Tiny Hands, Tiny Feet, Tiny Face

It's still a surprise every day to remind ourselves just how small Jacob is. And how genuinely beautiful.
 
 
 
 

Cross Country Skiing

When the weather is cold and you feel like you just need to get out of the house, skiing is the way to go! We got this backpack thing a while back and haven't really used it yet, it turns out it's perfect for skiing. Sophia and I went out to the reserve lands, onto the creek and around back to the house for a very nice tour.

 
 

Roseola

Sophia seems to have had roseola over the past few days. It started with a couple sleepless nights, and we took her temperature one evening because she felt hot, and it was low-grade but definitely a fever. The next day, she had small red dots all over her trunk, and by today they had spread out, but also faded. Yesterday and today she was happy, but she's still a little tired and crabby. Apparantly, Roseola is sometimes called Sixth disease. This one, though, we've heard of.

Alphabet

Sophie can identify most of the letters of the alphabet on flash cards now, but she does get a few pairs of letters confused.

D is frequently called B

J is often identified as L

K is usually seen as X

the other interesting thing is that these mistakes don't go the other way. X is not seen as K, and B is not seen as D.

Watching her learn to read letters has been making me realize just how confusing our roman alphabet can be, and how similar some letters are to others. It's not something I have thought much about until recently, but consider how many features are common in these sets:

LEFTIJ

UCGOQ

DBPRKX

HMVY

to say nothing of lower case: pbdq; and adding numbers make things even worse: 1l

It's a wonder people learn to read at all.

ANOTHER LANGUAGE UPDATE:

Sophie just said her first spoonerism today, too: She went to get me a diaper and a wipe so I could change Jacob, and, as she gave them to me, she said "Wiper and a diap!"

an insightful exchange

I was having a wee dram this evening in honour of the 250th anniversary of the birthday of Robbie Burns, and the following exchange transpired:

Sophie: "That's yours"
Daddy: "Yes, that's daddy's drink"
Sophie: "I have some. a little taste"
Daddy: "No, this is a Daddy drink. Mommy doesn't even like it that much"
Sophie: "Mommy likes water. You like beers"

Out of the mouths of babes...

brief language update

Sophia's getting to the point with her language that she is starting to generalize rules from what she has heard. As is common, she tends to overgeneralize, building unique constructions for new situations out of phrases she knows, and not quite remembering some phrase structure in other circumstances. It's really interesting to see what she comes up with and when. For example:

"I not can do it" = I'm having trouble, please help me do this

"I Doed it!" (sounds like I dood it) = Look at me! I did it!

"I flush it away" = I wiped/am wiping/will wipe it away (eg on a whiteboard or magnadoodle) or even when sweeping the floor.

"all up" = to completion. for example "I watch it all up" (a movie or show. either a request, as in "can I watch the whole thing" or a statement of fact.) or "I do it all up" when she finished a puzzle.

Since we regularly alternate between "Sophie" and "Sophia", she has generalized this, and has taken to extending "mommy" to "mommia" and "daddy" has become "daddia." just today, she was pretending to talk to "poppia" (poppa) on the phone. her pretend phone in this case was a vegetable brush...

Also, I was drawing triangles today and she said "You dood it! you do sandwiches cheese grilled!" I had to figure out what cheese-grilled meant, since it sounded very strange. Eventually I got that she had transposed "grilled-cheese sandwich. I wonder how one would cheese-grill a sandwich? It might be very tasty!

Tobogganing with the Grandparents

Visiting grandparents are an excellent opportunity to go to the hill and head down on sleds. Even Haley got into the act, chasing us up hill and the chasing us back down.
 
 
 
  
 
 
 

Off the Bottle

As of two days ago, Sophia is bottle free. I just decided that she was big enough now to have all of her drinks in cups. Besides I was tired of washing milky sheets after the bottle leaked at nap time. She was down to just one, so it was relatively easy to get rid of. We started warning her a couple of weeks ago that it would be going, and then the other day I just didn't give her the option. She still asks, but usually goes down for her nap easily enough with out it.

This means more cupboard space...for now. It's just a matter of time till they reappear for Jacob.

But for now we celebrate.

The next big challenge.....the soothers.

Quinzee completion, and two random pics

It was warmer today ("only" -17) so Sophia and Daddy went outside to play in the snow and complete the excavation of the quinzee. We also performed some face-plants, drew santas and did swimming. In the snow. Don't ask.


interior, showing the great room, as seen from the south entrance. The north entrance and the west landing are clearly visible.


View from the entrance to the east annex


Exterior. Annex is on the right of the image, and the south entrance is seen to the left.

And a couple more random images. Here is Jacob attempting to master the osborne finger suck, which his sister picked up so rapidly.



