May & June 2002

General family info

The Celeste Kropfs have been keeping busy as usual.  In May we hosted a party here at Celeste, and attended a Cajun-Zydeco festival called Music in the Hollow. In June we attended Hungarian Day in New Brunswick, a 70th birthday celebration for Noel's Aunt Sophie, the Clearwater Revival Festival in Croton and a week-long Hungarian Music and Dance Symposium.  June also saw our house project draw to a close, as the landscaping and painting were completed.

Sophie

Sophie is still "playing" with the idea of toilet-training.  When she's around older kids, she does it great.  When she's playing by herself with no bottoms on, she also does it fine.  As soon as we put anything on her bottom half, she forgets and has accidents.  So we let her run around naked a great deal.  Fortunately, the weather has been cooperating.

She really enjoys playing with her sister, especially as soon as Dalia goes down for a nap :-/.  Eventually, she'll probably enjoy playing with her, not just to drive her crazy!  Sophie still loves to run away from us, but strangely enough, she'll listen to other adults and mind what they say.  Go figure.  I guess we (parents) all start to sound like Charlie Brown's teacher after a while (blah, blah, blah).

Sophie graduated in June from the "Little Learners" program at her nursery school.  The kids' performance was very sweet, and Judy managed to videotape it, even while holding Dalia, who was grabbing at the camera.  This was Sophie's first stage performance, and she did just fine.

Dalia

Dalia welcomed a new pair of teeth (on either side of her front teeth) in mid-May, for a grand total of 6!  They make her look very grown-up.  She still crawls all over the place, very fast, and pulls up on furniture.  She loves to walk while holding our hands.  She says "Mama" consistently, but not necessarily only to Judy.  It's become an all-purpose word meaning "Somebody hold me!"  She also says "Na na" for nursing or something else to eat.  She loves balloons, balls, eyeglasses, toes (hers or other people's), bellybuttons (same), and shoes (she seems to have a real shoe fetish--unfortunately loving to chew on them!).  An especially cute trick she has is putting shoes on her hands and then crawling around with them, then stopping, sitting up, and clapping them together.  She still loves playing peek-a-boo, of course, and still loves to read books.  She is doing all the activities in Pat the Bunny, including "so big," raising her arms up at the appropriate time.  She now waves "bye, bye" and smells the "flowers."  She loves to play, "Where is?" and points appropriately to Mommy, Daddy, Sophie, or herself in the mirror when we ask her where we are.  She loves to play with the computer, trying to turn it on, bang on the keyboard, move the mouse, etc.  Which makes it a real challenge to get any work done, until we get her her own machine, of course.  :-)))  (Maybe we should have her update the website! :-/)  She loves to swing on the swingset, and will point to it from her bedroom window and say "Ah, ah" until we take her out and swing on it.  Dalia loves to grab food and other stuff on the dinner table, and if we remove everything from her reach, loves to "scrub" her hand back and forth on the table, floor, etc., as if cleaning it.  This is especially cute when she's holding a napkin or piece of Kleenex.

Our house is now a greenish-grayish blue!  We had a lot of stress over choosing the color, because it looks different in different lights, but we're getting used to it.  In these pictures, the final trim work hadn't been done, but you get the general idea!