Things I Don't Want to Forget

Sophie's vocab is growing exponentially each day. She repeats almost anything, even if the comprehension isn't there (like "Snickerdoodle" or "mango sorbet" or "James Brown says Hey!") and I see her grasping more concepts each day, too. Like today, when I turned off a video that she was watching (Veggie Tales) and she made the signs for "more" and "veggies" as she spoke the words. We've only made the vegetable sign a few times, and always in the context of eating. Many of her words have a toddler twang to them, and while I try to repeat the word with correct pronunciation, I secretly LOVE her Sophie-isms. Here are some things I hope I never forget:

She says "flowber" instead of flower.
She says "eyebrown" instead of eyebrow.
She calls my uncle "Bug Juice" instead of "Jud Bruce."
She doesn't know who the Curious George character is, so she points to the image on her band-aid and says, "Boo boo monkey."
She also points to the freckles on my shoulders, pronounces them boo-boos, and then kisses them. I've never been so glad to have so many freckles.

The Funny Things She Says and Does

This kid makes us laugh every single day.

Sunday night, we had the end of year English Dept. party at our house. There were a few speeches from folks leaving the department, and as we clapped, Sophie stood in the middle of the crowd and clapped and squealed. Then she did what her Daddy has taught her to do: twirl and bow, twirl and bow, twirl and bow.

Frank brought her to me in bed this morning and when I said, "Hi, baby," she answered back in this groggy little voice, "Hiiiiii, baby."

Instead of "I did it!" Sophie shouts, "I dig it!"

I dig it, too, Soph.

Mother's Day Weekend in Ft. Worth

As Stacy and I headed north with Sophie and Callie in the back seat, we were drawn to a spectacular roadside attraction. Well, actually the little fuel light came on, which attracted us to a Kwik Stop for gas, and there, spinning in all its glory, was a small electric carousel. And for only 25 cents I couldn't pass up the opportunity to explain hybrid elephant/ducks (is that an elephuck?).

The real roadside attraction was in Weatherford at the farm. The wildflowers are spectacular this year, so we strolled out into the meadow by the lake for some obligatory kid-in-a-Texas-field shots.

Tragic Mistakes of a Young Mother

Sophie has these two little baby dolls that fit nicely in her hand. She likes to hold them and rock back and forth saying "Sssh ssh ssh ssh." She's attentive and loving and nurturing...but not so big on infant safety. Today she was in her room reading a book to one of the babies, and I left her there to go make my bed. She came rushing in saying, "Uh oh, baby! Uh oh, baby! Help! Help!" I followed her back to the scene of the crime:

Yep..Timmy's down the well, alright. Here's Rescue Attempt #1:

She was none too happy that I was photographing the event instead of helping, so before MY baby got stuck (and I really did have a quick image flash through my head of hauling her into the emergency room with this toy stuck on her elbow), I leapt into action and "delivered" both babies. Sophie was SO relieved and lavished them with kisses:

Sophie's First Pony Ride

Sophie's no priss

She's willing to get a little dirty for the sake of her art. And if snack time happens to coincide with art time, so be it. Blue lips.

She saw Momma eating a salad and wanted "bite bite bite!" I popped a crouton in her mouth so she wouldn't touch the food herself with her rainbow-colored fingers, but she'd never had a crouton before so she had to reach up, take it out of her mouth, inspect it, pop it back in, then show it to Daddy:

Sophie's fingerpainting skills transferred nicely to the garden later in the day when she painted her face with mud. When I told her she was a messy little garden gnome, she picked up some gravel and pretended to wash her hair. She LOVES getting dirty!

Garage Sale Mania

Our neighborhood hosts two garage sale weekends a year. I am always torn about whether to clean out the garage and make some cash OR to go hit up all the sales and fill our garage with more junk. I finally decided that I was going to pull out two pieces of furniture that we had in the garage and see if anyone driving by would make an offer. But to GET to those two pieces of furniture, it turned out that I had to drag a whole bunch of crapola out into the driveway. Frank added a couple of guitars (don't worry -- he still has ten), and the result of our spring cleaning? $900, baby! We have some free airline tickets to Mexico this summer, and that just paid for our hotel in Playa del Carmen (and a really big margarita). Bonus, we are really, really close to being able to park a car in the garage again.

While we were cleaning out the garage, we ran across this antique car (found in an abandoned farmhouse on land near my grandmother's place). We thought we would clean it up and repaint it -- maybe for the next kid. Instead, Frank attached a leash and entertained Sophie for a while:

When things hit a lull on Saturday, Sophie and I headed out to see what was left at the sales and bought ALL of these dollhouses for just $30. I only wanted one because she was playing with the little schoolhouse and bus and I thought that was cute, but they wanted $8 for one house or $30 for all. Who could pass that up? We're going to share them with Laney and Lucy, because NO little girl needs NINE dollhouses:

Sophie also got this cute doctor's kit for FREE. (Because it was actually in our garage with some school props and we didn't know it.)

