Swimming

Stupidly, I thought that the weather would be warm enough for Sophie to go swimming in her "birthday pool" last weekend. The weather was definitely warm enough, but it didn't heat up the water like I thought it would. The minute Sophie's feet touched the water, she screamed and crawled up my body like a little monkey! (Ian has video of this, so someday soon you'll be able to witness her screams first-hand.) She did enjoy playing out on the grass and on our chairs, though, and Ian got a couple of good close ups.

Taking a Walk

The weather here has been so beautiful for the past week that we have been taking walks whenever possible. Here are some pictures from a walk we took last week:

Daddy found a fuzzy centipede and let Sophie take a close-up look:

Love from Sophie

The other day, I was playing with Sophie by putting her on my shoulders. She really enjoyed being up there, but as you can see by the progression of the two pictures, she loved her mommy even better (with lots of slobbery kisses)!

Sophie's First Word in German

As many of you know, I try to speak German as much as possible with Sophie. Just how much depends on lots of things, but I would guess I do so between 50-75% of the time, which will hopefully be enough for her to pick it up. By now, she's supposed to have long mastered all the sounds of both of her native languages (even if she can't produce all of them yet due to a lack of teeth).

Well, last night she said her first legitimately only-German word (I'm not counting "mama," since it's also English). Last night after dinner, though, she was pointing at books to get me to read to her (which she loves). I said "Buch," the German word for "book," and she reproduced it twice, nailing the "ch" sound perfectly each time. An obviously delightful moment for her German and lit. prof. daddy!

Where's Waldo?

Sophie loves to make a mess of her toys. One of her favorite games is to take each toy out of her toy box (aka the Luvs box in the corner of the picture) and throw them over her shoulder. Here she is after a particularly messy day in the living room. I kind of feel like it's a "Where's Waldo?" picture!

Fun Pictures

Sophie's turned into quite the messy eater. I don't know how she does it, but she gets food that shouldn't be messy all over her face:

I'm not really sure what Ian's pretending to be here, but I would guess some kind of animal. Whatever it is, Sophie was enjoying it:

And finally, Sophie enjoyed playing in Ian's suitcase when he returned from Italy. She was so interested in what was in there, I could barely get her to look up for the camera!

Inside during April Showers

We've been confined to the house a lot lately after wonderful March weather. First it got really cold again (it even snowed), and then it stayed cool and got rainy, too. This video shows some of Sophie's play indoors yesterday morning.

Right click here to save the video above.

Standing Up

Sophie has started to pull herself up regularly. She's not cruising yet, but she definitely loves to stand. I don't think it will be long before she starts walking, though, because she is not afraid of letting go of whatever she's holding onto. On Monday, she decided she wanted to stand on her own and let go of the couch. She didn't stand for very long, just a couple of seconds, but instead of being scared like many babies are, she seemed to like the independence. Then she fell on her bottom.

She's also trying to figure out how to stand without pulling herself up. I caught it on camera:


This is about as far as it gets right now, but considering she's only been trying to stand up for 5 days, I'd say that it's pretty impressive.

Happy Easter!

We had a nice, if cold, Easter here. We went to church and then went to an Easter party at a friend's house. The Easter bunny visited their house, and very conveniently hid eggs for older kids in one area and some in another area for smaller kids. Sophie seemed to enjoy "hunting" for the eggs.

Here she is with her Easter basket at home:

She kept trying to put the eggs in her mouth:

And in mommy's mouth!

Here we are at the Easter egg hunt:

Hi Dada and an Ode to Joy

Sophie's linguistic abilities have been improving drastically lately. While Grandpa and Grandma Wilson were here, she learned to "sing" from Grandpa Wilson. On Little Einsteins (a cartoon she watches every morning), they focus on a piece of classical music and a piece of art. While Grandpa and Grandma were here, it was "Ode to Joy." Grandpa was "singing" the song with "la la la," and Sophie tried to imitate him! So now, whenever we sing with "la la la," Sophie will do the same, although it doesn't really sound anything like any of the songs we're singing.

Another thing she's started recently is responding to Ian whenever he says, "Hi Sophie." She responds very clearly, "Hi dada." She won't respond to me at all, so we're pretty sure that she's associating "dada" in this case with Ian. (She says "dada" a lot, so it doesn't always mean "dada.")

Well, I'm hoping to post some more pictures soon--I just need to upload them from the camera!