On her own two feet

While at her Great Aunt Terry's place on December 27th, Sophie practised standing. Kristi caught this video of one of Sophie's longest independent stands yet.

Status update

Wow, it has been a while since our last post - ages, in baby development time. Here's where we stand right now with Sophie:

• she's crawling everywhere
• she's able to stand up on her own, if she has something to grab onto - in her crib, in her playpen, by the couch, by a chair, etc.
• once standing, she can stay there for a long time, balancing with one hand
• she's making lots of noises - her favourite word in the last few days is "huzzah"
• Holly said she was using her index finger to point at things (like streetlights) today, but I haven't seen it yet (not that I don't believe Hol, I'm just excited to see this in action)
• she's just (in the last day or so) started waving in response to people waving at her - her wave is a little fold-in-half hand flap, very sweet
• she laughs a lot at her parents behaving like silly idiots, which only encourages us - tsk, tsk
• just now, she was in a smacking mood, and was happily laying into our couch and the cusions on it
• she just tried peaches, and quite liked them

I guess that's about it for now. More as it develops. We've got a good video of Sophie waving and smacking, maybe we'll try to get that posted before too long.

She's crawling!

Batten the hatches and child-proof the condo, Sophie is crawling! About a week ago she realized that she could move her hands forward while on hands and knees. This resulted in some freestyle wriggling/crawling that has now progressed into a proper front crawl. Her new abilities have extended into the sitting area and she can now sit up on her own as well. Last night we lowered the crib mattress to the bottom setting to avoid any Sophie-escaping-the-crib incidents. Life as we know it is changing on a daily basis. Gotta go rescue my dear daughter, she's currently bumping her head against the wall and realizing it's solid.

Now that's recycling

For more than half of Sophie's life (since July!) we've been hoarding our recycling, due to the wonderfully elongated civic strike. Even though the garbage/recycling part of the strike was settled weeks ago, we've been unable to recycle our precious stockpile, because of what appears to be a combination of two factors: a multitude of other apartment-dwellers in similar situations, and a seemingly non-existent recycling pick-up service, even after all beefs with the city were forgiven and forgotten.

But tonight, oh night of nights, I was throwing out the garbage, when what should meet my disbelieving eyes but a completely empty recycling bin! Miracle of miracles! I rushed back upstairs and started the Herculean task of carting our entire stash (including approximately 60,000 formula cans) down the hall, past the yappy dog, into the alley, past the rotting overturned sofa, and into the bin in a crashing avalanche of freedom! It took me three trips, but we're finally rid of it all.

What a relief. Goodbye, fruit flies. Hello, a place to put our vacuum cleaner.

Happy Halloween from Sophie!

Here she is all dressed up in her ducky costume from her great-grandparents in Pennsylvania. All the kids at mom and baby fitness were dressed up today and it was very cute!


Sophie hanging out with our pumpkins, pre-carving. They eventually became Popeye, Olive Oyl and Swee'Pea.

Fun with food

Our one photo of Sophie on her seven month birthday is this one. She was enjoying her rice cereal so much that she lunged forward, ready for the next bite and collided with the oncoming spoon full of goo.


Sophie and Mommy went for a lovely autumn walk today and picked up all this yummy organic produce. We're looking forward to feeding Sophie potatoes, squash, applesauce, pears, bananas, avocado and yams. As you can see, she's already ready to get started!

A fan of fans

A few things seem to utterly fascinate Sophie, to capture her attention and make her happy. One is watching daddy brush his teeth. (This also makes mommy happy.) Another is watching the street outside from our 3rd story vantage point, seeing all the cars go past. And another is ceiling fans.

Her experience with ceiling fans is rather limited so far, but she loved both the ones at her grandparents' houses - even the fan two (high) stories up - she focused on it like nobody's business. And today, when we were attempting to buy her some mittens for the winter, she was twisting and turning in my grasp, trying to get a good vantage point to see the ceiling fan in the store, and then she just stared and smiled and giggled at it until we pulled her away from it, some hours later.

I'm not sure what the point of this is. Babies like funny stuff, I guess.

The first appearance of Mr. Bun

We did something rare today, and actually got a toy for Sophie - a little blue rabbit that she took a shine to while we were buying diaper covers. She ripped the tag off and stuffed his face in her mouth while we were still in the store, so it's probably just as well that we went ahead with the purchase.



