Stone Cold

I miss the good old days, when she could say "dada" but hadn't quite mastered "mama".

Now she not only can say "Mama", but also "No"--as in "Noooo! Mama! Mama!" when I have the temerity to pick her up when she wants her mother. Which is usually.

Sometimes she'll take to pushing me away, as if I didn't quite understand. "No! No! No! Mama!"

Mama's a rock star. Daddy rates somewhere just above a disposable diaper. You know, useful, but nothing to get too excited about.

Other times she's all kisses and giggles and hugs. But she may just be trying to make sure her options on ponies are safe, I'm not sure.

Cavitation

Good hygiene is a priority for Sophie. This is due largely to the fact that she’s fascinated with cavitation, you know, the formation of bubbles. She loves bubbles. She’ll wash her hands at any given opportunity because it gives her the chance to use the soap to work up a lathery hand full of bubbles. Trying to satiate her latest interest, I decided to give her a bubble bath for the first time last night. It took bathing to a whole new level. She enjoyed every minute of it running her hands through the bubbles and splashing around. This morning, she dragged out her baby shampoo from the bathroom into the living room and asked for bubbles, or as she says it, "bubble." How quickly she learns. Tonight, when we took her out of her cold bathwater, she pitched a fit wanting to stay longer in the bubbles. Did I interrupt an experiment? We just had a cavitation conference here at the University. Had I realized how intense Sophie’s interest was, I would have taken her to hear a conference paper or two as long as it didn't interfere with her nap time. Maybe next year. Perhaps we have a future fluid engineer on our hands.

The Hokey Pokey

Sophie's making great strides, babbling more and more, stacking things, expressing opinions (point and vocalize), speaking more clearly (shoose, noo, up, teese*), and telling jokes (mostly variations of things on people's heads--and farts).

We've expanded our repertoire of songs a bit. She hasn't really cottoned to "London Bridge is Falling Down," but when we do the Hokey Pokey, she stares at up gap-jawed in befuddled delight and then signs for "more". Yesterday, her Mama, her Daddy, and her JNanners performed for her pleasure during her bath, which led to giggles all around.

She's growing and changing daily, getting brighter, and cleverer, and becoming more and more aware. Today we drove home because we thought we'd forgotten something, realized that we had it in the trunk, and continued on to the store. Sophie's expression when we pulled into the driveway only to pull out again was priceless.

We are very much enjoying her sense of humor and her capacity for joy. What a delight to have a child who rushes at you for a hug, who giggles in delight and claps her hands when you walk in the door. We need a good word for what happens in the hour or two before dinner, bath, and the bedtime ritual, when we all roll around in a happy tangle in her room--chasing, tickling, giggling, and laughing. It is my happiest time.

I'm going to call it the Hokey Pokey: that's what it's all about.

[*shoes, no, up, teeth--it's more clear to us, anyway]

Along with words come opinions

Sophie has a working vocabulary of about 8 words, most of which are darling like “bu-bu-re” for blueberry or “Elmo” for elbow. She has no real need for the word elbow, I just love to make her say it because it’s so cute when she calls her elbows “Elmos.” With this burgeoning vocabulary, she also has mastered the concept of no, which she says with a long, drawn out “o,” like “nooooo.” She’s not shy to share with you her opinions if she doesn’t like or want something. Just a few weeks ago, she was such a positive child. Not so much now.

With her last illness, we pulled out the bottles again because the sippy cups seemed to hurt her mouth too much, but we've since put the bottles away (again). This evening, she signed milk, so I went to get her a sippy cup of milk. She signed milk again with even more intensity. It’s wasn’t just milk she wanted, it was milk in a bottle. It was clear in her sign that she was practically screaming it. Inflection in sign language, how cool? Before I even gave her the cup, she hit the sippy cup in my hand and was really mad. She’s done this several times now and its hysterical, but you can’t laugh because she’s clearly upset. I think if she had the dexterity, she’d gather all the sippy cups together, put a match to them, and melt them down to a pile of plastic goo. Then, she’d rustle around in the cupboards until she found all her hidden bottles and sneak them off into her room. Hopefully, by the time she can do that, she’ll have forgotten she even liked bottles.

Doing much Better

But she's had a couple of moments of regression during her sickness.

