May and early June, 2000

We survived the lamb roast to party another day :-)  Somewhere close to 200 friends and family descended on Lake Celeste for an unseasonally hot and muggy day of swimming, feasting, music and friendship. As always, this event and the people gave us great pleasure.  We had two great professional helpers which eased the stress.  May was a big party month, with 8 of our friends celebrating a joint "400 years" 50th birthday party.  Noel played Swedish fiddle, including 2 solo waltzes.

Judy and her friend Claire have organized a series of Hungarian dance practices which ended for the season this month.  About 12 people attended these practice sessions, and everyone felt they were very successful.  The goal is to create a core of local (NYC-area) Hungarian folk dancers.

Noel's 18-year-old nephew Elie came from Israel to stay in the USA for a few months, and he stayed with us for a few days.  He is grappling with "big issues" for himself and we trust he will find some satisfying directions while he is here.  Noel's parents returned from Israel and had to wait almost two weeks to see their beautiful, talented, smart granddaughter.  Which brings us to the topic you've all been waiting for:

Sophie loves to read.  This afternoon she took a nap in our bed while we did other things.  We heard a noise so we went to check on her, and found her sitting in the middle of our bed reading one of her books she had gotten off the night table.  One of her favorite books is "Dear Zoo," which involves lifting flaps to uncover animals.  She lifts the flap and then calls out, "ah," or "meh," in order to imitate us saying the animals' names.

Some of her other joys in life are: eating all kinds of food, playing with other children her age, fiddling with the television remote and cordless phone, playing in the water and sand at Lake Celeste, playing rattles, tambourines, drums, and spoons at music classes, and naturally hanging out and nursing with her parents.

She is still crawling and standing with support; her bipedal abilities haven't changed much in the past month.  She now has eight teeth (4 on the bottom, 4 on the top) so she can now handle raw carrots and chew things rather than dissolving them.  She still loves to eat most everything we eat. At the moment she is eating a cherry tomato in one hand and a lemon, rind and all, in the other.

She is imitating words more noticeably, more often.  We sing a silly song about crying and laughing which has a section that goes "ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha" and one day she repeated that refrain exactly, intonation and all.  Naturally we were proud and thrilled.  She says "da, da, da," and we're reasonably sure that it means Noel, and she says "mommy," "meh, meh", or "imi, imi," "na, na," for either Judy or nursing; we can't figure out which.

Her most reliable trick now is waving hello and goodbye.  She is getting back into clapping too.

The aquanaut:  Until recently Sophie squawked whenever we would dip her feet in the water of our lake.  Last week she followed one of her playmates right into the water - she crawled in with all her clothes on, stopping when the water reached her chin.  Since then she has gone in twice more and she seems to love it.  She loves to splash her hands in the water and splatter water and sand all over herself, and to squish the wet sand between her fingers.  And she is actually starting to understand (we think) about not putting sand, sticks, leaves, bugs, and other miscellaneous finds in her mouth.  She sort of looks at us first as if to ask: "is this okay?"

June 19: Sophie is getting quite animated lately, she started "chasing her tail", turning around in one spot very fast, then sitting up, then crawling around again quickly, it is very fun to watch.
This morning she was on the kitchen floor when I took out a banana to put in my cereal, and she quite clearly stated "nahnuh" - i.e. "banana". This is one of the first clear words she said unprompted.  This evening she repeated "orange" quite clearly, just flubbing the ending sound a little.  Tonight she figured out how to open the drawers in our kitchen - Oy!

She is generally quite a happy girl, but she moans and groans whenever she isn't getting quite what she wants, when she wants it.  She adores holding on the head of our bed and jumping up and down on the pillows.  Boingy-boingy!  Inside the refrigerator, the toilet bowl, and the toilet brush are her favored "forbidden" places (though the fridge is allowed for short periods).

Below are some new pictures; it seems this is her "pink" period.  We hope you enjoy!