I don't know if it'll stick or not, but I named him Mr. Bun, after Susie Derkins' stuffed bunny in Calvin and Hobbes. Sophie found that she could grab him by the (soft) tail and hit daddy in the face with Mr. Bun's (hard) head, in a kind of medieval morning star style. What fun!

It's funny, the stuff you think of when buying a stuffed rabbit... Will this toy be played with once, then ignored for ever more, or will it become a favourite? Maybe Mr. Bun will be the toy you always hear about, the one that the child couldn't live without, the one whose temporary disappearances brought on screaming fits by the child, and muttered curses by the parents... Maybe will we eventually have a humourous story about how we had to rescue Mr. Bun (sans ears) from the top of a tree in Winnipeg after the infamous "squirrel incident". Who knows? Time will tell.

Good luck, Mr. Bun.

Sophie and her Dad

Out for a walk on Broadway with Soph all cosy in her bear suit.

Avocado Adventure

It's been fun introducing Sophie to various foods lately, she really seems to enjoy the process! After the initial rice cereal, we've tried carrots, yams, bananas, Perky-Os (the health-food version of Cheerios) and now, avocado. I went to a nutrition talk at Capers this week and the nutritionist told us that babies who eat textured foods when they're 7-9 months old are more adventurous eaters as toddlers. Tonight we followed her advice by feeding Sophie some soft avocado chunks. Sophie seemed eager to try this new taste but was a little flummoxed by the texture. After picking up avocado off her pants and feeding it back to her (5 second rule!) we got several spoonfuls into her. She coughed a bit, but overall seemed to enjoy her avocado experience.

All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth

And Sophie's halfway there! Just this morning, a month after her first tooth appeared, I noticed that her front left tooth has broken through her gums. This tooth arrived with much less drool and fussiness than the previous two, so I wasn't watching for it as carefully as before. She'll definitely have both front teeth by Christmastime, so I guess she'll just have to ask Santa for something else!

Downward facing dog

Our little Kitsilano baby has been developing her yoga practice lately. Now all she needs are some pint-sized lululemon pants!

Sophie's first blog post

Sophie seems so intent on smacking the keyboard that we thought we'd let her write her own blog post. HereXXXXXXXXXXXXXX2XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX goes, hope she doesn't manage to Ctrl-Alt-Delete this sucker, or accidentally delete our blog account or something...

b k nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn N n nnnnnnnnnnnng
v
6666666X666666666666666666666666666666666222222222m 4
CXXC XXC
3333333333333M 66

And there you have it. Words of wisdom, by Sophie. We had to stop her a few times, as she was trying hard to move the cursor back up into the intro, and intersperse her own comments. Looks vaguely like she's leaning towards a combination of Roman numerals and web-safe hexadecimal colour codes as a method of communication. I wonder how you say Da-da in hex?

Photo booth comes full circle

Most of you probably know that Dean and I used photo booth photos of us holding "We're Getting Married" signs for our wedding invitations. Last week, Sophie and I visited the historic photo booth where those pictures were taken and got a few new shots of our own. Enjoy!

Sophie's first hike in the mountains

After two hours of hiking, Sophie fell asleep in her new carrier


Sophie with Daddy at the look out
The Story of the Missing Look Out
While driving up to Mt Seymour Provincial Park, we saw a sign saying look out. We pulled over, expecting a spectacular view. We headed for the first trail we saw, expecting a short walk to the advertised view. 25 minutes of downhill hiking later, we realized the trees weren't parting anytime soon and we were just setting ourselves up for more uphill hiking on our way back to the car. We turned around. Upon arriving at the car, we looked to the right and discovered a spectacular view of the Lower Mainland. If only we'd seen that the first time!


Happy Hiker (she literally giggled for five minutes the first time we put her in this new carrier)


Mommy carrying Sophie in the new MEC baby carrier we got through MEC's online gear swap. Used only once and $40 cheaper than new!

First teeth

Sophie's first tooth cut through three days before she turned six months and the second followed a few days later. She now has two little chicklets on the bottom and they show when she smiles really wide or cries very hard. The new teeth may be small, but they pack a punch, I've been bitten several times and it hurts! Teething has been accompanied by lots of drooling, chewing on everything in sight, and some disruption in her sleep patterns.

Sophie turns six months!