1) We need to wean her off bottles again. We reintroduced them because we were worried that she wasn't drinking anything and her poop, when it came, was hard and pellet-like: it looked like balls of oats--like she was a rabbit or horse (Hoof and Mouth!!) or something. Well the poo is soft and squishy again, and Ms. Sophie has decided that bottles are GREAT. She wants nothing but bottles from now on, and her mother and I can just go to hell if we don't like it. Did you hear me? Go to He-eahrghghghg-haurwoooo-harhgh (accompany with visual of small child collapsing in utter distraught abandonment--as if all her little bones had been magjicked out of her body at once).

Which brings me to:

2) The whining. Oh, the mommy and the daddy were quite attentive to the poor little sprout with the ouchy sores in her mouth. Of course she's whimpering when she can't eat strawberries without getting that open sore on her tongue and cheek and lip all acidy ouchy. But it seems Sophie has not made the connection "my monkeys love me very much and will look after me when I am ill", but rather "hey, if I whimper and whine, I get what I want." Well you know what Sophie? Mommy and Daddy do love you very much, and will look after you when you're ill. But sores heal, and now you're just playing us.

Her mother blames this on me and my genes. To which I say: fair enough. I've always been a recreational whiner, and I must admit that the sounds emitting in a nasally waver from my small darling daughter sound disturbingly familiar.

She slept through the night last night. To which I say, Hallelujah!

I woke up at 7:30 this morning, and couldn't figure out why it was light out.

Hoof and Mouth Disease

Sophie has it.

Okay, hand and mouth and foot disease, but if she had hoofs, those would be diseased too.

She's getting better.

Not hoof and mouth disease

This is what a normally happy girl looks like with hand, foot, and mouth disease. Everything I read about Sophie's latest malady, hand, foot and mouth disease, insists that this is *not* hoof and mouth disease. I don't really care if it is or not, I just know that none of us likes it. She's got a very sore mouth so she doesn't want to eat, drink or brush her teeth. And last night, she really didn't want to sleep. What's more, she's very, very irritable, breaking down and crying inconsolably. Apparently it lasts about a week and I think her symptoms started on Sunday. We can only hope that by next Sunday this will all be cleared up.

One thing that has helped keep her occupied is a hand-me-down trike. As you can see in the picture, it has a push bar to help guide/steer her. About half the time she likes to sit and be pushed, the other half, she gets off and pushes it herself. Poor thing can't quite reach the peddles enough to peddle herself and she isn't quite tall enough to push it on her own either. Add that to her list of frustrations. Like the Like-a-Bike, it's also made in Germany. It says the age range is 12 months and up, but at 17 she just barely is big enough. They must have some very big 12 month old German babies.

Sophie's first wedding

We went to an amazing wedding at a friend's house on the lake. A beautiful setting for two lovely people to get married. Sophie wasn't too into the whole sitting still bit. Shortly after this pic was taken, she and her dad went over to play on the swing. She didn't even make it to the beginning of the ceremony before she was getting antsy. At least we had a game plan before we arrived. Once the ceremony was over and she could roam a bit more, she was more cheerful, but by 6.30 she had had enough. We ended up leaving before the dinner was served (no pig roast for us :-().

soooo excited to be in a helicopter

Sophie squealed in delight when she got into this helicopter ride. Her joy was infectious. She didn't even care that the knobs were broken off or that it didn't go anywhere or do anything.

Sophie reads

These days when Sophie reads about things in her books, she’ll find the same object in the room and point to it or she indicates what one would do with said object. For example, she saw a picture of a table and then pointed to our desk/table. Then she pointed to the chair in the room after seeing a picture of a chair in the book. She’s also started indicating what to do with the objects she sees in books. For example, when she sees a picture of a bib, she’ll point to her neck. She’ll point to her feet when she sees shoes. And before we even ask, “What does a cow say?”, she’ll moo like a cow when she sees a picture of one.

Sophie's new BFW (Best Friends for the Week)

At school Sophie has started spending more time with another little girl who just turned two. I quite like the girl, she’s fun, sweet and smart--all lovely qualities for a friend. The first time I noticed her was a couple of months ago when I took Sophie to school. The girl called out Sophie’s name when Sophie walked in the classroom. Since the kids say so few words, the fact that they know, much less say another child’s name seems pretty meaningful. This morning when Sophie came into the room and saw her friend, she blurted out the girl’s name. Afterward, Sophie walked over to her, they smiled at one another, then Sophie proceeded to snatch the baby her friend was holding. After we found babies for everybody, including a plastic one that appears to have the umbilical cord still attached (weird!), peace was restored and a full day of play began.

