car seats

Sophie owns the safest carseat a reasonable person could buy. I did a lot of research on carseats before we bought this one. This is her second, and final seat, so I wanted to make sure that we would have no regrets after spending so much on it. I had few requirements when I bought it: safe, comfortable. It also had our pediatrician’s blessing—that’s what she uses for her kids. But what really sold me on it was this review on Amazon.com:

“This car seat was a life saver!
Our daughter is almost 4 months now and cried everytime we placed her in her infant seat, except on the day home from the hospital. We couldn't drive down the road without listening to screams - the only time we went anywhere was if she was asleep and often she woke up the minute we put her in her seat. My 8 year old and I would both sit in the back seat with her, it didn't matter. I read the reviews on this seat so we went to 2 different stores and placed her in the demo. She was fine. My mother offered to purchase it for us so we got it. Sketptical? I was skeptical, so I first took her for a 5 minute ride - no crying. The next day I chanced 15 minutes - still no crying. The third day we went to my mother's - a 40 minute drive each way. Within a week we were willing to try her on a 3 hour trip. She did great! I think the key for us was my daughter can see out and doesn't feel confined like the infant seat. She spends most trips gazing out the window and quietly sucking her thumb.”

I had very high expectations after this review. I too wanted a quiet, thumb-sucking baby in the backseat of my car! I figured the day we installed this seat, Sophie would love driving around more than she did in her previous car seat, which she progressively enjoyed less and less. Sophie never cried as much this baby, so I figured we had less ground to cover. When we finally installed the car seat, nothing really changed. At first we still had it rear facing so I wasn't too surprised that she' wasn't thrilled, but when we turned it facing forward, I had imagined a peaceful baby everywhere we went. That wasn’t the case. Even the 10-minute ride to daycare has been fraught with a yelp or two of frustration before arriving. Usually, we can’t go more than one or two places with her at a time because she gets fed up (read starts crying a lot) with driving around.

I think, I’d like to believe, however, that we’ve turned a corner. Drives to and from daycare have been happier and more cheerful, she’ll even laugh out loud for no apparent reason. Lately, she’s noticed that things exist outside of the car as we’re driving along. A couple of days ago, she pointed to a dog as we were driving through the neighborhood. Maybe noticing that there are things to look at keeps her calmer longer. Maybe she’s realizing that she sometimes it’s ok to just lie back, suck your thumb and watch the dogs go by.

Where's your.....

Over the last couple of months we’ve been working on learning different parts of the body. Just saying “Where’s your…” will often get a point to the head, sometimes an inadvertently hard slap to the head (careful, Sophie). It seems like she does pretty well, but we probably have a lot of false-positives when we ask for a body part and she gets it right just out of sheer luck, not because she really knows where her nose it. Currently, our small repertoire of parts consists of: head, ears, nose, toes, belly (tummy), fingers. We’ve worked on chin and knees with limited success. Yesterday morning I randomly asked her to point to her teeth, which she decisively did. Whoa! There was no doubt if she knew her teeth: this was an open-the-mouth-and-and-put-finger-on-teeth point. We haven’t been working on that word, so I guess she picked it up from daycare. While these moments are fascinating and exciting, they’re also a bit unsettling. What else does she know?
Update: she did it again this morning, and her dad thinks it’s because we have started brushing her teeth—which she seems to enjoy quite a bit. I think he’s probably right. Weird how they seem to be listening even when you don’t think they are.

What does the cow say?

Beside body parts, we’ve also been working on learning the noises animals make. I don’t know why we've been working on these sounds, but I think it has to do with the fact that we got her a small desk for her and sometimes in the mornings if I get up with her, we’ll go in and sit at the desk and read a book about animals. She seems much more captivated by it than other book and it keeps her from crawling up on the desk. We’ve read the book at least 40 times already. It goes through your list of typical household and barn animals. The story goes something like this: My mommy is a cow, I am a calf. Now just replace cow and calf with a dozen other animals and you too have now read the entire book without even have seen it. After each animal, I ask about the sounds that animal makes. She’s starting to get the idea and she’ll either try to make a little sound (many which are just modified versions of maaaaa or if it’s too hard, like meow, her lips will just sort of mouth mmmm sounds. Either way, she seems to be interested in making animals sounds. She thrilled one of the women at daycare when I asked her, "What sound does a cow make?" and she said, “Maaaaaaa.”

Dandelions

This video was shot about one month ago, yet already it seems dated. Sophie no longer toddles like she does on the video. She’s much more steady on her pins and much faster. Her vocabulary has expanded. She now tries to follow our intonation when we say things to her like “all done” or “hi.” “Uh-oh” is extremely popular too. The other day she looked at me and said, “uh-oh,” then proceeded to drop her bottle down the space between our bed and frame. Uh-oh indeed.

More broccoli, please

Sophie has an odd taste for food. I’d like to think of it as our daughter having a very sophisticated palate. Generally, we don’t give her any sweets or processed foods. As a result, she doesn’t really have a taste for them yet—which is a great thing. Yesterday, I offered her a bit of grocery store cookie because she hadn’t eaten much all day. When she tried it, you would have thought I just offered her a bite of dirt. She spit it back out immediately. We were at a picnic so I offered her a bit of hotdog. Nope, she preferred her orzo. At night, we presented her with a tiny spoonful of chocolate ice cream. She was completely offended that we would feed her something so vile. She sprayed the ice cream across the front of her shirt. "What was wrong with rambutan?" her face seemed to say. I finished the chocolate ice cream while Sophie attacked the piece of rambutan I gave her. This morning, we offered her some pancakes. No thank you. Instead, she wanted some broccoli. As we ate our pancakes, Sophie chomped on some fresh broccoli.

More hits to the head than a prize fighter

Yes, she's still cute.  But she's been keeping us busy.

So here's an update:  Last week she decided to kick into overdrive and started climbing things with dangerous abandon. 

Every hour would bring another bonk or two to the head, followed by abandoned, inconsolable crying, followed by another attempt to scale the drapes.  It's amazing how fast she switches from "oh woe, oh the humanity" to "oooh, a pinecone"!

These bumps were none of them very serious (though I did worry about the time she walked headfirst into the open car door), but her mother and I have been doing extra-careful watching to see she doesn't climb the bookcases, etc.

The other day we looked over to see her riding on her bouncy zebra.  Then she stood up in the saddle like a trick rider.  Then she let go of the handles and stood all the way up.  Then she chuckled.

We raced over to grab her before she toppled (unlike the blue rocking horse whose saddle is flat, the zebra's is precariously curved), but she thought 'twas all in fun.  She has a dangerously generous overestimation of our ability to keep her safe, I think.

One of my favorite times of the evening is when we all three of us sit on her floor and play.  She gets into this euphoric mood wherein she'll careen from the one of us to the other, giggling wildly and throwing herself into our arms, laps, head, legs, whatever.  This giddiness reaches such heights that she'll just fling herself happily to one side, secure in the knowledge that we'll catch her.  We will.  We do.  We try.  But honestly, we hope she'll gain some respect for gravity soon.

wave to the squirrels

The squirrels are out in full force these days. I counted 7 on our neighbor's lawn a couple of days ago (granted their lawn is the size of a regulation soccer field). Lately, we've been talking strolls through the neighborhood since mosquitos have taken over the park. Along the way we see dogs, cats, chipmunks, squirrels and rabbits. Sophie loves to look for the animals as we walk. Dogs are ok, as long as they don't get too close. Squirrels are the best because they usually stare down at us from the safety of their trees yet will let us get pretty close. The other day, I told Sophie to wave to the squirrel, and she did. The squirrel was perplexed.