Put socks on

"Put socks on," was not only a wise recommendation as it was pretty chilly outside where Vivien was heading, it was also Zoe's first discernible sentence, at least in our presence. She's been babbling away at high speed for quite a while now but apart from the odd word in English and sometimes in German it's still very much Zoespeak. Her vocabulary is expanding, though, you just sometimes need a while to figure out what exactly she means. For example, the other day in the park she excitedly kept repeating "wawwee" - turns out that's daycare code for a bird (the kids were scared of a noisy white cockatoo, so Sandy decided to name it - Wally - and that helped). And today she squeezed out a "saw-wee" for the first time, apologizing for being a bit too rough. I of course haven't given up my German ambitions and am happy to say that she has moved beyond "tschüüüsss" (bye). She will on occasion demand a "nusss" (nut) and if she spills something her t-shirt may get "nasss" (wet). And she accepts that when she mentions her beloved bus to Papa then she just has to pronounce it slightly different than when Mama is around. Generally she understands heaps of both English and German, probably a lot more than we think.

Croup crept up

Without a warning, croup (a viral infection that causes swelling of the windpipe - Pseudokrupp) hit poor Zoe in the middle of the night. She woke up and started barking like a seal. It was pretty scary, to say the least, because she had problems breathing and obviously didn't like it at all. But the more she cried, or tried to cry, the more difficult the breathing got. We called the hospital and they recommended bringing her in immediately. So for the first time since her birth, Zoe was back at Randwick hospital, albeit in the childrens' emergency ward. They whisked her past the line of waiting worried parents and straight to the doctor, a young English registrar. The doctor considered giving her adrenaline, but luckily by this time, she wasn't quite as panicky. They put her on steroids instead, which reduces the swelling of the windpipe and makes breathing easier. It worked for Zoe and withing half an hour she was happily running around the emergency ward (at 1 in the morning), chatting up the nurses and looking at babies. An hour later we took her back home and apart from a much less dramatic cough in the following two nights Zoe was fine.