Happy Birthday!

 

 

Let’s start with today.  Sophie is getting so much closer to walking on her own.  It was weird because when we were in Ohio she was walking everywhere (may have had something to do with us not letting her crawl around strange places as much!) but as soon as she got home she was straight to her knees and crawling everywhere.  Today though she was standing in the hall outside of her room and just walked in to the middle of her room where I was.  She’s getting so big and learning so many different things all at once!  She gives kisses now (the big open-mouthed drooly kind) and loves to point at things and say “dat?”.  She knows a lot more than she can say.  She likes books now (so that’s nice).  She got two big books recently and she really likes pointing at things in them.  I hope that it’s not a reflection on her eye sight that she likes big books (I highly doubt it b/c she finds the tiniest bits of things on the floor!)  Today she learned how to take apart the blocks that she got for her birthday and put them back together (the one piece ones).  She also learned how to put the circle in the shape sorter that she got for Christmas (though if I turn it she tries to put it in the square but hey, it’s a start!)

We had Sophie’s 1st Birthday Party yesterday!  (Birthday is Wednesday so we had to pick a weekend.)  She did SO good, especially since her molars are bugging her like crazy.  I think maybe the bottom ones are getting ready to break through (she is drooling like old times).   She also has a runny nose (related to molars?  or a cold?  not sure, because now Tom and I have a runny nose…)  Needless to say, she hasn’t been sleeping well through the night.  Before they were really bugging her (so a couple of weeks ago) she was giving us good sleep about every other night (7:30pm-8am) with maybe a little wakefulness every now and then.  Not anymore.  Add to that the fact that we are in a nap-transition period (2 to 1) and she can be cranky.  The 1 nap would be fine if it was substantial (at least 1.5 hours) but some days it is only 30-40 minutes.  We’ve switched over to regular milk from formula and were trying to switch to cups – she did fine initially and then had a little rebellious phase so she’s getting milk from bottle and water from cups.  She did the same thing when I tried to introduce the cup at first so I’m just going to wait it out a bit and keep trying to give her a cup of milk and eventually she’ll come around.

So back to the party!  We had quite the crowd and Sophie had fun playing with the kids.   Friends and family included:  Mom, Mike, Sandy, Jeff, Ingrid, Tom Shmina, Liz, Brian, Michelle, Caitlyn, Grant, Amy, Alex, Mike, Erin, Liz – Brandon – Charlie Schnettler, Deborah – Mason Cowan, Elliott – Emmy Buchanan, and Doug – Char – David – Maria – Alex Juras.  I made her a rubber ducky cake.  I had such a hard time deciding on a cake.  I had been thinking about making some sort of animal head (Liz had a cake pan for Charlie’s birthday but it had been packed away for their move and do you think I could find one anywhere???  Nooooo……)  So then I had to decide on something else.  Since Sophie is crazy about her baths (it’s the one sign she does – she really only does that and wave her hands up and down for all done, not sure why she didn’t pick up on them more…I haven’t been as consistent lately but heck, she still doesn’t do milk or eat and we’ve been doing that forever!)  Also, duck is one of the words she can say (but she hasn’t been saying much of anything for the last couple of days) so I thought that would be nice.  I made cupcakes to go around the duck so that it would look like water.  Needless to say, I had WAY too much cake.  But I think it turned out nice.  Sophie got lots of nice things for her birthday and she really seemed to enjoy opening them.  Well, not so much the “opening” part but definitely the “let’s see what’s inside” part.  You should have seen her go for the keyboard on her new “laptop” – that was the hope with that toy:  she’ll let me type on mine if she has one of her own.  Just today I brought her out after her nap and she saw my laptop and just squealed in delight.

Oh, and I’m starting a tradition (one that Tom’s not crazy about):  every year I’ll get her a flower for how old she is.  I like it.  Tom just sees the dollars adding up year after year.  And I’ve borrowed a tradition:  I made a picture board (thanks Kelly) of some of Sophie’s pics from this year.  I’m going to hang it up somewhere (on her door?) if I can find a way to do it without tape (might try some of the 3M things).

She’s definitely been more vocal for the past month or so.  She has her cooing kind of voice when she’s playing, her squeal when the dog is chasing her, and the laugh when you tickle her and play games.  One of her favorite games is to roll around on the bed.  For some reason it is hilarious to her when you move your head around so if you go side to side for a few and then in close to her face, she’ll really laugh.  She’s getting better at finding face parts too – she can point to my nose and mouth (doesn’t point to hers though…I think that kids usually do the other face first).  We try to point out eyes and ears but she gets distracted by hair and then that’s the end of that game…until she tries to put her finger up my nose!

 

Let’s see, as far as other “tricks” go we want to start working on potty training.  Did you know that before the 70s (when disposable diapers became the norm) that most kids were potty-trained by age 2?  I thought that was interesting.  Who knows when Sophie will decide to make the switch to the toilet (because I’m under no illusions – it will be her decision) but we’re going to start working on it now.  I put her on the toilet seat (we have one that goes over the big seat) on Christmas Eve and she peed.  But then she cried.  She’s not crazy about sitting on the toilet.  I tried putting her on it with her clothes on but she still didn’t really like it.  She got a little potty for her birthday and I tried sitting her on that she wanted off right away.  So we’ll work on it.

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