Good Singing, Daddy

It seems all of our positive reinforcement has had a secondary, unintended effect: Sophia is now praising us when we do a good job. has said:

Nice singing, Daddy
Good shirt, Daddy
Good reading, Mommy
Good driving, Mommy

among other things.

She is turning into a very courteous little girl, when she wants to be, too. She says please and thank you without being told, even when we wouldn't expect it. She says thank you even when I blow her nose.

She is also becoming quite maternal around Jacob. She'll say "whassa matter, Jacob" and "Jacob Cry!" and try to hold him (this part can be quite a hindrance, actually)

Oh, and her language skills are increasing exponentially. Here's a little gem she uttered this morning:

"Daddy, I need help getting up on the bed, I wanna see Jacob"

This kind of complex sentence is not uncommon with her these days, and she gets the "I-you" confusion (common at her stage of development) correct, most of the time. She still says "Carry you" when she wants to be carried up the stairs, and we could be generous and assume she means "Carry! You!" but we know she's still not entirely comfortable with "me" as a personal pronoun yet. It will come. But she is comfortable with "I" as in "I need water" or "I need help getting up on the bed"

Columnist

I know this blog is supposed to be about our family, but individual achievements should also be celebrated, I suppose, so I am tooting my own horn (after telling a few family and friends) and linking to proof that I am now an official columnist on CBC radio.

Gingerbread house, halloween style

Sophia and I put together the gingerbread house tonight - lots of fun, especially in eating the mistakes. and Yes, Gingerbread houses are more traditionally for the christmasy time of year, but who can resist a gable made of candy corn. And black icing is oh so easy to clean up.

Correction. The best part was making big piles of squiggly orange icing.

 
 

The First Two Weeks

Well, so far so good. We are slowly adapting to our new family configuration. The road thus far has had some bumps, but mostly it has been pretty good. Sophia is still learning what it means to be a big sister and is also learning the "joys" of time outs.

This week marked Jacob's two week check up. So I packed him up and we trekked over to see Dr. McMeekin-Down. She took a good look at him, although he kept his eyes firmly closed so she couldn't check them, and gave us a clean bill of health. Jacob is growing and filling in even though he is such a little creature.

Here are his vital stats at birth:
WEIGHT - 2.61 Kg
LENGTH - 46.5 cm
HEAD - 31.5

And his stats this week:
WEIGHT - 3.0 Kg
LENGTH - 46.5 Cm
HEAD - 34.0 cm

I am not convinced that his head grew 3 cm while he stayed the same for length. But that's what the friendly medical office assistant told me. Anyway, the main point is that Jacob is gaining weight which indicates he is getting plenty to eat. What a good cow I am!


A typical "old man" look. Clearly unimpressed at whatever was happening...not unusal, though.

Just hanging out

He is a cutie...

Working the Election

I worked for Elections Canada today! I was an information officer, meaning I met people at the door and checked their ID and showed them which poll to go to. It was a long day but very cool to participate in the process more than simply 'x'ing a box. Maybe next time I'll be a deputy returning officer or something.

Playing Pretend

Sophia is starting to really get into creative play and imagination. Earlier in her life, she would go through the motions of, say, cooking with her toy pans or having a phone conversation, but now she is really pretending that she is doing those things. She'll take her pretend phone off the hook of her pretend kitchen, pretend to dial and then wait for the ringing. I'll ask her who she's calling and she'll say "Nana" or "Grandpa" or even Jacob. (she's called Uncle Todd and Dea too). Once the phone has rung, she'll say "hello?" and then have a full one-sided conversation with the plastic phone, complete with "uh-huh"s and "OK"s and she talks about a lot of stuff. Here's a transcript of one of her recent phone conversations:

"I'm calling Jacob! ... Hello Jacob! ... Oh, Yes ... yep ... wow!... OK, Bye!"

She also likes to pretend to drive the car. Grandpa has taken Sophia into the front seat of their car to play and she loves to pretend to drive, making "vroom vroom" noises and "honk honk". She also makes noises like that when playing with her airplane toys: "VROOM, neearow" etc. (hard to make up onomatopoeias sometimes...)



When we are driving, if we're at a stoplight she'll say "go go daddy" or "go go mommy" depending on who's driving, and we say "What colour is the light?" and she has learned that red light means stop, and green light means go. When we were out for a walk one day, she started to say "red light" and "green light," and we stopped and then went on. We have never taught her that game, she more or less made it up herself. I find that pretty cool.

