Planting Fall Flowers

Earlier this week, we decided it was time to spruce up our front yard and plant some flowers. Sophie was very excited by the prospect, and because of this, while we were at the store, we found the cutest kids gardening gloves for her to wear.

Some times she was more of a hinderance than a help, but she had fun. (I think she's actually putting dirt back in the hole Ian is digging in the picture below!)

And surprisingly, she was willing to clean up!

Now the hardest part is getting her to not pick the flowers!

Spring Play

The weather here finally turned nice a couple of weeks ago, so we've been trying to spend a lot of time outside. Sophie loves to play outside, and although Daddy wants her to take after us and study humanities, I think she's going to be a scientist, perhaps a botanist, given her love for exploring our yard. She loves to find new flowers and plants--in these pictures, she was picking some sort of daisy weed, but lately she's been very interested in the wild strawberries growing in our yard (and so far we've been successful in convincing her not to eat them!)


Here she is on the hunt for her purple flowers (which are some sort of wild pansy that grows in and near one of our planters):


You can't really see them since they're so small, but she has some pansies in her hand:

I love this picture because it shows just how active Sophie is right now...we can't even catch her with the camera sometimes!

Here she is telling me about the flowers she found:

Some Pictures, Finally!

I've finally uploaded our recent pictures of Sophie. Here are some of Sophie learning to sit "Indian style." She saw mommy and daddy sitting this way on the floor and manipulated her legs until she got it:

No, it's "apple-auce"

Sophie's linguistic skills (and attitude) continue to develop in a very independent-minded way. Recently, she's taken to correcting our language sometimes. The first time she really did it, I was trying to help her pronounce one of her favorite foods better. I said, "It's 'apple-sauce,' Sophie," thinking that she may have had problems with the two S-sounds of the word. Sophie responded immediately, "No, it's 'apple-auce.'" That's confidence.

Other lingustic landmarks include much better mimicry (she can repeat almost anything--which means we, i.e. I, have to be even more careful) and consistent identification of herself as "I" and her things as "my" and "mine." She still uses "Sophie" and "Sophie's," but she's definitely switching over to the first person.

I'm not sure if this is truly a linguistic achievement or not, but in response to the question, "What does Snoop Dogg say," Sophie will respond "chill" (in true Snoop Dogg style).

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:

Pictures of the Monquers Ritual

Here are some pictures of Sophie "scaring away" the monquers:

"Monquers"

Sophie has suddenly become scared of what she calls "monquers." (That would be "monsters" for anyone who doesn't speak Sophie.) She really likes the movie Monsters, Inc., but we can't really figure out why that would make her scared of monsters. Most of the monsters in the movie are nice and the bad ones aren't really that scary (and get it in the end anyway). Whatever it is, she has become quite conscious of monsters. They apparently live mostly in our entry way, maybe in the closet, maybe outside, but I think they also must live just in the entryway area in general. They sometimes reside under her bed too, but not as often.

A couple of weeks ago, she woke up crying and we had to break out the flashlight to show her that there weren't any monsters under her bed. This weekend it got so bad that Ian suggested we try some sort of "magic monster wand" to see if that would help. We gave Sophie a wooden spoon and let her bang on the doors in the entryway to scare the monsters away. She then proceeded to bang on her frisbee for the rest of the day, saying "Go away, monsters, go away." It seems like it's helping a little, but I'm thinking that a real magic wand might be the way to go...

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).

A Few More Pictures

So we made it to the end of the week--phew. Sophie's been having a great time in general, though she's had a mightily nasty diaper rash for a few days and then some hives today. Grandma Fine expects Sophie may be looking at a lifelong battle with allergies, something she comes by naturally from both sides of her family.

She really enjoys her daycare now, and we've noticed lots of little things she can do that she must have learned there. It began, of course, with walking better, which we think must have been helped by seeing all of the other kids in her room walking around. But she also colors well, which means she has some pretty good motor skills, she sings a little, and she dances, too. So we're pretty pleased with the learning side of the place, and Sophie likes it, too.

Last weekend Sophie's grandpa and grandma Wilson came to visit. Sophie got some new clothes, including a new winter hat. She insisted on wearing it around for about 15 minutes that evening. This morning, she brought her black hightop Chuck Taylors to us so she could wear them around with her pajamas. It was pretty funny.

The second picture shows her doing one of her favorite things: looking through her transparent plates after (well, usually after) she's eaten all the food on them.




I thought of a few more words she's been saying lately: "basketball," "Eidechse" ("lizard," one of her favorite animals, in German), and "Auto" (German for "car").

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:

Blast from the Past I: Early July

Returning from Europe has been tougher than we expected--jetlag seems to be harder everytime we experience it (though worse on the trip back now than on the trip over--we've been managing that pretty well for the last few trips). We've also been planning for trips (to Baltimore and Washington, DC and to North Carolina) and catching up on work.

At any rate, we've been slow to update the blog. So here's a brief video of Sophie from the beginning of July. She's hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa Fine here, dancing and even walking a little!

You don't get a sense in the video, of course, of what has been going on with Sophie since we got back. We returned to find her walking much more, and she's now up to many steps at time (6-7 at least), though she still prefers to hold onto a hand while walking. Her active vocabulary is growing pretty fast now, too (just yesterday she said "hippo" and "elbow" for the first times, I think). Grandmas and Grandpas will be happy to know that she also mastered those words in early July. She's been adjusting to her new daycare situation slowly, but it gets a little easier every day. I think hanging out with a bunch of kids who walk has helped motivate her to walk more. And she's getting at least one molar now. It was pretty rough on the day it really broke through the gums, but she seems to be OK with it now. More updates and pictures soon, though it may not be until we get back from DC next Thursday.

P.S.: For anyone who hasn't heard, apologies, but we're officially spending the 2008-09 academic year in Strasbourg, France, where I'll be directing Centre's residential study abroad program and teaching a few courses. We're really excited about the experience and look forward to keeping the blog updated with Sophie's adventures in Europe! If you want to get an idea of where we'll be, visit Strasbourg's tourism site or the official site of the city. It really fits us well--it's in France, so Mindy and I can improve our French, but it's also on the Rhine river, right on the border with Germany, which is only a bicycle ride away. (If you visit the tourism site, click on the British flag to choose the English-language site, then click on "Discover." After being shown a map of where Strasbourg is located in Europe, you'll see a photo of the old city center [the Grande Ile] featuring the cathedral in the upper left. If you move toward the canal further to the left and then down a bit, you'll see a very long building right on the canal. Move back into the city one block, and you'll be looking at the street where we'll be living. The apartment is not in that first block but the one closer to the bottom of the photo.)

Right click here to save the video above.

Sophie Walking

Okay, so the title is a little misleading since Sophie isn't walking on her own yet, but she is walking with some help. She doesn't really "cruise" yet, but she has discovered walking with the aid of a toy I bought her (used for $3!).

Also, one of her top teeth came in last week, and she enjoys feeling it with her tongue as well as making noises by clicking the bottom and top teeth together.

Puzzles and Shapes

Sophie's been enjoying putting small toys in cups and other containers lately, so Ian thought that she might be ready for her shape toy that Grandma Schmidt gave her. Although she gets frustrated easily by it and doesn't quite understand the concept of different shapes, she did understand that the shapes were supposed to go through the holes. Here she is playing with Daddy.