Sophie's new hat

Winter is on its way. Sophie has a new winter hat. She doesn't much like it, but she'll tolerate it.

Boo-boos

At school, the teachers regularly provide ice packs when the kids have a boo-boo. For a while, Sophie seemed to be having regular boo-boos on her cheek likely due to new incisors erupting. The teeth are now in, but the boo-boos appear to be here to stay. With very little provocation, she continues suffering from boo-boos and demands ice-packs. Yesterday, Sophie pinched her finger a bit and declared a boo-boo, then went to the fridge to collect the all-important ice pack. When I gave it to her, placed it on her cheek. I guess it helped the finger.

Bullet time

New to the pantheon of filmic technique is the slow-motion, three-dimensional track and pan that ever since The Matrix (1999) accompanies every other firing of a gun in a Hollywood film.

Besides being wicked bad-ass cool, "bullet time" as it is sometimes called, has a base in physiological fact. In moments of stress and danger (such as, for instance, when somebody fires a gun at you), individuals can experience a subjective time dilation in which the brain diverts all resources to tracking and evaluating the quickly evolving circumstances. Result: the bullet seems to be moving in slow motion.

I experienced this very effect two days ago when my darling daughter hurled a projectile at me in an arc that intersected with my nose. Slowly the plastic ring tumbled end-over-end, growing ever larger in my field of vision until--bonk!--it bounced off my face. Sophie giggled delightedly.

All of which is to say, she's started throwing things--really well. She's got good aim, and we're doing our best to encourage her not to aim at us. This is difficult due to the aforementioned delighted laugh, which is itself delightful. So hard not to giggle back at her.

The only other option, the one her mother and I opt for in stronger moments, involves removing the projectile from her possession--an operation that results in a brief, but heartfelt temper tantrum.

Still cute

She's been very very busy being cute.

Her mommy and daddy have been very very busy with dissertations, journal articles, and applications--thus the lack of updates.

She's started to throw herself down bodily and commence wailing when she doesn't get her way. Still cute somehow.

Also, her language skills are getting better, which is proving useful to her as her mother is unable to deny her much of anything when it is, after all, expressed so clearly and emphatically.

"Dis! Dis! Dis!" she'll say, which means "Juice". Like "cookie" we've no idea who taught her "juice". But somebody did. She knows what it is, knows that she wants it, and now knows how to get it. (We cut it with water, but still).

For some impressive fireworks, try giving the girl milk (or straight water!) instead of juice.

Pink Rules!

Sophie is in a serious pink stage. This morning I let her pick out her clothes, pink or brown pants. She picked pink. Pink or brown shirt. Pink, please. Brown or pink jacket Pink, pink pink. She looked oddly pink. I don't know where this comes from.

This isn't a one time event either. The other day at Ikea, when she saw the pink crib, she got very excited.

A couple days ago, we walked through the toy section to look for some alphabet magnets. Here's what she really, really wanted.

After she grew bored with the unicorn, she showed an overwelming interest in these:

really, Sophie, really?

Picture Dictionary

"Na-Na"

"Ah-Ma"

"Boo-Boo"

more foot & mouth

So, I was wrong and the school was right, she does have foot and mouth disease--again. Last week Sophie brought home a paper saying that somebody in her classroom came down with this and I smugly thought, ha, at least we've already had it and can't get it again. I was so, so wrong. At least after this round we'll be done with it. I'm sure you can't catch it three times, right?

sent home from school for growing teeth

Today Sophie was sent home from school. I was so frustrated because when I saw Sophie after her Dad picked her up early from school, she didn't look or act sick. At home while we were playing, I did notice, however, that she was doing some hard-core drooling. Sophie is not a drooler normally, so that was a sure sign that something was up in her mouth. While brushing her teeth, I found two teeth ripping through her delicate gums. Ouch. These two teeth explain a lot of things: talking about boo-boos and rubbing her cheeks lately, clinginess, moments of grumpiness. However, by state law because she was sent home with a fever today, she can't can't go back for 24 hours. Sophie only goes to school mon-wed nowadays. This means we're done with daycare for the week and it's only Tuesday.

fall leaves us behind

Feeding Mono

Scattered scenes

She astounds us with her passive vocabulary knowledge. She can point to and identify elbows and house flies, for instance.