And here is Sophia in her brand-new two-piece bathing suit. Swimming lessons (level "sea turtles") start up again tomorrow (hence the snow swimming mentioned above) and when we bought the new swimsuit a few days ago and she tried it on at home, she insisted that she wear it all day. With socks.

invisible bike

invisible bike

Hard lessons

Sophia is learning a couple of hard lessons these days, primary among them being that when things break, they often can't be fixed.

She received a nice hairband for christmas, and she wore it a few times and quite liked it. One afternoon, she and Mom were in her room playing, and she picked up the hairband, looked at mom, said "I break it" and proceeded to bend it in half the wrong way. The band cracked and was ruined. She then started to cry, and proceed to have a fit saying "Put it together!" We spent some time comforting her but telling her that it couldn't be put together, that it was broken and had to be thrown away (which was true - there was no fixing this break). She calmed down after a while, but for a while was confused and enraged that the thing that was once whole and is now broken could not be made whole again.

A few days later, we were in the store and she had a coke cup full of water, complete with lid and straw. And yes, we had costco hotdogs for lunch. It's not such a horrible thing once in a while. So we're rolling around the store and suddenly there's a sloshing noise and the new bathing suit in the cart is soaked with water and there is a large and spreading puddle on the floor. She had up-ended the cup, just to see what would happen, and the lid popped off and out flowed all of the water. She held the cup to me and said she wanted more. I tried to explain to her that refills weren't free (although water would probably have been OK but we were not anywhere near the cafeteria) but she wouldn't have it. She threw a fit, again confused and angry that things once emptied cannot on demand be filled.

A tough life lesson but one better learned early than late, I suppose.

Quinzee

A few days ago (when it was "only" -9 outside) Sophia and I played in the snow. One of the results of that playing was a large pile of snow and the intention of constructing a Quinzee the next day, if it was nice out. It wasn't. Many days came and went, with -30 degree temperatures. Today was "only" -16, so we decided that today was the day to tunnel. We began by digging a cave in the pile, and Sophia was a bit anxious about going in, but once the room was excavated a bit and the hole was completed to the other side producing a complete in-and-out tunnel, she was more eager and crawled through a number of times. She got stuck on the huge drifts on the other side, but once we tramped a pathway, she was good to go.

Stage two of the construction involves a larger central (or "Great") room, an annex, and an east entrance.

New Year, New Skills

OK, so these skills are not exactly new as of 2009 (although Sophia's is only a day or two old) but there are a few cool things that both kids can do now that they couldn't do recently.

Sophia has uttered a 13 word sentence. She regularly amazes us with her linguistic aptitude, but for some reason this particular sentence stuck in my head. She was on her bed having just received a diaper change, and she said (something like) "I need down, I need to put this in garbage in Jacob's room" which is where the diaper genie is. So down she went and put her old diaper where it was supposed to go. The crazy thing is she is always taking in big sentences like this. Sure, she misses an article or two here and there, but really, who doesn't. She rarely makes those "me-you" mistakes she used to, but there are a couple of new common errors: "I doed it" (instead of "I did it") and "I break it together" (instead of "I break it apart") when she is done a puzzle and wants to disassemble it and start again.


This goes here

Sophia's drawing ability is also proceeding. Just yesterday, she began to draw faces. Out of the blue. like with a circle-type thing, then eyes and mouth. And then arms coming out of the ears and legs coming out of the neck, but still, all the parts are there and she's actually pretty good at it. Before, the best she could do was a string on a balloon daddy had drawn. Her colouring is also all of a sudden better. Rather than random scribbling, she intentionally colours in someone's hand, or a face, or a ball, or something else in the picture. Of course, it is still scribbles, but it is very intentional and she even holds her marker or crayon sort of "normally" instead of in her fist like she used to.

Sophia drawing Sophia:


Jacob's skills are in a different category altogether. He is just starting to roll from his back to his side, to have some control over his hands and some control over his feet. Also, he is blathering more, holding his head up more, and smiling more. also drooling. a lot.

Jacob playing the jukebox:


And here is more evidence of his advancing manual dexterity, in the form of grabbing and holding on for dear life.

New improved Jacob with the kung-fu grip!

We are starting to try him in the bumbo and the jolly jumper from time to time, too. He is old enough, theoretically, but his head is still a little wobbly yet. Also, the harness thing he sits in is too big for him, even at the smallest setting. That's how small he is.

Jumping not so jolly yet. but soon.

He is starting to suck on more things as well. He is just starting to take a soother for a few tens of seconds at a time, then he will spit it out. He is finding his hand but isn't quite able to locate a thumb or a finger to suck, but when he has "the need," any lump will do, so we often find him slobbering all over the second knuckle of his index finger... and if you've never experienced a 3-month old slobbering over the second knuckle of his index finger, it is NOISY!!

latched to something other than mommy

ALSO: Christmas posts are coming, so be patient.