Aw, baby's first compound word

Sophie and I were walking home, while Holly (Mama) and Kristi (Didi) went to choir, and we passed by a park. There was a soccer game going on, and once Sophie spotted the ball, I told her it was soccer, called football by the rest of the world. She liked the sound of "football" better, so I explained how it was called that because you kick the ball with your foot. I guess I mimed a kick or something, because she started saying "football", but really slowly, as she had to get her foot in the air to do a kick before she'd say "foot", and then have to wait until she got her foot on the ground again before saying "ball". She said it five or six times - we were there ten minutes.

Latest in the world of Sophie

I haven't posted for a while, inexcusable. Even worse, I'm posting my first post in a long time while I'm tired, due to Sophie having a cold and not sleeping happily through the night like usual. (Plus, she got me up before 6am to watch cartoons.)

[Side commentary on the toddlers' cartoons of today: I was pleasantly surprised to see quite a well-done cartoon based on Richard Scarry's work. However, this was offset by the next cartoon, something about mechanical animals, in which the horse with the power of flight was, of course, the unicorn. Never heard of a pegasus, people? Very poor.]

In short, not much sleep in the last night or two, which isn't too bad in itself, but is a rude awakening (har) from the usual wonderful pattern of full nights of sleep. So I'm tired and somewhat grumpy, but I'll still try and recount a few recent Sophie stories for her vast and eager audience.

First, her vocabulary is growing in leaps and bounds. By this point, we've completely lost track of how many words she knows. She picks up new words on the spot, and can either say them in context, or understand them correctly when said to her. She learned Janet's name today, and "dishes", and "boogah" (she'll announce this to get you to help blow her nose), and probably a few more I'm forgetting.

She's also putting words together into simple sentences, and using words outside of the context in which she learned them. For example, she said "beach hot" today, "hot" only used for food temperatures before. Her other sentences usually involve commands, like "nana up" (get off your butt and get me a banana, Mom) and "pasta allgone more". She always seems to want more of some things, cottage cheese especially. Oh, and we tried her on peanut butter, and it seems fine (no allergies), but there does still seem to be something causing her a rash from time to time. My money is currently on tofu/soy - we'll see how that pans out.

Her main pastime is still reading. Books, books, books. She'll play with the occasional ball, and she likes a few stuffed animals, but the first thing she'll do in the morning (after pointing out your toes and your nose for you) is to bee-line for the book box. If you're working on the computer for five minutes, you might look down to discover a pile of four or five books that she's piled on your lap, a none-too-subtle hint that she'd like to be read to.

Holly and I recently became members of Science World (Sophie gets in free), and we went for a trip there during my lunch hour. Soph really enjoyed seeing the bees (actual bees, although to her, all insects are still "bees"), and sitting on the giant frog, and splashing in the water table, and generally running amok. We're looking forward to many more trips there, plus some trips out to the Vancouver Aquarium as well.

And finally, we plan to take Soph to a BBQ tomorrow, if she's feeling well enough. It's at Raven and Robyn's, so Sophie would get to see Mason again, which would be cool. Hope she's feeling better by tomorrow, and that we all sleep through the night. Wish us luck!

Happy First Day of Non-School!

The first day of the new school year always brings me back to Mom taking photos of me and Kristi in our new clothes on the deck. Obviously, Sophie isn't going to school today (we have four more years still she starts Kindergarten in 2012), but she just got a vintage 70s dress as a gift and it looked so much like a back to school outfit that I had to take her picture. Happy first day of school to all of the students out there!

She's a size 25 already!

Sophie and I went shoe shopping today and came home with these cute brown Mary Janes. The saleslady measured my little 17-month-old's feet and said they were size 7. According to the charts, that's the average size of a two-year-old. The pair we bought were a whopping size 25 though! (That's the European sizing, they're really size 8-8.5) We got the biggest size that Sophie could comfortably clomp around the store in and she's got about a centimetre in room to grow. According to the website, these shoes should last her til she's 2.5-3 years old, but at the rate Sophie's going, I'm not sure if she'll still be wearing them by her second birthday!

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. :)