At the park

Sent home for smelly shoes

Yesterday when we went to pick up Sophie from daycare, she was shoeless. Since she spent much of her first year that way, I wasn’t too surprised. Then her caretaker told us she didn’t want to put her Keen sandals on her feet because they, the shoes, were too stinky. I figured maybe she’d stepped in something. No, they were smelly from everyday, general use. Granted, she’s worn these shoes every day for the last two months or so. But, I thought part of Keen’s dealio was that they weren’t supposed to smell--isn't that why they cost so much? How gross (and embarrassing) is that to think about: here are your daughter’s shoes, they stink so badly that I won’t even put them on her feet. I meekly promised to wash them by the next day. But the next day came way, way too quickly and the shoes never made it into the washing machine. I did what I would imagine Diane Keaton would do in a bad movie about having too many kids and not enough time: I doused them with Fabreeze and stuck them on her feet—cue the lame laugh track. Unlike Diane Keaton, however, I didn’t have a look of exasperation on my face, I was way more stoic.

This situation also presents a conundrum. On the one hand, I wanted to know just how much stink is too stinky—I don’t want to have to repeat this incident again. On the other hand, I didn’t want to smell the shoes. I trusted the caretaker and her good judgment. Now that I think about it, you should never really second-guess anybody when they say something stinks. Nonetheless, I took a sniff. Stinky? Well, yes a bit. But clearly, the caregiver has never played soccer because if these were soccer shoes, I’d tell you they were just getting broken in.

berm runner

Sophie enjoyed the petting zoo in Toronto, but not because she wanted to pet any of the animals particularly. She just liked running up and down the berm.

Not quite ready for a bike

Yesterday night we brought home a like-a-bike knockoff. These things are all over Germany and they use them instead of bikes with training wheels. Kids move seamlessly from these to regular bikes much younger than they do in the US. After watching kids ride around on them, it’s clear to see why (check out the video). One thing we particularly liked about these bikes was that we’d see kids putting around on them on the sidewalks of Berlin keeping up with their parents as they walked—no strollers needed and the kids get a great workout.

This morning Sophie, who points to bikes in her books and loves to sit on mine, finally got her own. I didn’t quiet expect her to be booking down the streets anytime soon, but I did at least think she’d be scooting along the sidewalks. I seriously miscalculated, by about three inches. After the initial excitement passed when she found it in the living room, she tried to get on. When she sat on the bike her feet dangled in midair nowhere close to the ground. She seemed happy enough to just let me push her around the house and when I took her off, she tried to push the bike herself. So we’ll put the bike away for a few more months. I’m afraid that she probably won’t be on it until next spring. By the time her legs reach the ground, we’ll be in the middle of winter.

Bottles the Sequel: Return of the Bottle

But okay, just for nap time.

She needs her nap. Daddy needs her nap too.

bye-bye bottles

Today I hid all of the bottles. No more. At her last checkup I was told to get rid of them. We'd been using them only for sleep time because sometimes she'd insist that she wants a bottle and not a sippy cup and that's not a moment when you want a meltdown, you just want a sleeping baby. But a few nights I gave her a sippy cup instead and she didn't even seem to notice. I think we've been slow to stop using them not just because of Sophie, but because it's easy to fill them up and give them to her. Like so many things with young children, it's easy to take the path of least resistance. She signs milk, we are happy that she can express herself and gladly fill up a bottle full of milk for her. But at the same time, I'm sick of cleaning bottles since we don't have a dishwasher. For about six to eight months we were cleaning five bottles a day by hand. Recently, we're down to one or two, but it still seems like there are always bottles that need to be washed. For whatever reason, sippy cups seem so bother me less--probably because they take 1/5 of the time to wash. So, we'll see if we are all strong enough to move on and leave the bottles behind. Stay tuned.

Sophie knows her possessive adjectives and demonstrative pronouns

One of the interesting things about language is that we know when to use certain grammar rules even when we don't realize it. For example, unbeknownst to Sophie, she has mastered possessive adjective. She easily understands my, your, his, her, etc. We can go through the whole series of "Where's your nose?" "Where's my nose?" with speed and grace with her accurately pointing to her nose then my nose. Now she seems to be working through demonstrative pronouns. The other night she was pointing at every object in the book asking "This? This? This?" Or she'll point to something in her crib and say, "That!" when she wants what ever is in her crib.