Sophie with Daddy on her six month birthday

Sophie is now half a year old, hard to believe! Ten days ago, at her last weigh-in, she weighed 20lb 14ozs and was 28 inches long. She's the size of a twelve month old and wears clothes that would fit a twelve month old, but she's still just a six month old when it comes to motor skills. She's getting better and better at sitting up, but still takes nose dives quite often. Her manual dexterity is really improving and she loves playing with toys. No signs of crawling forward yet, but she likes tummy time more and more and is definitely developing her muscle strength. All in all, she's a healthy, wonderful baby and we're so lucky to have her in our lives!

Sophia's rapper name

We realized today, to our horror, that we didn't know what Sophie's rapper name was. Thanks to the wonder of the Internet, we have remedied this terrible oversight... She is Busta Skittles, long may she rap.

The state of the freezer address

Our freezer is slowly becoming emptier and emptier. For the last several months, it has been packed with the fruits of our friends' and family's generosity. We've slowly been chipping away at all the frozen foodstuffs, thawing when we're too tired/lazy/harassed by Sophie to cook or shop. It's been great; many thanks to those who contributed.

I suspect that we had packed the freezer in what we computer science types call FILO order - first in, last out. In essence, the first thing we put in went straight to the back, and only surfaced... well, this week. We just finished eating some soup that was older than our daughter - by a couple of months! Now we're back to the staples - frozen hot dog buns, several cans of pink lemonade concentrate, and a handful of perogies that I'm sure we've had with us since two or three moves ago. Back to the status quo.

Semi-recognizable sounds

I know, even as a relatively new father with an over-active imagination, that it's too soon to expect Sophie to be talking. But still, she's making some sounds that could, I think, be counted as proto-speech. The two most enjoyable ones she makes are, of course, the "ma-ma-ma" sounds (when she's particularly upset), and the "da-da-da" sounds - which she was making just now, so that I had to interrupt my blog writing, and go pick her up and spin her around and give her hugs and smiles and dance her around. Good times...

Instilling a love of sci-fi thrillers early

What can I say? Our girl has daddy's taste in books... Just look how into "Sphere" she is here!

Face-making contest

Holly and Sophie were just playing a little game, wherein they were taking turns making faces at each other. As an impartial observer, I have to give the victory to Sophie, although she did employ some underhanded (i.e. disgusting) tactics. Here's a quick play-by-play, with Sophie lying down and Holly kneeling over her, face to face:

Holly: smile
Sophie: smile
Holly: stick tongue out
Sophie: stick tongue out
Holly: stick tongue out, then give a big open-mouth smile
Sophie: big open-mouth smile
Holly: big open-mouth smile, Sophie (simultaneously): sneeze vigourously into Holly's big open-mouth smile

Game over.

Sophie at the Wolf and Hound

So we (me, Hol, and Auntie Janet) took Sophie out for dinner at the Irish pub, the Wolf and Hound. We had just finished our meal, and I was trying to compute the tip, when Sophie (being held in Mommy's arms) casually kicked a glass of water, sending it toppling off our table to shatter on the floor. We shamefacedly added a few bucks to the tip, and told the bartender that Sophie had reached her limit. A good time was had by all.

Test video

So it looks like Blogger has a video option now, which I'm going to test. I tested it by uploading an 18MB raw video, which is about 4 seconds of Sophie swimming in a pool with Mommy. If you feel like waiting until it downloads, go for it - although, we'll try out a few things to upload lighter videos in the future. Enjoy!

Update! Pictures! Large baby!

Sophie had a regularly-scheduled doctor's visit today, and she's now up to 19 lbs, 13 ozs, at the tender age of 5 months. The doctor said she's eating the right amount, so we're not overfeeding her or anything, she's just a big baby! Just like Mommy and Daddy were!

Here are a few pics to round out the post. (Click the images for bigger versions.)


Sophie has recently started grabbing her feet, and has been considering putting one of them in her mouth


Sophie and a fuzzy sheepskin


Holly reading Sophie a classic... "Pat the Bunny"


Cow in the headlights

Quick clarification

I've had a number of confused comments about the "Sophie's latest phase" post. Seems that people are under the impression that our daughter is sweetness and roses, and that "smacking" meant "giving little kisses". To set the record straight, "smacking" means, in fact, "winding up with a tiny fist and then letting a wild punch fly, attempting to do Daddy a serious injury, or at least knock his glasses off". When she starts giving little kisses, I'll do another post - if I'm still conscious.

Sophie's latest phase

This phase has just started gaining popularity in our house in the last few days, and I call it "wild smacking", or "smacking with gusto". Sophie's showing her affection (of her daddy, at least) by winding up and landing a giant smack right on daddy's forehead.

