoyed her cousins and second cousins. In fact, we took our Holiday pictures while everyone was here. You could always tell where Claire and Branden were because Alli was facing them and laughing!!

And Aunt Wendy taught Alli Peek-A-Boo. She got her pulling the burp cloth off her head in about 3 tries.

One of the activities for the weekend was to tie-dye some t-shirts and then have everyone sign them. Here are pictures of all the kids showing off their creations.

Jonathan Amstutz (12 years)
Claire Amstutz (10 years)
Branden Amstutz (7 years)
Lawrence Zucker (10 years)
Benjamin Zucker (7 years)
Allison Guerrette (6-1/2 months)

6 Month Photos

We did great at taking photos in a timely manner, but just didn't do very well getting them posted.

So finally, here are some 6 month photos of Alli. More on Flickr.

Alli's Sounds

Alli has become quite vocal over the last couple of weeks. It's interesting to hear some of the sounds she makes. Lots of coos and light sounds, like you would expect. We hear those mostly when she is "talking" to her friends which hang on the activity mat. But then sometimes her tone changes with her friends. She has this one sound that is accompanied by a funny face. It usually lasts a long time, like she's holding a note. But this is a more gutteral sound. Hard to explain (obviously). But, we have finally come up with a name for it. It's Alli-zilla!

She has also developed quite an interesting laugh. I swear it just started this past week, but hasn't gone away. It's a deep laugh, but instead of a deep ha ha ha, we get something more staccato, and sounds like she's upset. But then you go look at her face and there's this giant smile with tongue sticking out and you realize she's enjoying whatever it is quite a bit.

I've found that this laugh comes out easily when Bagheera is around. Boy does she just adore that dog! The other day we got home from work and Bagheera was wound up. We were in Alli's room and I was encouraging Bagheera to be excited, meanwhile holding Alli facing out so she could watch him run around the room. She thought it was just great, with her staccato laugh and tongue sticking out. She even got a kick out of getting whacked in the face with the tail. Who knew that would be fun!

Six Month Update

Alli went to the doctor today for her 6 month appointment. Here are her stats:

Eyes: Yep, still blue!
Weight: 14.7 lbs (25th percentile)
Height: 25.5 in (42nd percentile)
Head Circumference: 16.1 in (13th percentile)

She's doing fantastic sitting by herself, talking up a storm to her animal friends, and rolling over. Today she did something I hadn't seen before - she rolled from her belly to her back! And the milestones keep on coming!

Alli feeding herself

She's catching on. She fed herself with only occasional help from
daddy! I'm so proud. -Kim

Alli's Email

Since the "hot keys" post, one comment was asking when Alli would get her own email address. Daddy signed her up for a gmail account when she was two weeks old.

If you want to send email to Alli, her gmail account is in the format firstname.lastname@gmail.com, where firstname is Allison and lastname is Guerrette. (Sorry, trying to protect the account from lots of spam.)

Alli, Master of the Hot Keys

Today Alli decided to help me with some of my emails. She just loves the computer - can't wait to start banging on it whenever we sit down in front of it. So I let her type an email to her daddy.

Daddy decided she should be typing in a blank text document instead since she actually found the hot-keys to send the email! So, we opened up a text document and let her go. Well, let me tell you - she is a MASTER at the hot keys!!! I kept having to pull her away from the keyboard and escape out of whatever windows popped up.

When we left the computer, I told Daddy that the computer was "talking". I figured she had started one of his video clips that he was watching, so I just wanted to warn him. He sat down to figure it out, but it wasn't a video. Master of the Hot Keys had turned on the blind-assist, so it was "saying" all the keystrokes that were happening. Hilarious!!! Way to go Alli!

Green Eggs and Ham

Ok, not really green eggs and ham, but we made Alli's rice cereal green today by adding peas. And, because mom was too lazy to go to the grocery store, she got the good stuff. I steamed some frozen peas and then mashed them with a fork, added them to the tablespoon of rice cereal and voila! We had lunch. I think she got a kick out of eating with me. I made sure both our meals were ready at the same time, so we literally ate together.

Alli is really funny because she sucks her fingers in between spoonfuls of food. Yes, we had green stuff everywhere!!! I was also impressed by the way she handled some of the pea skins that didn't mash well. The bigger pieces I was able to separate, but the little ones just went down her throat - no problems.

She's really growing and changing. She's sitting more often, and has found that being on her tummy is actually interesting now. That's making her roll more. So if we leave her on her back and walk away, half the time we come back and find her on her stomach reaching for a toy.

That's our big girl!

Happy Halloween!

We took Alli to the Fountain Hills Autumn Festival (aka - keep the kids from going trick-or-treating because we have no streetlights), where we met up with the Searle, Searle, and Rosing clans. We had a lot of fun dancing to music and seeing all the costumes. Unfortunately the only kids that participated in activities were Jarrod and Josh as nobody else could even walk!

So here are some Halloween pictures for you to enjoy.


Alli - Pea in the Pod (Sweet Pea!)
Jarrod - Superman
Katie - Pink Oogley
Josh - Dragon
Ryan - Teddy Bear