Having fun at Heartwood

We're in Duncan to celebrate the opening of Grandpa Ken's and Grandma Jan's new studio. As usual, as soon as we arrived on the island, our daughter was whisked away by her grandparents and we haven't seen her since. Here are a couple shots of Sophie having some fun times with her grandpa.

Drawn-out game of "Find the Remote Control"

Sophia loves to play with things that aren't toys (cameras, rulers, wallets, computer keyboards and wastepaper baskets all come to mind) and her favourite non-toy objects are remote controls. We've given her two defunct remotes to play with, but somehow she knows they don't do the real work and she goes for the functional remotes that we try to hide out of reach. She takes them all over the condo and then leaves them in odd places. Usually, we can locate them pretty quickly, but there are times when we wish they had locator buttons like the telephone handset. Recently, Sophie hid the tv remote in an obscure location and we couldn't find it for a week and a half. This made it particularly difficult to switch channels, as we don't have cable and only get channels 2, 8, 68 and 83. Today, I finally discovered the missing remote inside the radiator in the tv room. Sophie gets big points for sneakiness on that one!

Enter Sandman

Sophie always has a tough time going to bed. She doesn't mind being changed, having her bath, being put in the crib, having some books read to her, but when expected to actually fall asleep, she starts screaming. And crying, and whining, and blubbering, and then (just for a change) more screaming. She seems pretty angry at having to lie down and stop doing twenty things all at once, as per usual.

Tonight, Holly came out of the bedroom mystified, after Sophie had dropped off. I had gone in earlier and put the radio on, but Sophie hadn't noticed. At least, that is, until Metallica's "Enter Sandman" came on. Apparently, that was what she was waiting for, and she finally drifted off to sleep.

It's especially odd if you know the song - here's a sample of the lyrics...

"Hush little baby, don't say a word
And never mind that noise you heard
It's just the beast under your bed,
In your closet, in your head"

Pretty soothing, eh? Oh well, whatever works. :)

It's a dog eat dog world

Sophie loves dogs, both real and stuffed (we're talking toys here, not taxidermy), so I brought her plastic dog dog for her to play with today. We ran into a nice woman with a real dog dog (a poodle/Cavalier King Charles cross) and before I knew it, our little plastic dog dog (pictured here before the attack) was missing a nose. I gathered up a few of the pieces, but I think that poodle might have a bit of a tummy ache tonight.

A summer evening at the beach

Yesterday was a hot one (or so they tell me - I spent my day freezing in an overly-air-conditioned office), so we went down to the beach after dinner so Holly and Sophie could take a dip. After running up and down the sandy beach, Sophie decided to run straight into the ocean to join mommy, tripped on the water, and did a lovely faceplant into the waves. Here's the aftermath...



Luckily, she recovered quickly, and enjoyed being dipped in and out of the water and feeling it with her hand.



After the swim, we hung out on the grass for a bit. Sophie started mouthing off pedestrians - she's so cute when she tries to do rude hand gestures!



Another of her forms of intimidation, Sophie's sumo stance is nearing perfection...



She almost had her bluff called by a small dog who looked like trouble, but Sophie managed to stare him down. He slunk away, Sophie did a triumphant dance.



To try to curb her aggressive tendencies, I hung her upsidedown for a while to cool her off. I love the red in her hair in this one...



After that, she relaxed a bit, and played one of her favourite games - running with shoes. What you do, as if this needed explaining, is to grab some shoes, then run for it. If you can get the shoes far enough from where they're supposed to be before you get caught, you win.



And finally, here's Sophie vaguely trying to wear her blue hat. All in all, it was a fun evening with summer written all over it. Good times.

First bike ride!

Summertime is officially here, and with it comes some really prime biking weather. We recently bought a bike trailer to cart the wee one around, so a few days ago, we hooked it all up and took Sophie for a ride along the beach. She took it quite calmly, just relaxing in the trailer with her feet up, commenting on passing dogs and how much she loves her hat - a huge red helmet (with dinosaurs on it) that makes her look like a big mushroom. Here she is in transit, and then (happy) with mommy, and (sad) with daddy.

A few fun fifteen-month-old photos

1) Cause when you find a mini Groucho Marx mask, you need to try it on your baby!


2) This kid is a bookworm, and she especially LOVES her copy of "Each Peach Pear Plum". I can recite that book by heart and Sophie knows exactly where the dog, cat, baby and birds are in all the pictures.


3) Dean had the brilliant idea to get bubble bath the other day. Can't believe we waited this long to give her her first bubble bath. Fun!