January and February 2002

Sophie-isms

"5" is Sophie's new favorite all-purpose number.  "How many buildings do you see, how many stars, how many cookies do you want..."  her response to everything is "5".  "2½" (her age) and "Fourth of July" (her birthday) are also popular responses to questions.  "And that's all" comes up a lot, too, as in "just 5 more crackers, and that's all!"  "Mommy, let's bake 5 cookies and 2 muffins," is a typical activity suggestion. 

We went on a birding walk with our friend Jane Shumsky.  Later, Sophie came out with, "When I grow up, I'm going to be a teacher."  In response to "How wonderful!  What are you going to teach?" she answered, "Signing (ASL) and listening to birds."  Judy has started back with ASL classes, so we're signing more at home and hanging out with friends and their children who also sign. 

She also is trying her hand at performing for us.  Out of the blue one memorable evening, Sophie decided to do a little show.  She said, "Are you ready, Mommy, Daddy, Dalia?  Set, go!  Bum bum, bum, bum bum...." accompanied by marching all around in a little circle, ending with a somersault.  She repeated this little show, each time with a slightly different theme:  Peter & the Wolf, Goldilocks, etc.  Very cute.  She also likes to twirl.  I got her a couple of shirts and dresses that flare out when she turns, and she likes to say, "Look Mommy, I'm a singer!" and then twirl around.  Recently, she's come out with, "Mommy, watch me do ballet!" and she'll dance around on tiptoe and twirl.  

Another new (for her) game is Hide-and-Seek.  "Mommy, you hide and I'll seek."  Or, "Mommy, you be Red Riding Hood and Dalia will be the grandmother and I'll be the big bad wolf" and then we play hide & seek with that theme.  She can play this endlessly.  Scary monsters also are a recurring theme, especially since our trip to Disney World in October.  "There are scary monsters, we'd better hide!"

Other cute quotes: "I bonked/hurt myself, but it's okay. I will feel better soon."  "Mommy, I see a piece of the moon!" when seeing less than a full moon.  She's come up with a few hip phrases like, "You got it, man," and "I got you, buddy boy!" When offered a cookie or to read after being upset, she says, "OK, that will make my sad face go away."  Since weaning (yes, it finally happened Jan 4, her 2½ birthday!), she's been into sucking her index finger, and sometimes stroking her cheek simultaneously to comfort or relax herself.  It's funny, too--when we put mittens on her, she often protests, saying, "But I need to suck my finger!"   We're not worried--she'll probably give it up eventually, and we're glad she has something other than nursing to self-soothe.  She still needs dedicated mommy-time, I've been noticing.  A lot of undesirable behavior can be redirected by "You just need to cuddle, right?  Let's have a little Sophie & Mommy time."

"Time to wake up, guys!" is the reveille call every morning.  Basically, whenever she wakes up, she comes over to our bed, makes her pronouncement, and sleep is over for the rest of us.  "I want yogurt (her new favorite food group) for 'breafkast' (sic)."   Sophie's not as easy to please with food as she once was.  Pizza, yogurt, broccoli, crackers & soy cheese, mac & cheese, and pb&j  are good fall-backs, but she can't be counted on anymore even to taste what we're eating, so we end up being short-order cooks right around dinner time.  Or she has two bites, says she's done, then refuses to eat any more, but at 10pm she's ravenous, of course.  It's really annoying, but it could be much worse, as I hear from different parents of two-year olds. 
 

Sophie's favorite music tape, by far, is Raffi's Baby Beluga. She loves to listen to it in the car, and she knows, or thinks she knows, all the lyrics.  She really belts out the words, too, with lots of "soul", and she knows the order of the songs perfectly, always accurately predicting which one will come next: "Kumbaya," "Day-O," "All I Really Need," "Oats & Beans and Barley Grow," "Joshua Giraffe," and of course, her all-time favorite, "Baby Beluga."  She is still very funny about when and if our participation is required.  She'll ask us to sing, then to refrain from singing.  Whatever....  In general, she picks up songs very quickly.  We attended an African dance troupe performance, the dancers taught us two songs, "From the shores of Africa, to the shores of America,"  and "Nguzu Saba."  Two weeks later, Sophie started singing the songs out of the blue, and we looked at each other wondering where in the world she could have heard them. 

Sophie can identify letters accurately most of the time, and she loves to point out letters that she sees on signs as we drive by.  "I saw a (sic) 'A'," "I saw a 'H'..."  She is also still very big into reading.  We'll read her a story, then "just one more, just five more," you get the picture.  It's really nice, though, to hear her re-read the story to herself, or better yet, tell it to Dalia, after we've finished reading it to her.  Dalia too is crazy about books, especially "chewable" bath books--she simply devours them! :-)  In February we all came down with a really bad flu that culminated in ear infections for Noel, Judy, and Sophie.  We spent much of the recovery time reading books, because we really didn't have the energy for any other games.

In January, we visited our friends Drew Harris and Teresa Twomey and their children in Virginia (1st picture below).  Noel had a business trip to Richmond, so "the girls" dropped him at work and then drove to Farmville one day.  The other two days we spent in the children's museum of Richmond (CMoR), an amazing place, full of hands-on projects for little ones (four pics below).
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Later in the month (MLK weekend) we saw Drew and Teresa again, as well as many other friends from our folk dance community, at the annual Zlatne Uste two-day Golden Festival in NYC.  We drove through a snowstorm to get there Saturday night, and were rewarded with a great family outing.  We parked ourselves in the "kafana" - a large gym with music, dancing, food, Brooklyn Lager draft, and a large tent for children.  We all had a ball!

Dalia's progress

Dalia turned 6 months old January 14 and is sitting up well.  She absolutely adores Sophie, even when Sophie climbs all over her, takes her toys away, etc.  Her first two (bottom) teeth sprouted at the beginning of February (at ~6 ½ months), and we've started to offer her rice cereal and teething biscuits, in addition to small tastes of whatever we're having: apple, bagel, Cheerios, pizza crust, vichyssoise, bits of cooked broccoli and carrots . . . .  She seems very proud of herself that she can "eat with the big folks."  She's not the diehard, nonstop nurser that Sophie was--she nurses to live, as opposed to living to nurse!  She's attempting to crawl, but so far has only gotten as far as lying on her stomach, pushing up on her arms, with one leg under her and the other leg back.  We think she has the theory, though.  Actually, it's kind of nice, this little interim period between sitting up and crawling.  I can put her somewhere with some toys, go do something (yes, it happens!), come back, and she's still there, playing with the same toys.  Crawling can definitely wait, as far as I (Judy) am concerned.  She's still a very even-tempered, cheerful, good-natured baby, chubby and cute and delicious as can be.  Still a decent napper and night sleeper, fortunately for us.   Also still a good-sized girl, weighing 16 lbs, 6 oz. and measuring 26 3/4", with a head circ. of 44 cm as of January 17.  Her new trick is clapping when she's happy or excited about something, like seeing us, which we just love, of course!  She even likes to say "kakakakaka" when we ask her to clap, then she actually claps!.  Occasionally she likes to say "mamamamama," "bababababa," "dadadadada," but she doesn't yet associate them with a specific person or thing.
 

The house is finished!!!  We moved in the last weekend in February and are very grateful to have the additional space.  It's really amazing to live in new construction, where you can look around and not feel that you need to paint and fix everything.  It's a lovely feeling.  Unfortunately, the older part of the house now looks really shabby by comparison, so we're making lists of things to do for future projects.  The next priorities are landscaping and exterior painting, and we should be able to do both this spring.  Hopefully we'll get some good pictures for the March page.