Free requests remaining: 0

On the final day of 2009, I am proud to say that Sophie has used all 50 free hold requests that she was given from the Vancouver Public Library for the year. With a mom who is a teacher, a picture book collector and a reader of kid lit blogs, this kiddo has been reading all sorts of cool books this year!

Merry Christmas from Sophie!

Hungry, hungry hippos

Sophie's first exposure to a classic childhood game. She loved it!

Every day, a different animal

Pretty much every morning, Sophie decides within the first few minutes of waking what animal she wants to be during the day. Lately, she's been a red dinosaur, a sea turtle, a mouse, a penguin, a snowy owl, and most recently, a reindeer. This choices carries on through the day (although occasionally, it changes a couple times a day), and Holly and I are designated as Mama [animal] and Dada [animal]. I found out over the chat today that I would be Dada Reindeer when I showed up at home.

Holly was just putting Sophie into bed, and taking her best guess, she asked Sophie if she wanted to get into her owl nest. Sophie rolled her eyes and said, "Owl-reindeer-burrito nest, Mama!" ... Of course, wasn't it obvious?



(Amazing what Google's image search comes back with, isn't it?)

A child's view of the world

Conversation while walking in the early evening:

Holly: (looking up and noticing a beautiful moon on a clear evening) Oh, Sophie, can you see the moon?

Sophie: Yeah! There it is! It's caught in the tree!

Image by spratmackrel on flickr.

Reading voices

I've just realized that most of the time, when I do the voices while reading books to Sophie, they come out sounding either like a Monty Python member in drag, or Admiral Ackbar. I need to work on my range, or no voice acting career for me.

Art gallery

Pointing to her pumpkin

Sophie has been making art with three other little girls in an art group ever since January 2009. Each week, we rotate houses and one mom comes up with an art project. It's been incredibly rewarding for both Sophie and myself and we're sad that one member of the group is moving to the States in December and another is moving to East Van.

Sophie's room is her art gallery and she's amassed quite a collection. Between art group and preschool and her daily independent art activities, we've got much more art than could fit on the walls. Today we did some refreshing of the gallery, so I thought I'd share it with you.

In this mixed media collection, the trained eye may be able to spot fingerpaint, electrical tape, aluminum foil, foam stickers, markers, bingo dabbers, watercolour paints and tempera paints. Sophie's an eclectic artist who prefers not to limit herself to one medium.

Here are a few images of the artist at work:


Making blotto art (folded paintings), August 18, 2009


Squirt bottle painting, August 4, 2009


Painting en plein air, June 4, 2009


Potato printing, May 4, 2009

Say cheese!

Sophie: "Look, Mom, I made a line in my hula hoop!" (shows me this cool arrangement of blocks inside the hoop)
Holly: "Wow, can I take a picture of that?"
Sophie: "Yeah, but they cannot smile." (the blocks)

Hope you like the photo anyway, even if the blocks aren't smiling. I think Sophie is smiling enough for all of them!

Riddle of the Sphinx

We're on the bus coming home tonight, and out of nowhere, Sophie starts asking me the riddle of the Sphinx: "What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?" It wasn't delivered with the same veiled menace you could imagine the Sphinx asking it with (the first part was mumbled and I only caught on during the "two legs at noon" part), but still, I was pretty impressed. I answered quickly - just in case there were any Sphinxes taking the bus home after a busy day Sphinxing, but there didn't seem to be. And no, I'm not going to tell you the answer, if you don't want to be eaten by a Sphinx, you'll have to figure it out. Or Google it. Google, the Sphinx's bane.

I know Holly already mentioned this book in her last post, but here it is again - a most excellent book, one which apparently teaches riddles to toddlers. Hooray for Calef Brown! The only two books of his (that I know of) that we haven't seen yet are "Flamingos on the Roof" and "Soup for Breakfast". We'll have to check them out.

In Sophie's library bag

Halloween preview

We'll be heading out for Sophie's first trick or treating experience later today. Sophie is going with a few of her little friends who will be wearing bee and ladybug costumes. Blurry and dark photos are sure to come, but for now I thought you might appreciate a look at Sophie's bumblebee costume.


At the playdough table at preschool, ready for the Halloween party (this is the smile we get every time Sophie sees a camera these days. I blame her dad).


Hard at work (see how my brow is furrowed in concentration?) at the sewing machine, making my first ever Halloween costume for Sophie.

