What goes up can't go down

Just before the Christmas holidays, while at John and Linette's place, Sophie learned to climb stairs. She took to it with such know-how that we were amazed - I guess stairs just fit well with the whole baby/crawling thing.

Over the course of the holiday, she progressed to taking on an entire set of stairs at once, with only a few glances behind her to see the view. Of course, down will be harder, and hasn't been attempted yet. One step at a time.

(Note: actually posted by Seagull Boy, logged in as Enviro Girl by accident.)

Was it a cat I saw?

Before the Christmas holidays, I don't think I've ever seen Sophie scared. She's done her share of screaming, and crying, and general freaking out, but never (that I could tell) because she was scared. That changed when we were at Star and Russ's place, and Blue (their cat) was walking around. At first, Sophie was just interested, because she was up high, and this weird creature was down on the floor. She was watching him when he was in an energetic mood, so she got to see him tearing around the house as only hyper cats can. You could tell she wasn't so sure about his erratic movement, but up high, she was safe.

Then Blue walked by when Sophie was standing on the floor (holding on to a coffee table). He walked by within, say, two or three feet.

This picture is Sophie's reaction. Of course, as good parents, our first thought was "Where's the camera?" Our second thought, of course, was, "Are six pictures enough?" Our third through seventh or eighth thoughts were mainly of how funny the pictures looked, and only around thought nine or so did we think to comfort poor Soph. She recovered quickly, and agreed that the pictures were pretty darn funny.

Sophie's first visit with Santa

The first time Sophie met Santa was at my work's kids' Christmas party in mid December. We were very impressed with the party - there was a magician, a bouncy castle, an arts and crafts table, food and drink galore, goodie bags, and a veritable horde of young 'uns.

Sophie enjoyed meeting Santa, which is to say, she didn't freak out at all. According to Santa, in fact, Sophie was the only wee one who didn't scream when he held her.

All in all, a very good party, even though Sophie was too young to properly thrash the bouncy castle, or eat her weight in sugar, or any of the neat things that we look forward to in coming years.

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.