Ready for the Big Game!

Tomorrow is the big game between Carolina and Duke. We're all ready to watch it and cheer for our team, but I think that Sophie is having some split allegiances. In the following pics from a couple of weeks ago, she's wearing her Wisconsin Badgers shirt while watching a UCLA game. (FYI...she set her own chair up this way to watch the game.)

Go Tar Heels! (Part 2)

Last night, Sophie stayed up long enough to watch part of Carolina's first game (against Davidson). She was excited to learn the phrases "Go Tar Heels!" and "Airball" (this last one in a sing-song voice).

I guess we have a basketball fan on our hands!

GO TAR HEELS!

Sophie wanted to exclaim her support as the men's Tar Heels basketball team begins its 2007-08 season. Go Heels!

Quick Update

Sorry for the delays in getting updates posted. We're reaching the end of the first week of classes here at Centre, and it cannot come soon enough.

Sophie's walking really well now, and she seems to add new words with ease every day. A few I can think of off the top of my head include "heiß" (German for "hot") and both of the cats' names.

Here are a few fairly recent photos, too:

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.

On the Way Home from NC

On the way home from North Carolina we stopped in Asheville to enjoy the mountains a little. We drove up the wonderful Blue Ridge Parkway and were again reminded just how beautiful parts of NC are and how much we miss it. We're already planning a brief trip back to go camping.

Here are Mindy and Sophie at one of the lookouts along the Parkway, followed by a photo of Sophie and me.



And here she is in the car, where she was again a very good girl. She was awake for more of this trip than for the long car trips we took last fall, but overall she was just great. She did constantly remove one of her sandals, but if that's her worst behavior . . . .

Carolina Girl

Sophie really enjoyed herself on her visit to Chapel Hill despite the heat. She renewed her commitment to being a Carolina fan in many ways, not the least of which was the campus tour she and I took together (constantly ducking into air conditioned buildings). On the tour she got to visit the famous Old Well, a symbol of the university. You can't see her well in this photo, but she's there, in the shade near the water fountain.

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:

Pre-Christmas Pictures

I finally downloaded our Christmas pictures, but when I did, I realized that we had a lot of pictures from before Christmas, so for the sake of organization, I'm going to post some of the pre-Christmas pictures first.

Also, Sophie officially has her first ear infection! And it's a double-whammy...she has an infection in each ear! We started antibiotics last night, and she seemed much better even this morning, both in temperment and physically.

Here's a picture of Sophie ready to watch a Carolina game!


Santa came early to our house (sometime in November!) and left Sophie this present. He thought she was ready for an exersaucer and that mom and dad would benefit from it as well! She seems to have lots of fun in it and like it (as do mom and dad!).