Bookshelves

Sophie and I just finished putting up her new bookshelves - vinyl rain gutters attached to the wall. Holly found the idea online - I'm not sure where, as by the time I got home that day, she had bookmarked a ton of pages. This is the one I ended up taking the directions from, not that too many were needed. It was a nice simple project, it fills up a wall that previously had no purpose, and Soph loves it. Here's a shot of her with her books.

An oldie, but a goodie

Taken March 27, 2008. Age 364 days.

Speaking of penguins

Sophie: "I wanna bring the penguin up on the roof."
Dean: "You don't have a penguin, do you?"
Sophie: "No. It's at someone else's house."
Dean: "Whose house?"
Sophie: "Mia's."
Dean: "Oh, Mia's house! Do you like Mia?"
Sophie: "Yeah! I like her a lot. She has a baby."
Dean: "Do you remember the baby's name?"
Sophie: "Yeah, he's Gabriel. He can't sit up."
Dean: "He's working on it, though."
Sophie: "Yeah, he'll sit up when he's this big (stretches arms out)."
Holly walks in...
Sophie: "Mama, can I go to Mia's house and get the penguin and bring it up on the roof?"

Happy two and a half years, Sophie!

This kiddo just turned two and a half yesterday and she learns more every day! Her language skills amaze us and we're always laughing at her quotes. Here are a few recent ones:

Janet: "It feels like fall, holy cow!"
Sophie: "It doesn't feel like I'm falling!"

Dean: (offering Sophie pasta) "Do you want a spoon or a fork?"
Sophie: "A T-Rex would be fine."



Today, she showed me her new hopscotch skills for the first time and I was amazed at her progress. The last time she tried hopscotch, she sprinted from one end of the court to the other and dubbed the game "runscotch". (Thanks to Grandma Jan for the great photos!)


With a schedule that includes entertaining her grandparents, starting preschool, working on toilet training, and learning dozens of new words a week, being two and a half is an exciting time. We love you, Sophie!

Imitation

At the recently installed "Meeting" sculpture in Coal Harbour. It's part of the Vancouver Biennale sculpture exhibit.

Fun at 4,039 feet

On the last day of summer, Sophie and I took advantage of the great weather and took the skyride up Grouse Mountain. We watched the beautiful video of BC in the Theatre in the Sky, cheered on the brave and crazy people climbing up the Grind, got up close and personal with two grizzly bears, and took the chair lift to the peak of Grouse (1,231 m or 4,039 ft) to enjoy a picnic on the top of the mountain.

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Arrrr. Tis one of the swashbucklingest holidays ever today - Talk Like a Pirate Day! Yo ho ho!

To celebrate, we balanced our grog-drinking parrot Arturus on our little pirate's shoulder, and snapped a few shots. Here's one of them, yarrrrr...

We also gave Soph a choice between walkin' the plank and watching the Dead Parrot sketch. She chose wisely, although she didn't seem to fully grasp the genius of the Pythons... She does at least understand that pirate parrots sit on your shoulder, so that's something, ye dog.

That didn't quite satisfy my pirate needs for the day, so I also started playing The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, on sale on Steam for $4.99 this weekend! Gotta love Guybrush Threepwood... Avast.

Well, until next time, my scurvy bilgerats.

Fall wardrobe

Sophie's new-to-her pea coat


The shot from behind because her curls look just too cute with the coat

A couple days ago, we took a family trip to a local consignment store and loaded up on pre-loved clothes for Sophie's fall wardrobe. I just had to share a couple of pics of Sophie in her new pea coat. We also got some cool whale pjs, an orange and red corduroy skirt, a ski jacket, and a sweet robot t-shirt. I love buying used clothes for Sophie, they're in great condition and we get to give the clothes a second chance!

A Maisy quilt

One day while Sophie and I were reading "Maisy Goes to Bed" by Lucy Cousins, the idea to make Sophie a quilt like Maisy's came into my head. I immediately dumped out my fabric stash and discovered that I had everything I needed to make a doll-sized version of Maisy's patchwork quilt. Sophie helped by choosing pairs of fabric squares for me to sew together. She also enjoyed playing with the string-pieced fabric.


After Sophie went to bed, I finished the quilting.


I think it's a pretty good match with the quilt in the book!


And Sophie loves snuggling under the quilt with her head on a pillow and calling it her "nest"!