days on the beach...

Swimming with the locals has made Sophie a great swimmer. She's become fearless of the water. After watching some local girls swim (the fact they were six didn't seem to matter) got Sophie to put her face in the water. She'll be out in the huge waves laughing and they crash over her and now she wants to go snorkel after trying it a bit yesterday.

I really never imagined Sophie wanting to snorkel.

I didn't put this on my list...

As Sophie opens a present that turns out to be a book she frowns, "I didn't put this on my list to Santa."
Dang, girl, you are stone cold sometimes.

Later she reminded me that she didn't get everything on her list. Welcome to reality, Sophie.

What's Hawaii like?

I asked Sophie what she thought Hawaii is like. She said, "Like a jumpy castle." Not too far off, I guess.

Meditations on Motherhood

"I want to be a mommy without the childs when I grow up."

"I don't want to have a childs because I'm afraid that would hurt my body."

"Daddys can't have babies, only mommies. And babies can't have babies."

"Cause they in they mommies' tummies!"

in re: stealth party

"Why was they eating in the living room?"

"How these people come here?"

"I thought only Rachel was here."

"Do grownups eat in the living room?"

"Are these people going to sleep my house?"

"Where they gonna sleep?"

stealth party: fail

Last night I invited some friends to come over after Sophie went to bed. The only problem was that Sophie never fell asleep before they started arriving. For several hours we could here her roaming in her room, talking, sticking her head out, going to the bathroom, asking for mommy. We tried to tell her nothing was going on, then we changed our story to only Rachel was visiting. It was no use. She wasn't buying it. But I think she was truly stunned when we finally marched her out to say hi to everybody. So many people who she didn't know who where hanging out in her house. Stealth party: fail.

coolest mom ever!

Last night we started making Christmas cookies. They´d would have been more fun if it weren´t for the fact that we had to make cookies for our cookie exchange tomorrow at school. Obligation can suck away enjoyment at times. Nonetheless, we did have a fairly fun time making the cookies but didn´t get quiet enough time to frost them before bedtime so I told her we could frost cookies before school. How frickin´cool is that? Most kids would give a left pinky finger for the chance to frost cookies in the morning. We busted out the frosting and sprinkles--lots and lots of sprinkles--and threw together some cute cookies for school.You can probably guess what we had for breakfast ;-(. Not the healthiest choice, but one that got us up and going.

playing princess

When Sophie went to visit our neighbor, who is maybe 7, Sophie returned from the neighbor's house dressed as Cinderella, tierra and all.

Our neighbor, when playing princess, suddenly speaks with a horrible English accent. She also makes up Disney-like songs on the spot, revealing to me how crazy formulaic those songs are.

Later Sophie came back saying she had to talent show for us. I've never heard the verb 'to talent show' before.

Sophie's Comedy Stylings

Q: "Why did the Christmas tree go be in the poop?"

A: "And he wanted to go on the other tree and he couldn't come out!"

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"Once there was an old man reading a book and there was poopies on the page!"

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Q: "Why did the boat and the car go on the road?"

A: "Because the boat was too big and didn't fit into the car! And he was poopie on the top of the car!"

A Surfeit of Santas

She's been talking lately about how she's seen two different Santas.

She saw one Santa on a parade float and another at the apartment complex clubhouse where she sat on his lap.

She's pretty sure these were two separate dudes.

Her mother and I tell her that there's just one Santa and that perhaps she's mistaken. ('Cause when telling lies to your child, go all in, I say).

Most recently she looked thoughtful and conceded that perhaps he'd just changed his shirt.

Blah Blah Blah

"'Blah Blah Blah!' is what my Daddy says, 'Blah Blah Blah!'"

two steps closer to independence

Sophie is skipping briskly on her way to independence.
In the last week she´s started to dress herself (hurrah) and now loves to take showers and wash her hair repeatedly (double hurrah)

She´s now dressing herself. However, it takes a bit of bribery. Maybe next week we can start getting dressed without "incentives". About half the time, the underwear goes on backwards, but she tells me that it´s fine like that.

Suddenly, she has wanted to start taking showers. While we were excited about that, we were double excited to see her start washing her hair repeatedly over and over. She would hardly ever let us do that to her in the bath tub. In one day she washed her hair more than we had done so in three months in the tub. She had the cleanest hair of all of her classmates that day.

The Santa Gambit

I feel like a heartless ogre.

Tonight at dinner we resorted to threatening Sophie with missing a parade if she wouldn't eat.

Santa will be in the parade tonight, and we told her that we'd shout out to him: "Sophie has been good!" if she ate, but that we'd have to tell him she'd been bad if she didn't.

This was highly effective at first.

Perhaps you've seen the buckets suspended high on poles at water parks. They slowly fill with water, and then suddenly empty out on whoever is standing below. Because you can't see in the bucket, you don't ever really know when it will empty. Little kids stand below, giggling in anticipation.

Sophie was doing quite well, really quite well, when we went a step too far.

In an effort to get one last bite in her, I grabbed the phone and told her I was going to have to call Santa to cancel the parade.

We'd done this before, earlier, and the result had been a hastily gobbled spoonful of lentils.

This time, Sophie burst into heartbroken, racking sobs of despair.

I hugged her, and kissed her, and told her we were definitely going to the parade.

And then we gave her a gingerbread man we'd been saving for later. Which she devoured. And it was a big gingerbread man, too.

So: Santa Gamit=failed.