Big Girl Bed

So, Ian and I have been trying to decide when to move Sophie over from her crib to a "big girl bed." We knew it would be before we left for Strasbourg since the apartment only has twin beds in the second bedroom and with the amount of traveling we'll be doing, it will be a hassle to try to figure out a crib for each place we stay. I thought that maybe we'd start the transition around her 2nd birthday, but we recently changed our minds. I bought a bed for her dolls recently, which she's really enjoyed using (for her dolls), and on our spring break trip, we stopped at Ikea to have lunch (Sophie really goes for those meatballs!) and had to walk through the kids section. She really wanted to climb in and out of the kids beds, so I thought, why not try it?

I changed her crib to the toddler bed on Saturday morning, and so far, she's loved it! I was expecting to have to go into her room constantly to drag her back into bed now that she can escape, but so far we haven't had any problems. She seems actually excited to go to bed now in her "big girl bed" and doesn't get out until we come in to get her. (Actually, this is sort of a problem because she will stand up in bed when she's ready to get up like she did with the crib...I'm kind of afraid that she's going to fall out on her head!)

Here are some pics of her enjoying being a big girl:

Playing at Great Grandma Wilson's

Great Grandma Wilson had several toys for Sophie to play with when we visited. A couple of her favorites was a mouse puppet and another was just a linking doodad that acted as crown, bracelet, walking stick, and several other creative things.

Here Sophie is playing with the mouse. At first she would just wear it on her hand, but soon she learned that she could get reactions out of people when "it got them."

As you can see, she got really excited when we acted scared:


Here is Queen Sophie with the linking toy as a crown:

And she definitely had fun rough housing with Aunt Heather. The second picture is blurry, but I like it because it shows her hair flying.

Visit to the National Aquarium in Baltimore

While in Baltimore, we took Sophie to the National Aquarium. We know she likes fish (partly because of her love of Finding Nemo), but I was surprised at how engaged she was. We were there for about 3 hours, which is a long time in the world of a toddler. At the beginning she really watched the fish, but toward the end, she enjoyed just running from exhibit to exhibit. The fun thing, though, was that we asked her what she saw at the aquarium a few days later, and she came up with "Nemo," "sharks" and "fishies." She's been remembering her experiences lately, and has been able to express herself when asked about them. (She also gave us a list of her favorite foods recently: eggs, strawberries, broccoli.)

The first thing we found when we walked in were giant bubble tubes. She had fun watching the bubbles and playing with the tubes:



Her favorite exhibit, hands down, was watching the sharks. There was one shark swimming around in the sting ray pool:


And in the actual shark exhibit, there were cutouts of sharks. She really enjoyed them and insisted on going up to each one to touch it.

Here are some shots of her with the fish:





And some shots with Ian, Aunt Heather and I:

And finally, at the end of the visit, we went to the store. She enjoyed wearing her penguin hat around.
And here she is sitting in a big girl chair having a snack after our long afternoon:

Visiting Great-Grandma Wilson

During Ian's spring break last week, we took a road trip (about 1500 miles total!) to Baltimore and then to North Carolina. Our purpose in going to Baltimore was to visit Ian's grandma, Sophie's great grandma. Aunt Heather came to visit at the same time, so it was a little family reunion.

Grandma Wilson had stickers for Sophie to play with, but I'm not sure who had more fun with them!


The first night we were there, Ian's cousin, Bonnie, and her family, came to visit. They have a little one, Arianna, who is about 6 months older than Sophie. Arianna and Sophie seemed to enjoy playing with each other.




Here is Grandma Wilson with all of the great grandkids. We've been lucky enough to take other pics like this, so it's fun to see them get older. (I thought I had the older pictures posted, but I can't find them...I'll try to find them at home and post them all together again.)

Happy Easter!

I'm going to post pictures a little backwards from the past week. Today I'm posting Easter pics. I'll try to post some pics from our trip to Baltimore and Chapel Hill throughout the rest of the week.

Sophie really enjoyed Easter this year. She got the hang of Easter egg hunting, and really got the hang of the idea that each egg had candy in it! We don't give Sophie much candy...not because we're against sweets or junk food or anything, but because she likes so many different healthier foods that we just don't bother to give her junk that often. I think that Easter may have changed the landscape a little, though. She definitely knew that there was chocolate wrapped up in that foil...

Here she is, stuffing her mouth at the first chance! (We put bunny-shaped marshmallows in all of her eggs.)

Grandma Fine sent Sophie bunny ears that she enjoyed:

And also a little play camera:
Getting ready for the Easter egg hunt. Of course, her doll, Laila, had to join us as well:

Hunting:

Stuffing her mouth with chocolate:

The aftereffects of eating so much chocolate:

As I mentioned in the last post, Sophie and I accompanied Ian to campus the Sunday we had nice weather. Ian has chalk for his students, so we borrowed it, and Sophie created some sidewalk art:


She also did a lot of exploring. You can see in the second picture how comfortable she was wandering around without me.

And finally, she's getting better at her smile-on-demand. I asked her to smile for the camera, and this is the face she came up with:

Outdoors Fun

A few days before our big snow day, we actually had really nice weather in the 50s and 60s. We took Sophie out to play in the yard on that Saturday.

She played with her frisbee:

She picked our wild crocuses:

She explored and climbed on some rocks:



And she observed the trees in our yard:

I even took some video on our regular camera (so the quality isn't great):

On Sunday, we took her to campus when Ian had a meeting. I'll try to post those pictures in the next few days...we're actually leaving for a spring break trip to Baltimore and Chapel Hill tomorrow, so posts will be sporadic. We'll try to find some internet access, though, while we're gone.