Last week she was telling us "No! No! No! No! No!" about something. "No! No! No! No!" she said. And then: "Don't!"

Her symbolic play is quite impressive. She sits her toy animals around her musical cube as a table--sets the table with a table cloth!--and pretends to feed them. This is especially impressive as I don't know when she could have encountered a table cloth.

Just this morning, when we told her "No more bubbles, all done!", she took her stuffed mouse and signed "All done" with his paw.

We're still working on gentle. She gets excited and rambunctious and starts hitting. We tell her "No! Gentle!" and show her how to gently pat something or someone. Then she gets all excited and starts slapping again. The other day, she walloped her mother. I said "No, no, gentle!" and patted her mother. Then I drummed my hands on the floor to show her that she could be rough with things, but not people. She watched fascinated as I alternated drumming on the floor with patting gently. Then she walloped my hands as they rested on the floor.

And yesterday at Jungle Java, she ran over to the display case full of milk and apples and juices and cookies.

"Goo-gee!" she said, and pointed with great urgency at a chocolate chip cookie. "Goo-gee! Goo-gee! Goo-gee!"

"Who taught you that word?" I cried in dismay.

The Jungle Java woman behind the counter giggled.

Halloween

We didn't go out trick or treating, instead we went to several events more suited for an 18 month old. She quickly caught on to the idea that if you hold your bag out, people will drop things into it. Then she'd whisper in a shy, little voice, "tank you." It wasn't until quite a bit later she realized it was actually food in the bag when she saw me sneak one of her chocolates from her bag and pop it in my mouth.
We were going to first dress her like a lamb, but couldn't find a lamb costume that wasn't lame. Then we had a cowgirl outfit ready for her, but she refused to wear the vest or cowboy hat and the boots only stayed on for a minute or two. Resigned, we dressed her in her Tour de France jersey, which nobody seems to recognize. She's been asked if she was a Nascar driver which seems to me to be the absolute antithesis of biking! Others asked if she was a mailman because Lance Armstrong's team was the US Postal Service that year. They thought that, because of the logo, she was delivering mail or something. What? Really? Although it was our third choice of outfits, it was still quite clever. I'm sure the people in Boulder, Colorado would have understood and indeed been charmed. Any French person would too, surely. So while I appreciate the fact that our little town is highly educated and most people have an MA, MD, JD or PhD, these people need to get some culture. Nascar? I mean, come on!

Hiding and Seeking

We've got some red velvet curtains we hung in front of our closet doors long before Sophie was born. She's taken to hiding behind them, now and then. Luckily she doesn't pull (too hard)--she just wants to hide.

Yesterday, I was gathering toys, pouring milk, wiping the floor (Sophie's usual postprandial halo of food around her highchair), making sure Mono and Pato were at their posts in her crib, and cuing up her song--all in preparation for bedtime.

I wasn't watching her. At least not with any great degree of concentration. She would pitter-patter-pitter-patter-whoosh! run past me as I swept up some crumbs; she would pitter-patter-pitter-patter-whoosh past me again as she rushed back to her room. I could hear her giggling and chattering all the way.

Come bath time, I heard her laughing softly to herself in the bathroom. I went in--and no Sophie to be seen. Where was she?

Where's Sophie? This last having been said out loud, the bathrobe hanging on the hook on the back of the door began shaking with uncontrollable mirth. And giggling louder.

She whipped aside the bathrobe for a triumphant reveal and grinned at me with a fair helping of smug.

I laughed out loud. So we did it again and again and again.