February 2001

Sophie turned one and a half last month.  Her language ability is growing quickly and we really converse a lot now.  She asks for the foods she wants, saying (and signing) "please" and "thank you" when we remind her.  She sings to herself.  She climbs up and down from her high chair, and emulates the hero of one of her stories, Sam, who gets a chair for his birthday and is suddenly capable of climbing up to turn on and off lights, open doors, etc. She drags her high chair around and climbs up to watch us make dinner.  "No" is becoming a common response, but she's still very helpful and attentive as a general rule.  She also answers "Yes" or "Yeah" (when she wants to be "cool"), and we've even heard "Yep" a couple of times.  She's recently come out with "Sorry", or "I sorry" when she accidentally hurts us or herself.  We've started working on learning colors, and I (Judy) am finding that when we use ASL in conjunction with learning the English word for the color, she is able to remember the word more easily, as well as the sign.  

Sophie's scheduled activities includes a gymnastics program called GymTime, Music Together, and going to the gym with mommy.  Every Tuesday she spends the evening with daddy while mommy takes an ASL class at NY School for the Deaf.  Her favorite things to play with at home are phones, especially cordless ones, NOT toy ones.  She walks around the house and pretends that she's having a conversation with one of her friends.  She also loves her computer ("umputer") game, even though we encourage her to play with "real" toys instead.  The computer is mom & dad's "toy," so of course she considers it the cool thing to play with.  It's so sweet now how she considers us to be so great, and that everything we do from cooking to folk dancing to shoveling snow is just amazing for her.  Maybe we can just fast-forward past the teenage years when she won't want anything to do with us!  

We enjoyed a  big snowfall mid-month, and the snow ended up being perfect for building Sophie's first snowman (below left). Afterwards it warmed up enough to cause him to keel over "sleeping" and melting in our front yard.  Later in the month we managed to get a baby snowman out of another small dusting of snow, and Sophie was completely fascinated, enough to stand outside at night in 32 degree rain staring at it. (We finally got her to turn around for the 2nd picture below.)  She is completely obsessed with snowmen now, noticing them everywhere--books, store windows, etc., and always says "snowman, snowman."

She has been singing songs around the house quite a bit. A couple of her favorite songs come from a videotape called "Sing 'n Sign" by a woman named Gaia.  Sophie loves this tape and requests it daily.  A lot of the signs aren't exact, but she moves her hands and imitates as best she can.  She sings a lot of the Music Together songs, and also loves to sing the ABC song, and pretends to sign the letters, opening and closing her hand in what she thinks are the ASL letters.  Very cute.  She can reliably both count to 10 and spell her name, applauding herself at the end of each task. Noel took us to Jacksonville, Florida, over President's weekend (a business trip for him, a quick visit with the Great-Grandmas and other cousins for us!) and Sophie showed off constantly, doing her whole little repertoire, singing, signing, and dancing around.  We also fortunately managed to grab a little gorgeous beach walking time together on our last evening.

She loves to laugh and kid around with tickling people. She initiates "knock knock", "who's there?", "Sophie", "Sophie who?", "Kropf!" (pronunciation improving).  She actually made this joke up by herself--we sure don't tell her "knock knock" jokes!!!  She kids around with us by scrunching up her shoulders and her face, for example see picture with our buddy Trixie below.  We don't know where she picked that trick up either, but it is certainly very entertaining.

Sophie asks for "music" constantly when riding in the car.  Of course, this can't be Mommy or Daddy's music--it has to be "her" tapes.  She also has been doing the toddler thing of fighting like crazy when we try to put her in her carseat, and we are getting very creative at negotiating (usually bribing with cookies, sigh!) and/or convincing her to calm down so that we can strap her in.
 
Here, enjoying a bit of broccoli.  Mac & cheese, crackers, cereal, mushroom soup, cookies (of course), and fruits and veggies are big favorites.

Lately Judy has been nursing her to bed in her room, and she comes in to our room (by herself, without crying) sometime in the middle of the night.  Occasionally she'll spend the whole night in her own room and then come in to see us in the morning, asking for cereal and milk or to read a story.  Nursing is dwindling down to almost nothing, which is just fine with us  When asked what's in mommy's tummy, she says that a baby is inside mommy's tummy, and she'll kiss the tummy, sometimes even blowing a raspberry for an extra laugh. 

In the pictures below you can sort of tell that her hair is getting long in back -- almost down to her shoulder blades.  Her hair color is finally getting darker.  Judy finally took her to have it trimmed in late February, and it already seems to be getting thicker

Can you tell how much fun this is for us?

Noel was quite sick with a very debilitating virus for over a week, mid-month, but is fortunately back to his full energy.  In late February Sophie and Judy suddenly both came down with a bad flu and ear infections.  Sophie bounced back pretty soon after beginning a course of antibiotics, but recovery has taken a lot longer for Judy, who apparently was hit pretty hard.  There has been a lot of this type of illness going around; we even know of two folks that have had pneumonia.  

Judy is starting to feel the weight of the pregnancy, going on 20 weeks' gestation at this point. She's keeping busy with doing publicity for the Hungarian dance practices, as well as for her La Leche group, and studying and practicing for her weekly ASL classes.  Most of our activities are Sophie-related groups and playdates, so we keep VERY busy.