Upgrades

The house has been all up in a tizzy these last few days, getting ready for Sophia's birthday, but also taking advantage of the hired help (read: grandparents) currently staying at the house. Here are just some of the home improvements we have made:

We have added ceiling fans to Sophia's new room as well as the nursery:





We have painted an old bookshelf for Sophia's new room:







We have cleaned out the garage (what a wild task THAT was):



And, the piece of resistance, we purchased a brand new dining room table! If any of you recall photos of our old dining room table, or remember seeing it in person, you know it was a kind of a sickly thing, well beyond its expected lifespan, never intended really to be more than temporarily functional, but we had it for probably 4 years. We finally found a really nice and reasonably priced dining room set that we like for style and everything, and at Costco, no less. I have taken to saying that I let Costco make all my decisions for me, and while it's not entirely true, we do find that we spend way too much money at Costco these days...

So here's the new grown-up dining room table. Shiny, no?

playing in the sand and water

On hot hot summer days, there are two options in our backyard that Sophie uses to cool down. The sandbox, with good sand-digging toys and the cool touch of shady sand, and the pool, a nice 4-foot inflatable job that gives her lots of room to wade. We have set up a canopy-type thing so the sun doesn't deter the hot-day activities, and Sophie loves both. We received our sandbox as a gift from our next-door neighbors who don't need it anymore, since their kids have grown out of the whole sandbox thing. Personally, I'm not sure how somebody could "grow out of" playing in a sandbox, although it is a little small for a full grown angsty teenager, I suppose. The sandbox is about two-and-a-half feet across, so pretty small, but Sophia manages quite well. It has a lid, which keeps the nasty neighbourhood cats from using it to their amusement and as a bathroom. Not that we have seen a lot of neighbourhood cats roaming free recently...

Sophia has a few favorite games that involve the sandbox and the pool, and the crushed rock that her playhouse is sitting on. Most of the games involve moving rocks into the pool, moving rocks into the sandbox, moving sand into the pool, picking up rocks from the bottom of the pool and throwing them in the water, picking up rocks from the bottom of the pool and piling them on top of a little pool toy table she has, and picking up rocks from the little pool toy table and throwing them into the water. She is also very fond of re-purposing sand tools for water and vice-versa. Also bowls and flowerpots.





(water movie to appear)

overdue

Several blog posts have been percolating lately, but conditions have not permitted us from updating. So don't be surprised if you see some backdated blog entries (like, say, this one) in the next couple days. just a warning...

2 Year Check Up

Well, Sophia and I went off to see Dr. Sander yesterday for her two year check up and evaluation. As most of you know, she keeps getting taller and bigger, and talks more and more each day. In fact, according to the "charts" she's a little advanced for her age, as she is producing both two and three word sentences. She's trying to run and can do all sorts of fine motor skill stuff. It's so cool to see. Anyway, the doctor took a good look at her and pronounced her healthy and developing well. She's clocking in at 26.1 pounds and 2 feet 10 inches long. She's a tall two year old. The only concern we have right now is that she seems to have developed a skin sensitivity where she turns red whenever her skin is touched or rubbed. A little disconcerting to mom and dad, but Sophia seems oblivious.

Anyway, it's nice to know that our little girl is growing up just fine!

Big girl bed

Last weekend, in preparation for a new little one, the family went to the mattress store and bought a new "big-girl bed" for Sophia. This more or less completes the remodeling of the guest room into Sophia's new room. The craft room downstairs has been remodeled into the guest room (and it's pretty nice, too) complete with door! Yes, David hung a door himself, from scratch, including adding some 2x4s to the existing opening to shore up the jamb. or something like that. Yay me! the handyman. who knew.

Anyway, here are some photos of Sophia in her new big-girl bed. We are using it for naps for the meantime, to let Sophia adapt gradually. In the next week or so, we will move her to the new bed permanently. Hard to know if it will affect her sleep patterns, but right now she is getting up in the middle of the night some nights again, so a change might be good!

Video Update

It's been a couple weeks, so here is an update on Sophia. Video is always a nice way to show what she is up to.


We had ice cream the other day, and she liked it so much, she licked the bowl. Cuteness ensues.



This next video has everything. Sophia is climbing up and down stairs (standing up, which is a new thing), she sings a song, then she tries on daddy's shoes (in two parts since it wouldn't upload in one).






Later, Sophia tried her own hand at videography.