--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??"

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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.

Melt Down

Give me a binkie, I want a binkie. NO! Nooooooo! Don't give me a binkie, I wanna get my OWN binkie. Nooo! NOT on the left, on the RIGHT--I wanna pick it up from the RIGHT!!! No! NO NO NO! Why are you doing this? I don't want the binkie at all now! You've ruined it! Why do you hate me? I want a blueberry! I want more milk! DON'T TAKE MY MILK CUP! That's my milk cup! Why would you take my milk cup look what you've done you've made me throw myself on the ground and now i'm on the ground WHY????????? WHY won't you give me a blueberry? I just want a blueberry. NO!!!!!!!!!!! DON'T give me the blueberry, I wanna get the blueberry myself. I wanna put my hand in the bag. UGH! Ucky! My hand is gucky! Why did you let me get my hand gucky? Now you've made me throw myself on the-- DON'T PICK ME UP! Why would you pick me up? Why would you even think of doing such a--now I'm on the floor again, you let me get on the floor again WHY? Why--YOU'RE LAUGHING AT ME!!!!! I see your smile. DON'T SMILE!!!! You make me roll around on the floor and i'm gonna get ucky and it's all your fault i just wanna BINKIE BINKIE! Gimme BINKIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!don't you don't you even dare you're PICKING ME UP!! THIS IS EGREGIOUS! AAAAAAAAARGH!!!!! WHY DO YOU HATE ME WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TOO ME WHAT DO YOU--

Oh look, a bubbly bath.

How lovely. Yes please, ha ha ha ha!

melt down over not flushing

Sophie lost it this morning in a near-total meltdown because I forgot to let HER flush the toilet. Just as I was flushing, she ran over yelling, "My flush!!!" I tried to let her flush again, but apparently it was too late--the good stuff was gone. She burst out crying. Her dad managed to distract her with something else before she totally lost it. Who knew that flushing was so important?

laser-like focus produces many small turds

Potty training, I think, has as much to do with the adults as the child learning to use the potty. Watching the child sit on the pot for many minutes a day, sometimes with no results, is a challenge. The path of least resistance is to keep the child in diapers and not deal. But recently, Sophie's decided diapers are lame and she'd prefer to be without them so getting diapers on her has become a wrestling match. She doesn't understand that no diapers and no potty are incompatible. As the adult, I decided I need to get serious again about getting Sophie out of diapers. So tonight, I put her back on the toilet. We sat and sat and sat. Then mostly out of boredom, I turned the water facet on to see if that would help. Immediately, she focused in on the water and her face started turning red. I heard the joyous noise of a few small turds splashing down. I turned the water off, thinking that was the end of it. Noooo, Sophie wanted that water right back on. I turned it on and she stared at it intensely, dropped a couple more turds and peed. Victory. Is this the beginning of the end of diapers or merely a false hope?

let's call a spade a spade

Every day from school, Sophie gets a mini-report card, summing up her day, what she ate, when she slept, how she felt. I look forward to reading these when I pick her up so I have some idea of what she's been doing. Today I laughed when I read her report: "Pushing the boundaries of sharing--taking duplicates of what she had and saying, 'mine too.'" What a diplomatic way to say your child was greedy today.

Me, myself and I

It's been interesting watching Sophie's speech develop. For the last several months, she uses "my" for I or me. Just today, for the first time, I heard her use "me" correctly. Oddly, she still doesn't quite have her name down. She'll call herself Tegel (sometimes), but responds to Sophie (sometimes). What a curious sense of self.

Do we have a TV?

Tonight as we read our bedtime stories, Sophie chose a book that was way beyond her level of comprehension. It was a guidebook for Spain, so I mostly just talked to her about the pictures. One picture in it was of a man watching TV. I asked Sophie, "Do we have a TV?" I figured she wouldn't understand since she's never seen our TV on except when she accidentally fiddles with the remote control and the screen lights up. We've been very strict about the no TV rule. Apparently, that's not enough for her to understand that the box in the corner is a TV because she turned around and pointed to it without much hesitation. I guess my next question should have been, "Do you know what a TV does?" I wonder how she's figured that out?

Who Flipped her Sassy Switch?

I remember when she was all sweet and enjoyed helping us out.

"Sophie, can you help me put on your shirt, please?" you'd say, and she'd rush over to oblige.

Now it's all "No, my Dis!" and "walk away!" Or if she's not in the mood for active resistance, she just completely ignores you. I mean completely. It's uncanny the degree to which she can utterly, absolutely and in no way respond to somebody talking to her, and tugging at her from less than two feet away. Total disregard. It's really impressive.

Of course we are able to physically overpower her, so diapers are still changed, baths are taken, and bedtimes observed. But to pick up this child when she doesn't want to be interfered with is like setting off a powerful and impressive anti-theft mechanism: she hoots and shrieks loudly, and alternates postures of limp noncompliance with ramrod straight stiff-as-a-board-ism.

This morning it took her mother 45 minutes to hunt her down and wrestle some clothes on her. That's 45 minutes her father had to pretend to sleep through! (It's been rough for us all).

There's considerable sweetness leavening the stubborn defiance though. She gave me an "ah lub ooo" yesterday, and melted her JNanners when she climbed into her lap, gave her a hug and told her "my happy, JJ".

not everybody can wear a basket on their head so well

Music Critic

It's part of the ritual.

After the bath, and the diapering, and the brushing of the teeth comes the song. A little ditty about how we're going to turn off the lights and open the door.

"Daddy don't," she said tonight.

"What? No song?" I asked. "Softly falls the ...."

"Daddy no, no song, daddy don't. Peese."

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In other news, she knows the word "pasta." I don't know who taught it to her, but there it is. "Moh pasta peese Daddy," she said tonight.

Why am I surprised she knows "pasta"? I don't know. Perhaps I expected "noodles" first.

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She also knows the word "elbow." She enjoys pointing out both her own and others' elbows. She also identifies her own and others' shoulders as elbows, and vigorously resists all attempts at correction.

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We went to the park again with her today. She ran up hills.

At bedtime, I didn't even have a chance to turn off the light before she turned around, snuggled into my chest and said: "Bed now peese."

amazing day

The weather is amazing today. This morning JJ & Sophie went to the park. I sat at my office receiving the pics :-(.

the hunt

Easter

This morning we first had an Easter Egg hunt at our local Trader Joe's. This is my kind of hunt, no crowds, civilized people, and good prizes, not crappy plastic toys or candy. It took her about one egg to catch on to the idea that she was supposed to find eggs hidden on the shelves. They had a five egg limit. In exchange for our eggs, we got a small bag of gummy bunnies, a bit of TJ chocolate and some clementine oranges.

JJ, Sophie and I went back home when we got a phone call from the Easter bunny saying that he was done at our house. As we pulled into the drive way and saw all the eggs "hidden" around the front yard, Sophie quivered with excitement and said, Jo-Jo's! Yes, just like Jo-Jos, there were eggs hidden around the front yard, lots of plastic eggs. She had a blast looking for them and knew just what to do.

After she found the first batch, they were hidden again. By the third round, the excitement wore off. She got tired of looking and JJ and I ended up picking most of them up. Note to self: 96 eggs is about max.