Playing Around

Just a couple of pictures of Sophie (and Daddy) playing around with Sophie's vampire teeth:



Sophie's drawing has also improved dramatically lately. This picture is from before Christmas, but I liked it because she drew me and the baby. The baby is the splotch in my body:

More Sophie Artwork

I promise that we do actually have some recent pictures of Sophie...they're just not uploaded to the computer yet. While you wait for us to do that, I thought I'd post some more of Sophie's recent artwork:

Mother's Day Card

Sophie made me two cute cards for Mother's Day at daycare. Here is a copy of the one with her hands:

We had a nice Mother's Day. We've been so busy lately that we haven't had time to relax or go to Lexington, so we did both. It was rainy and stormy, so outdoors activities were out. Ian let me sleep in, and then we went to a student art show. The we went into Lexington, did some shopping, and ate at a pub where they serve draft cider...mmmm! This weekend was the first weekend in a long time that I felt rested by Monday morning!

Sophie's Art

I realized after reading my cousin's blog about her little one's first art project that I haven't posted very many of Sophie's. She came home last week with all of March's projects (and I had a stack of February's at home), so I've scanned them all. Here is her early 2008 collection:

Sophie, the Photographer

Sophie decided that she wanted to push the "butt" (which is her word for "button") on the camera at Thanksgiving, so here are her pictures that she took. Mommy or daddy held the camera while she pushed the button. As you can tell, her picture-taking abilities improved drastically by her 3rd or 4th picture!

Sophie's Artwork

Sophie has been creating "art" at her new daycare and has brought several pieces home with her. Here are a couple of her most recent pieces. (The pumpkin is her favorite...she likes to carry it around with her sometimes.) Both of these are scanned, so you may not be able to tell, but the shapes on the pumpkin and the leaves on the second one are all glued on (and the leaves got cut off in the scanning process...the paper was too big for the scanner).

Video from Chapel Hill

Here's some fairly recent video of Sophie--from our visit to Kidzu in Chapel Hill. We still have to document just how well she's walking right now, and every week makes a huge difference. One week ago she was Frankensophie, but she's already walking with a much more fluid gait. Look for that video soon!

Right click here to save the video above.

Visit to North Carolina/Kidzu in Chapel Hill

We got back from NC late on Monday afternoon. We had a great visit and got to see a bunch of good friends, including Ericka, Anna, Scott & Laura (and their daughters, 5-year old Ellie and 6-month-old Caroline), and John & Tanya (and their daughter, 4-month-old Molly).

Sophie liked her first taste of NC and looks forward to going back more often. She really got confident with her walking during the trip. We think she's now mostly left crawling in the past, and we're encouraging her when she falls down by saying, "Up!"--it seems to work pretty well. Our friend Anna thought her walk looked a little like Frankenstein's and encouraged us to dress her up that way for Halloween. We do hope that she's walking a little more fluidly by late October, however. On the other hand, Mindy did call her "Frankensophie" yesterday morning.

It was fun to see Sophie around babies on the trip--she really seemed like a little girl around them, which was a bit of a shock. She's grown up a lot very quickly.

We also discovered on the trip that she likes Indian food and really enjoys a mixture of refried beans and rice at Mexican restaurants.

The weather during our visit to North Carolina was truly brutal--as high as 100 degrees, with a heat index of 110 degrees. So we spent as little time outside as possible. One of the places we beat the heat was the Kidzu, a children's museum in Chapel Hill.

Sophie enjoyed the toddler area the most, especially the giant duck she could ride and rock on. She did have some trouble getting up onto it, though:


The current exhibit at the museum focused on art. In various ways, it encouraged children to get into art in a very literal way. Here's Sophie as the Mona Lisa:


Here she is skeptical of the hat prop from John Singer Sargent's painting Camp at Lake O’Hara:


And here she is riding a giant chicken from folk artist Clementine Hunter’s Big Chicken:

Visit to Baltimore and Washington, DC

We're back from our visit to Baltimore and DC. First we spent some time with Sophie's great grandma Wilson. She had a good time and was able to sport her Chucks (see above) for the first time.


Then we went down to DC for a few days. It was a good visit but quite hot. While Mindy worked during the day, Sophie and I explored the city a bit. We visited the National Gallery, where Sophie was most struck by a small exhibit of drawings, etchings, and woodcuts (especially the 17th-century etching featuring an elephant and a drawing she thought might have been of Mindy).


Here she is deciding whether she liked being dragged along to see Raphael, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, or El Greco less:


We also visited the Museum of Natural History, where the dinosaurs impressed Sophie enough for her to wave hello to them. On the mall, she posed briefly in front of a few main monuments. I've enlarged the photos to give you an idea of her reaction to each building. Interpret them as you want. I can't help but see:

a distaste for monumental architecture, especially of overly-large obelisks . . .


. . . a reverence for the vision and oratorical prowess of the former legislator from Illinois (ahem) . . .


. . . and maybe a desire to serve in the Congress. But who knows.


We also visited the National Zoo with Mindy, but more on that later. The reptiles and amphibians were again the big hit.