Bruises and KOs aside, it's a pretty fun phase. But aren't they all?

Long car ride zooms by

This being the weekend of the Fuoco/Vigna family gathering, we took Sophie on a road trip up to Shuswap Lake to meet about 6 million family members. The car ride up there was about 6 and a half hours, but it went pretty smoothly. (And so did the ride back.) Sophie let us know when she was hungry, and we stopped and fed her, but other than that, she travelled pretty darn well!



The trip itself was lots of fun - we got to see all sorts of family members, we got to participate in a bocce tournament, we got to eat like royalty, it was great. Thanks to all involved, we were really happy our family could be part of the gathering!

Sophie's first fireworks

Grandma Jan and Grandpa Ken came over for the weekend, and last night, we took Sophie to her first fireworks show. It was Vancouver's Celebration of Light, which featured China, Spain, and Canada. The judges decreed that Canada won, but we all know that Sophie is the only judge that matters, and here were her thoughts. Intro: Sophie slept through it. Spain: Sophie woke up, and stared at the fireworks without moving for the whole ten minutes. We all agreed, it was very engaging! Canada: Sophie stared at a tree. It was good, but if you'd rather stare at a tree, it probably could have been better. China: Sophie slept through it, even though it was pretty good. And the grand finale was excellent, as one might hope it would be, but I think Sophie slept through that, too. In conclusion, I stand by Sophie's judgement, I think Spain did a great job.

In other news, Sophie is more vocal these days, doing more than just the usual jaw-flapping yelling - she's taking care to shape her sounds more carefully, enunciating her "awooglorr" very well. Good job, little one!

A bunch of pictures

It seems like a while since I posted much up here, so I thought I'd make up for it with a schwack of pictures. Click them to see them big! Enjoy!


A big smile and a punny onesie.


She's starting to understand how some Broadlands prefer to have their picture taken. You can't really see it, but that's an attempt at bunny ears behind her head there.


Just a darn sweet pic!


Sophie and Daddy at Andy and Mia's wedding at Queen Elizabeth Park.


Sophie and Daddy hanging out in the Queen E gardens.


Sophie and Daddy by the Queen E fountain.


And sometimes, you just have to put a pair of pants on your baby's head. They sure won't let you do this when they're teenagers, unless of course, that happens to be the style at the time.

Rollin', rollin', rollin'

Sophie spent a good part of today trying her best to roll from her back to her front. She succeeded three or four times, but not without a little help from mommy or daddy. She was doing well, turning onto her left side and twisting her hips sideways, but she just couldn't finish the job by herself. I think the fact that her left arm was sticking straight forward on the mattress may have something to do with it. Anyway, this development means we'll have to keep a close eye on our little girl, she's ready to roll!

Drooling and thumb sucking

Our dear sweet Sophie has a few endearing habits. One is drooling all over herself and anything in her vicinity. She's only 15 weeks old and we don't expect any teething for several months, but Sophie seems to be practicing. To tell you the truth, I'd take drool over vomit any day!

Sophie has also discovered her hands and enjoys sucking her thumb (so far, just the right one, will she be a righty like her dad?). However, she doesn't suck her thumb in the classic, hand-in-a-fist way. She's got her own unique, fingers-in-the-eyeballs style that she seems to enjoy. It's quite humourous to watch her (does admitting that make me a bad mommy?)

The Family Tree

Today is our fifth wedding anniversary, so I thought I'd do a little reminiscing and take a look at how our family has grown. On July 7th, 2002, the day after our wedding, we planted a redwood tree at Dean's parents' home in Duncan. Last weekend, we took a photo to mark the growth of the tree and our family in the past five years. Pretty impressive, if you ask me!

An infant's laughter

About an hour ago, Sophie startled us with her first real laughter.

I was dancing her around the living room, singing "The River Driver" by Great Big Sea to her - rather poorly, I'm afraid. Confusing the lyrics, singing off key, but smiling at her and dancing rather smoothly, I must say. I guess she thought my singing was pretty funny, because she just started laughing - not just a quick giggle, like we'd heard snatches of before, but a real laugh! Several, in fact! Enough that Holly had time to get out the video camera, and catch a few on tape. We'll have to see if we can get that online.

In the meantime, we're just basking in the warmth of that laughter. Ahhh...

