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.