She has also begun pretending to pick up objects - a tea party doesn't necessarily have to have teacups. She pours from an imaginary kettle into an imaginary cup and hands it to me, and I take an imaginary sip. I think this is a significant cognitive step. She will also pretend to pick up things she sees in magazine and book photographs. She has on more than one occasion fed me an apple or a hamburger or a carrot from pictures in a book. She'll pick one up and put it in her mouth, then she'll pick up another and put it in my mouth. I think this started with a rattle that we got for Jacob, in the shape of an elephant with little peanuts in a sphere meant to be his belly - it acts like a rattle. Sophia tried to get at the peanuts, and when she saw she couldn't actually pick one up, she pretended to get one and give it to me.

Oh, and she also likes to pretend to be a robot:

Playing with Baby Brudder

Eventually, Sophia will be able to say "baby brother" but till then, it's absolutely adorable when she talks about Jacob. It's also adorable how she plays with Jacob. She's completely in love with him, and (usually) gentle and appropriate. Sometimes during play she might be a bit rough, and a couple times we have had to make sure she doesn't sit on him or step on him, to the extend that she has had her first time-out and her first "go to your room" but in general, Sophia loves Jacob. How Jacob feels about Sophia, we'll just have to see.

We have retrieved some of Sophia's old toys from storage for Jacob to have, specifically her old music-and-lights swing, and her lie-on-the-floor baby entertainer. The swing has been a bit of a problem, because Sophie remembers it and can now work the controls, so she will often go up to it, and say "I turn the song on!" and then switch on the tinny small-speaker music. Which is fine, but she will also get into the swing and sit in it as it swings. Which is fine, but she's right at the top of the weight limit for the chair. So soon we'll have to tell her "no no" to that, and that it's Jacob's swing, but for now it's more or less harmless.

Sophia does like to lie on the floor with jacob and play with him under the baby entertainer thingy:

So have you read Nietzsche? How do you feel about postmodernism?


Grrr. this is what zombies do.


...then STRETCH like this.


See, THIS is what you look like. Weird, huh?


Jacob does like to suck on things, even noses.

Sophia in the pumpkin patch

One of Sophia's friends had a birthday party out in the pumpkin patch near Lumsden last week. This was the party for which Tricia made the "Witch" cake with all the black icing. Sophia, William and all of their friends were there, and they had a wonderful time. It was, however, gale-force windy, and dust was flying everywhere. Great for my allergies. For a couple days after the party, Sophia said "Plates fall onna grass!" and we had to think what she meant, but then we remembered that any paper plate without food on it (and several with food, especially the cake which was so light and fluffy) went flying off the picnic table. because of the wind.

Even with the crazy wind, everyone had a great time, and it was sunny enough to take some good photos of the kids on the enormous pumpkin pile. Also, there was a hay-bale maze that was just high enough to hide 2-year-old kids. Convenient, when you look the other way for 2 seconds to discover that your kid wasn't right where you thought she was. Good side of that, though, is that it's a maze and 2-year-olds aren't smart enough to solve a maze. yet...

Walking in the maze.


Pumpkins!


Pumpkins and my pal.


Lookit me, I can drive a tractor. Beep beep!


A little childcare goes a long way.


Oh, and that "Witch" cake? here it is:

Yup, that's a breadstick for the broomstick, cookies for the hat and bristles, and black black jet-black icing that stains everything it touches, including flesh. The kids had a ball with it, and all the parents were suitably impressed.

Yoga

Just a short post from a month or so back - Sophia likes to do yoga with Mom, or sometimes along with the Wii Fit:

The Warrior pose:


The Warrior pose (another try):


The Cobra pose:


The Tree pose:

Note the green lego baseboard which is "sophie's wii-fit balance board". Saves us from keeping her off of the real one while we are doing exercises.

She does hula-hoop too...

Coming Home

So it's been a couple weeks now and we are more or less settled with two children in the house. Most of the grandparents have been and gone, and life is starting to enter a kind of routine. So with that, we are able to look back at the last couple of weeks and blog. More photos will be appearing, and there are a couple Sophie-themed blog entries waiting to be presented as well.

To begin, homecoming photos.

First time out of the car seat at home.


The whole family together.


Learning about "baby brudder"

He really likes to suck on fingertips


Once you cut the tag off, no returns or refunds


Everybody's tired except Jacob