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.