A day at the petting zoo/cider mill

Today we had an intense morning at a local cider mill with a petting zoo. We started out waving hi to ducks, then brushing the goats and donkey. We also spent a lot of time in their jumpy castle complete with a pool of balls and slide. She cried when we had to leave and she couldn't jump any more.

cute prison

Jailed for being too adorable. ;-)

Sophie hearts Bebe

sophie has a new bebe

It was love at first sight. In the toy store, she ran up and grabbed the perfect doll that met everybody's needs. Bebe is small and not made of too much plastic. She's not too freaky looking, no umbilical cords or weird hair, although her eyes are a bit off. Bebe came with a binky. Recently, she´s really taken a liking to her binky, and now that she has a doll with one, it is likely that Sophie will not give up hers until she´s 15. Sophie hasn't let Bebe out of her sight all day. I think Bebe is going to be a regular feature in her life for a while. This sweet picture is at the park with JNanners, the hip-hop grandma. Sophie's snacking on yogurt while Bebe watches.

Today a friend and her mom came to visit. All of us went to the park to take pics of Sophie. At first, Sophie was feeling a bit shy, but by the end, she had totally warmed up and blew them kisses when they left to go home.

Be-be for Sophie

Be-be has multiple meanings for Sophie. First, it can mean belly button. Usually she’s pulled up her shirt and is pointing to her belly when be-be means belly button. The other meaning is binky (pacifier), as in go get my binky. You know she means binky because she’s usually hooting as well and pointing to the binky that has fallen out of her crib. Be-be can also mean doll, like a baby. She likes to hug dolls, which is cute but can sometimes present a problem if the be-be isn’t hers and the other girl doesn’t want to give it up. Then she follows up with a "mine." No, Sophie, it's not yours

Sophie invents her own sign

Lately Sophie’s mastered the concept of open, but can’t quite say it. When she wants something open, she’ll makes a sound that resembles “up” (which can also mean, lift me up or help me). But what is more curious is that she’s invented a sign for it as well. I thought maybe she learned how to sign “open” at school, but when I looked up the ASL sign for “open”, what she does looks nothing like it. Arguably, her sign looks a lot like “more,” but she puts more emphasis on pulling the hands apart. The only problem, is that she goes around wanting everything open.

Wouldn't hurt a fly

So last weekend, we were in a little coffee shop outside of town.

Sophie was sitting in the window sill, which was wide enough to be a window seat for her. It was a great place for her: kept her out of mischief, but she could still entertain herself by looking out the window.

Then a fly came buzzing by, and Sophie noticed it. This might have been the first time she looked really closely at a fly, and she did not like what she saw. So she hooted, jumped into her mother's lap, and refused to have anything more to do with the window seat.

So yeah, she's definitely turned skittish lately.

Conflicted about Dogs

The other day we were at the playground.

There was a dog tied up to a bench. It was a very nice dog. It hardly even whimpered when a couple of children were using it to play tug of war with while arguing over who got to play with the dog.

Sophie was fascinated. Transfixed. And very very skittish.

The first thing she did was bend down and pick up some wood chips to offer it. 'Cause, you know how dogs like to eat wood chips.

I can only think she's remembering the petting zoo, and various petting-zoo-like experiences. (Five months ago she was fearless at these things. Now she's terrified.)

So the dog wasn't interested in wood chips. Possibly she was distracted by the small children who kept getting tangled in her leash.

Sophie watched carefully from afar.

When, during a quiet moment, the dog turned toward us, Sophie spun around to my legs, held her arms up, and tried to jump into my lap (while whispering hoarsely "Bup! Bup!").

Almost, almost, she pet it. But she couldn't quite bring herself to do it.

playing nicely with others

Not a very captivating picture, but it's sweet because she's playing so nicely with her new, 5-year old friend. He did a great job playing with a younger toddler, she did a great job of playing with him. No tears, no unnecessary poking or arguing over toys. We all had fun.

what composure

What strikes me about this pic is how unwobbly or unflailing she is.

Sophie in action

Sophie's first bouncy castle

With this event, I officially declare Sophie no longer a baby and well on her way into toddlerhood.

Sophie in the dark

Last night I heard her coughing in her sleep.

And then she was awake, crying fitfully.

I stood at her door, waiting to see if I should go in or not. When she cried again, I went into her room and bent over her crib to rub her back and see what I could do for her. Vaguely, through the dark of her room, I could see that she was reaching out from the bars of her crib.

I bent down and fumbled around until I found the binky that had fallen out. As I did so, Sophie murmured "Uh oh! Uh oh! Uh oh!"

Then she snatched the binky from my hand, rolled over and went back to sleep.

A couple of nights ago I had similar cause to check on her in the night. I fumbled around in the dark, trying to set things right. I could just barely see her little body as a pale blob lying in her crib. I petted her, straightened her out and waited for her to calm and fall asleep.

Finally I got up and started sneaking to the door. I opened it and looked back at her. Sophie was lying there staring up at me solemnly.

"Good night, Goose," I said, "Sleep tight."

"Bye bye," she said, "Bye bye. Bye bye."

Watching fall arrive

Sophie and I went down to the river for a picnic. The weather was perfect and the ducks were out in full force.

waving hi to the ducks

Watermelon

A babbling brook

She enjoys babbling. "Myna myna myna myna" is a favorite, as is "bitte bitte bitt". But there are some actual words in there too. A surprising number, actually, when we started counting.

Here is her top ten:

--up!

[Started as "bup", now very well formed; means 'up', 'open', 'take me over to that thing and open it', and 'do the thing I want now'.]

--no

[She gets good vibrato--a plaintive wail at times. At others, a curt dismissal.]