The best "find" of the weekend was on Sunday, when we were driving around after church trying to get Sophie to fall asleep. Only a few stragglers were still selling, and they were all willing to drop their prices to get rid of the stuff. Frank found this great bike buggy, quite the step up from hauling Sophie with a leash. He took Sophie and CreepyBaby on the maiden voyage Sunday afternoon:

Maggie found adorable matching bike helmets for the girls, and every day this week Frank has come home, loaded up the munchkins, and gone on a ride around the neighborhood. Now they never want to take the helmets off:

What's in a name?

Tonight's conversation at dinner:

Sophie: Hi, Momma. Hi, Daddy. Hi, Mommy. Hi, Daddy.
Me: What's your name?
Sophie: No.
Me: Who's that?
Sophie: Daddy
Me: Who's that?
Sophie: Coggie (Callie Doggie)
Me (pointing at Sophie): Who's that?
Sophie: No.
Me: Can you say Laney?
Sophie: Naney.

And the conversation continued as above with us saying names and the little parrot repeating: Nini, Maggie, Adam, Kate, Jason, Lucy (which sounds like Lulu), Nana, Jeff, Jordan (more like JoJo), Ashley, Grandma Kate (she said Gra..., then spit out "Baga!"), Paw-paw (this is Grandpa Jerry), Lupita (sounds like Pitapita), Taz, Vanessa (Baness), Max, Madeline (Madada), Mamaw, Grandad (Dad-dad), Rob (Wob), Laura and Lauren, then a scrunched up face at the name Hazen, then finally back to...

Me: Sophie
Sophie: Hwettie
Frank: Sooooooo
Sophie: So
Frank: Feeeee
Sophie: Fee
Me: Sophie!
Sophie: Hwettie!

Guilty

of "Febreezing" my child before we went to have dinner with Maggie and Adam. She had been at the park with Frank and smelled like a sweaty little boy. What? I covered her eyes before I sprayed the Febreeze and told her, "turn, turn." And then she smelled like crisp linen.

Be Sweet

Be sweet. That's what my mom always said when she got off the phone with me. And that was also the defining quality of my mother -- sweetness. Jane Ellan Lively, my mother and Sophie's grandmother, passed away on Wednesday morning after battling lung cancer (then brain cancer, then radio necrosis, then a return of cancer in her spinal fluid) for many months. She was diagnosed when Sophie was only 25 days old. My brothers and I were there with her, and we told her it was okay to go. It seems so fast, I know. She was doing so well, and now she's gone. But I saw my mother in pain for one day, and that was long enough. It is such a blessing that she is no longer in pain and that all of our memories of her are of the vibrant, funny, sweet person that she was. There are so many amazing stories to tell about her and about the time we spent together this week remembering her. This is my favorite one from this week, and this is what brings some peace to my heart right now:

My mother always wanted a roomful of balloons. My older brother, Jeff, coordinated a special project for his boys on the day of the funeral. Back at the farm, the boys (and Jordan and Ashley and Claudia and other friends) prepared a gigantic bunch of balloons and tied a card with my mom's name to the strings. We counted down and released the balloons and watched them float away over the farm and disappear from our sight. About an hour later, my younger brother Jordan was down at the pond with his friends and I heard his girlfriend yell up the hill, "Stacy, look at the rainbow!" I searched the skies for an arch, then Ashley yelled, "right above the house!" And there it was. A small, horizontal rainbow stretching right over the farm. Jeff saw it, and my sister-in-law Claudia yelled for Joel to come look. As soon as we had all seen it, the rainbow faded away and disappeared. I know Momma was telling Jeff "thank you for the balloons." I know she is still here, all around me. I know that, even though Sophie will not remember her Nana Jane, I have the awesome responsibility of telling her all the stories and teaching her all the lessons that my mother taught me.

Sophie and her Grandpa Joel.

Adventures with Laney

Sophie spends every weekday with her nanny, Nini, and her Laney-friend. Next year, Sophie's going to school (not sure where yet, but "school" it is, because Momma has to go back to work fulltime). We're excited about the social interactions, the "curriculum" for two-year-olds, the increased opportunity for language development, the construction paper artwork that will be coming home to decorate our fridge, and so on. But the closer it gets, the sadder I am about Sophie not spending every day with Nini, who loves her, and Laney, who is her twin-friend. This is the best scenario I could have imagined for her, and I'm a bit panicky about change of any kind.

Laney and Sophie have sooo much fun (and they fight, too, especially on Mondays when they've spent the weekend NOT sharing toys with anyone). Here are some pics and videos of some of their adventures.

