--and a silver spoon--

There was a baby in the restaurant at lunch today, sleeping in an infant car seat that was the exact model that Sophie had when she was young.

Sophie immediately and correctly identified this as a baby, and spent a good part of the meal looking over the seat back to see what it would do.

It's at this point that I, primed by an impending move, several requests a day from Sophie to see pictures of her as a baby (she's working this out, see), and my very own innate proclivity for the maudlin and mawkish, that I was tempted to start singing Cat Stevens.

"Look at that," I say later that day, "you were so tiny! How did you fit in those little booties??"

----

Besides her increasing bulk, her language tells me most clearly that she's not a baby anymore.

She understand just about everything I tell her. Though there is a lag. If you present her with a choice, she's got to think it over for about 15 seconds before she's ready to answer you.

Also, some time in the past week, she's acquired um as a new lexical item. Like uh oh!, I wouldn't have considered um to be much of a word before she started using it. It's remarkable the depth of meaning it seems to add to her utterances. For one thing, it's a marker of thought. If someone or something says "um" to you, you know that that person or thing is doing some thinking, marshaling her forces preparatory to telling you "dis one" or "my ball outside na-ow".

It's very humanizing. Or perhaps anthropomorphizing. In any case, it's swept away in less than a week any lingering tendency I might have had of treating her like a very well loved cat–and, it seems, the last cobweb vestiges of her babyhood.

Bawk Bawk Bawk!

Today at lunch she correctly identified the lumps in her chicken quesadilla as chicken.

Then she started clucking.

I thought it was a bit later when you suddenly realized that beef is cow, pork is pig, and soylent green is people. Of course chicken is always chicken, so it's not that big of a leap. However, this also reminded me of her attitude towards live chickens at the petting farm: no thank you. The only good chicken is a dead chicken, perhaps?

So she's making connections; that's good.

Sand in her Shoes=Sand in the Everywhere

For two days running we've gone to Burns Park and seen the same little friend.

She was so *so* excited the first day, and rushed around with him (somewhat ordering him around, actually) in a mad dash from sandbox to swings to slides.

Yesterday, when we showed up, he was across a field with his mom and dad. Sophie shouted at him till she got his attention.

She was quite excited. They play well together.

By today, it seems, she was taking his presence for granted.

"Itai? Itai he-ah?" she asked looking around in confusion. He wasn't.

She got over it and was soon trying to get sand everywhere she could. She largely succeeded.

OMG The Mall!!!

We were going to go to a park yesterday, but it started looking awful rainy, so we changed plans and headed to the mall instead.

This was such a hit with Sophie.

She started gibbering and hooting as if she'd just won the lottery.

"Dis? Dis? Dis he-ah? Dis! My happy!"

(Contrast this to passing the pediatrician's office a block earlier. The pediatrician's daughter Rebecca is a classmate: "Becca Mama work he-ah owwie!")

And then--then!--when we got inside we found two classmates from daycare whose parents had had a similar thought. There ensued more hooting and gibbering.

Sophie kept leading her friend Itai around to the various coin operated rides ("Mer Itai, mer now!"). And then there was the carousel, and then there was the play area in the center of the mall.

And then (I didn't realize we had quite such a pattern going), Sophie started chanting "Appuh tore! Appuh tore" as we were, yes, walking towards, but not yet in sight of, the Apple Store.

Sophie's favorite expression

These days, she says a lot of "This now?!" Usually when she says this, she's pointing to her children's museum t-shirt or we're driving past a park. She'll say it over and over about 10 times before giving up.

How to keep the terrible twos away

This weekend, Mike, Sophie and I travelled down to Lexington for a conference. We haven't taken Sophie on a trip for a while and I had feared the worst. However, it turns out that all the newness kept her so engaged she didn't have the chance to get enraged. She loved the hotels we stayed at, and during the day while her dad was off at the conference, we went to parks and the kids' museum. She was a model child. Even sleeping in different beds or cribs didn't phase her much. In fact, she slept better in the hotel rooms that had the industrial curtains that kept the light out (note to self, check out new curtains for Sophie's room). We just might extend an invitation to her for next year if we go back.

best dinner ever!

We found this cute Mexican restaurant we decided to try. By the time we got there, Sophie had fallen fast asleep in her carseat--she skipped her nap. We deliberated on what we should do, this isn't a problem we've ever had before. I decided we should go ahead and take her in. Since we were early, nobody else was there, so there wasn't much noise. We asked for a booth and laid her down next to me. The food came out quickly and was fantastic. Sophie never budged. Mike and I actually talked like real adults and I didn't have to force feed a small wiggly child on my lap. The waitress wasn't very good, but I left her a generous tip just because we enjoyed ourselves so much and the food was crazy cheap. When we left, Sophie woke up. Everybody felt rejuvenated.