--mo'

[more. Mo' milk, mo' problems, Sophie--usually for us when she pours it on herself.]

--Bye bye!

[She's got a singsong accompanied with a lovely little wave for this. She's still working on 'hi' (and 'yes' for that matter).]

--dis

[She'd like a bit of dis and a bit of dat. She can be quite insistent when her mommy and I are being obtuse: "Dis! Dis! DIS!"]

--Uh oh!

[For when she drops things and wants us to pick them up. Often this 'uh oh!' will be my clue that she's dropped a stuffed animal and that we'll now have to backtrack a block and a half to retrieve it. If I pick it up and don't give it to her (after say, three iterations of the dropping game), she'll tell me "Uh oh! Uh oh! Uh oh! Uh oh! Uh oh! Uh oh!" I should really give it back.]

--momo

[Actually 'mono'/'monkey']

--mama

[I get to hear this when I go in to pick her up in the morning. "Mama! Mama! Mama! No! Mama! No!" (combined with her trying to push me away as I'm still holding her). Does "No!--Mama!" count as a word-combination/sentence then?]

--Baa

[The sound a sheep makes, and also, now the name of her stuffed sheep. We'll pick it up and ask "What's this Sophie?" and she'll get crazy excited, grin like a little maniac, and shout "Baa! Baa! Baa!" as she rushes over to rip Baa from our hands.]

--Shoos

[shoes. These are vastly, mysteriously important to Sophie. She'll try them on, try to try them on, bring them over to us to try on, try to fit them on our feet, slip into our shoes and try to walk around, and generally babble about how cool shoos are.]

That was here top ten. Here are her also rans. I'll put me first, even though I'm pretty sure she talks more about belly buttons, teeth, bubbles, and Elmo.

Dada, beh-beh [belly button], nohse [nose], aise [eyes], teese [teeth], ehmoh [elbow (or possibly, sadly, Elmo)], buhboh [bubble ballon], meye meye meye [me mine--chanted rapidly and insistently], bah [ball], boo-boo-ree [blueberry], nana [banana], gog [dog], uck [both duck and truck], oo [spoon; also 'oon' and 'poon'], ooooo! [sound a cow makes]

Here are some signs (non-verbal):

feed me, water, all done, milk, elephant, monkey.

fun with felt-tip pens

Crayons are kind of sucky, they don't work well unless you use a lot of pressure. But felt-tip pens, they work wonderfully! The hard part, as I see it, isn't the ink all over the small child (that washes out with a bit of scrubbing), but rather keeping her from the pens when we aren't there to supervise. I fear that someday I'm going to walk into her room and find a long, purple scribble on her pure-white walls. I just hope she can wait until its our house and not a rental.

back to school

Sophie started school yesterday, sort of. She was already going to daycare over the summer, so the only thing that really changed are some new kids, mostly younger infants in her room--boring. She misses the older kids and sometimes wanders down to the classroom where the older kids now are. Last night, on the drive home, she started repeating their names after I would say them.

She’s in a weird stage; sometimes she’s a social butterfly and others, a bashful monkey. When she’s in her element, like at school, she’ll greet everybody who comes in and leaves the classroom. As I mentioned, she loves to play with the other kids and she shares toys remarkably well. But if somebody new approaches her, especially when we aren’t in a familiar place, she wants to be picked up and burry her head into the picker-upper’s chest.

Once we drop her off, she immediately takes off to go play or run around. When we pick her up, after an initial hug, she’s ready to return to whatever she was doing before we arrived. And before we leave the building, we have to stop in the monkey room, a designated room designed like an outdoor playground. But who can blame her, when we were younger, didn’t we all want to play in a monkey room?

Besides the fact that she seems to thrive at school, another reason I love it is because they regularly do arts & crafts, which usually involves getting very messy. It’s clear she thoroughly enjoys this, but I would never want to do it in my tiny house. In the picture I think they are playing with colored whipped cream or maybe shaving cream. Another favorite medium is chocolate pudding, which offers a slightly heavier and richer texture. When I asked Sophie which she preferred she said whipped cream because chocolate pudding doesn’t provide the definition or hold its form like whipped cream does.

A video only family would find interesting

Here is Sophie getting her new crib and repeatedly showing off her trick of offer and rescind. It's clear that Sophie appreciates the nice, clean lines of her new bed.

A day without a nap makes everybody grumpy

I hope this is an anomaly. Sophie decided to forgo her nap today. It wasn’t pretty. She cried for about 20 minutes when we put her down to nap, then I went in and tried to convince her to take a nap on the futon with me for about 30 minutes. After giving up thinking she might just go to sleep on her own without me distracting her, I put her back into her crib, where she lasted about 20 more minutes v. unhappy. Mike tried to go calm her and convince her a nap would be nice to no avail. I did what I’ve never had to do before, I played the drive card. I’ve definitely let her fall asleep while we are driving, but I’ve never taken her out of the crib and into the car for the sole intention getting her to sleep. I thought surely a car ride would put her to sleep given that she now must be exhausted—her parents were--she'd been up since 6:30 and spent the entire morning running and playing hard. Sophie and I made it out to Chelsea, 20 miles away, wide awake on the way out and very fussy on the way back. At that point I gave up on the idea of getting her to sleep, which was probably best for all of us. I was manic and exhausted; she was frustrated and sick of me shoving the pacifier in her face. We went to the library where her overpowering friendliness was too much for shy Korean children. She was perfectly happy. She was the most cheerful kid there, I was the most exhausted parent. Then we headed home to play a bit before dinner. You would never know she didn’t take her regularly scheduled, two-hour nap. So it seems that she functions fine without a nap, but we don’t.