Click on the picture below to see our trip to the zoo:

Click on the link below to see their first adventure with Play-doh:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0ZuO2s1wJk

Forget the bonnet; where's the parka?

It was a low-key Easter, but we kept the spirit alive. Monsoon rains cancelled our neighborhood egg hunt, the same soggy weather pushed our church festival inside to the gym, and 40 degree weather on Easter morning meant we were searching for tights and a sweater to match Sophie's very springy dress. Still, she had a blast. Her egg-hunting tactic was to hang back as the rest of the kids raced ahead, then she collected all the eggs that they missed as they zoomed by. She was intrigued by the giant pink bunny (as was I), and gave him a kiss after we took her picture on his lap.

On Easter morning, she struggled a bit in church when it was time to put her daisy on the flowering cross. She thought it was a better idea to snatch a few more flowers for herself, but we finally got the flower attached without too noticeable a fit. Later, during the closing song, she danced right up the aisle to the cross to smell the flowers. The congregation thinks that's really cute when you're one. We'll see how many smiles and oooh's and ahhh's we get when she's eight years old and still scrambling on stage to be next to Daddy. (Actually, the thought of that makes me smile.)



The Easter Bunny visited our house while Sophie took her afternoon nap, so she woke up to an egg hunt this afternoon. By the way, the Easter Bunny went to Target yesterday and ALL of the plastic eggs and ALL of the chocolate bunnies were sold out, so the EB stayed up late boiling and dying eggs with food coloring. On the way home, Daddy stopped at Walgreens to buy a video tape and (Easter miracle!), found eggs and a bunny. Sophie gently dropped the plastic eggs into her basket, but popped every hard-boiled egg into her mouth (turning her lips and tongue all kinds of colors), then slammed the eggs onto the floor. I thought we might eat hard-boiled eggs all week, but it looks like egg salad sandwiches are in our very near future. While Frank and I tried to sort the plastic eggs from the hard-boiled, Sophie played with her chocolate bunny, making it hop, hop, hop. When we finished sorting eggs, we found a chocolate-covered baby. She ate right through the tin foil and devoured one of bunny's ears. Happy Easter, everybody!

A, B, B, B, B, B, B, E!

Sophie's working on her alphabet. One of her favorite books right now is the Dr. Seuss A,B,C book, but we usually stop at the Fiffer-feffer-feff page and then she flips ahead until she gets to the P page (which has cool colors but inane words) and the ZZZZZ! (which has cool swirlies around the Zizzer-zazzer-zazz).

Click here (or on the picture) to see SOPHIE READING HER A-B-B-B's.

Smoochin' Under the Bleachers

Okay, technically it was in the hideout under the slide, and technically it was a good-bye kiss, but it's true: my daughter kissed a boy on the playground today. Twice. On the lips. And she had only known him for ten minutes.

Hilarious? Horrifying? Yes, both.

Sophie in Funkytown

Funkytown is Fort Worth. According to my little brother's tattoo, anyway. This weekend it was a bit more like Freakytown, with a tornado touching down near my Gram's house in Weatherford (and she said, "C'mon out tonight...do you think I want to die alone?"), flash floods in my mom and stepdad's cul-de-sac that came dangerously close to the house, and then...the next morning...not a cloud in the sky. That's Texas weather for you.

So our weekend consisted of a parade through my mom's work (everyone in the building seemed to know Sophie already, from the shrine in my mom's office), then lunch with Mom and my brother Jeff, then a haircut for me at Claudia's salon, then over to Mom's house where we got stranded for a few hours while the streets flooded, then out to the farm at 10 p.m. (so Gram wouldn't be the only one in tornado alley). Sophie loved the fast-paced day and decided to stay up most of the night partying. I moved her from the pack-and-play to the big bed with us and, right after she'd drifted off to sleep, THUD. She rolled right out of the bed. She was fine (I was more upset than she was), but began crying for TOW (which is her new way of saying Cow), whom we had neglectfully and woefully left at home. My nephew Michael had sweetly donated a black and white Snoopy-esque animal as a substitute, which we put in her arms as we tried to tuck her back in to the pack-and-play. She promptly rejected it and began thrashing it against the sides of the playpen. And so she came back into the bed and slept while I groggily guarded her the rest of the night.

The next day was beautiful -- she played dress-up with Gram, read stories to Nana Jane, showed off her beebo (belly button) to Grandpa Jud, and played a little croquet in the yard. She trudged along with us at the First Monday flea market until Gram found a $7 stroller at one of the booths and then she said, "Ride! Ride!" We had "first lunch" at the farm because we had been too late the night before to enjoy Gram's stroganoff; we ate "second lunch" at Zeke's with my brother Jordan and his girlfriend Ashley because my mom has been craving fried fish. All in all, it was a fantastic whirlwind trip to Funkytown.