Spinning baby, goes round and round

We always put Sophie in her crib in the same position - head toward the window side, in line with the length of the mattress. Whenever I wake up and check on her, she's always in some stage of a slow spin - sometimes up to 90 degrees, so she's sideways in the crib, kicking the side bars. The interesting thing (or what I deem to be interesting in my sleep deprived state) is that she always spins counter-clockwise. This could mean one of a several things:

1. Babies are magnetic, and their heads naturally want to aim north.

2. She's right-handed, and her random arm/leg thrashing is stronger on one side, propelling her in one direction.

3. She's secretly learning breakdancing, starting with the back spin, but is a solely counter-clockwise breaker, severely hampering her breakdancing career options.

4. She's secretly learning breakdancing, starting with the back spin, but is a solely *clockwise* breaker, but I just happen to get up when she's 270-360 degrees around, and am totally incorrect when assuming I know what direction she's spinning. Regardless, her breakdancing career options are severely hampered.

5. Holly's playing tricks on me, getting up while I sleep, and repositioning Sophie.

6. She's trying to tell us that we've aligned her crib incorrectly, possibly due to bad Feng shui.

7. Maybe she's just learning to roll around. (This is the long shot option.)

Temptation...

So there I am in the kitchen, mixing up formula for Sophie, when... what's that I see behind the bottles? Mustn't... give in...

Father's Day

Dean (holding Sophie, born March 28th) and his cousin Greg (holding Dominic, born May 14th), two proud fathers celebrating their first Father's Day. We had a great picnic at Beacon Hill Park in Victoria and introduced Sophie to most of her Vancouver Island relatives.

Four generations

Today Sophia met her great grandmother Louise! She has now met two of her four great grandmothers and will meet one more on Father's Day. What a lucky baby to have such a loving family!

She's reading already!

We got Sophie a baby book called "Black & White" and she loves reading it! The other night, she was particularly interested in the chair picture. She gets so excited sometimes that she starts eating the book, high praise indeed!

Tummy Time

Sophie's gaining a lot of head control these days and can even hold her head up during tummy time. It's exciting to see how fast she develops!

Random Sophie close-up

In case you thought she was an angel

This is what Sophie looks like when she's hungry. Whether she's just a mite peckish or really quite hungry, she screams as if we're torturing her. Lest you think I was neglecting her while I snapped this shot, know that I was heating up her bottle, a process that takes several minutes. Several extremely long minutes if you have a screaming baby on your hands!

We left the fitness class early today...

Becoming a mother changes your life immensely. I knew this going in, but still find it humourous when I find myself doing seemingly bizarre things as a matter of course. For example, after my "Mom & Baby" fitness class today, I found myself emailing the instructor to apologize for the mess Sophie had left behind. We'd had a diaper blowout that penetrated Sophie's clothing and got onto a pillow and bouncy chair. Prior to this, I'd never written an email stating, "I'm sorry to have left feces in your business establishment." Life as a mom, eh?

Fists of Fury

This picture shows just how intense Sophie is about eating. As soon as she gets a bottle into her mouth, she clenches her tiny fists across her chest and stays that way throughout the feed. It seems to be her way of saying, "Don't you dare take that bottle away!"

Sophie's favourite toy

Sophie is really starting to focus more lately and she gets particularly excited when you dangle her colourful toy above her head. Her arms and legs flail about frantically as she expresses her delight in her own unique way. Endless fun!

Sleeping like a baby

This is how relaxed Sophie gets when she's in a deep sleep. Her arms go limp like a wet noodle and she'll keep sleeping no matter how many ambulances and buses pass on our busy street. I love it when she's like this, but I also know that I'll be paying for this peaceful morning sometime later in the day. Wish me luck later on!

Rookie parenting mistake

I made a silly mistake and I paid the disgusting price. I wanted to know if Sophie's diaper needed changing, so I unsnapped her sleeper to check. So far, so good, this is a time-saving technique that I have been using so I don't get her completely undressed only to find she has a clean and dry diaper. What was the mistake, you ask? Well, this time I went in blind, I didn't look where my hand was going, and definitely found out that she needed a diaper change! (I'll let you imagine the gory details). Suffice it to say, after that lesson in parenting, I'll be looking into the diaper at all future diaper checks!

Look at all the hair she has!

Everyone who meets our daughter is immediately amazed by all the beautiful auburn hair she has. For those who haven't met her in person yet to witness this, here is a photo to give you an idea of just how much hair she really does have. (note: this photo has not been doctored)