More about mommy and her silly cakes

So I finished Course 1 of the Cake decorating class and have signed up for Course 2. Should be fun, and a lot easier time wise as I only have to make one cake for the end of the session rather than one for each week. We've eaten alot of cake in the last little while.

Anyway, here are pictures of the grand finale cake...

Things Sophia can do

She's growing too fast. Just this morning David looked at me and proclaimed: "She really does look like a little girl." sigh. Where's my little 6 pound baby??? Ah, although I miss that infant stage, I am finding the toddler stage too much fun. Sophia is an intelligent (sometimes too much so) and affectionate little girl. She loves to give kisses and hugs. Although there are many challenges to this stage there are just as many rewards. Here are some of the new things in the life of Sophia:

1. Words: her vocabulary is expanding. In the last few weeks we have words such as -water, baby, belly, back, cuckoo (this comes from the Kindermusik focus on birds), caw (the sound a Blackbird makes), growls, and mama (with acknowledgement that I am mama!). For a while she's been pointing at my back saying "baby"...not quite but now we have her saying back. Now if I could only get her saying "belly" instead of "baby" when she points to my stomach. I can pretty much assure you there's no baby in there!

2. Sophia is getting FOUR teeth --two upper incisors, an upper first molar and a lower first molar. Yikes. Sleep has not been good.

3. Sophia LOVES books. We went to the library for the first time a couple of weeks ago and she was in heaven. She ran about the children's section (and later the fiction section) pulling books of the shelves and checking them out. There are little people sized chairs for her to sit on so she is quite content. I, on the other hand, am getting very good with the decimal system and might look into a library job when I go back to work.

4. Tents are good. We got this tent and tunnel play structure from the Gerhard grandparents for Sophia (it's her Christmas present really, but we wanted to have some fun. "We" being the adults of course). Sophia sits in the tent with books and toys...and it quite content to just be. It's her own little private space. Too cute.

5. Sophia loves the kitchen. The plastic, mini kind of Kitchen. Again a christmas present from the Mantel grandparents. When down stairs she spends oodles of time putting things in and out of the oven. There are little plastic utensils all over the floor in the basement.

On the whole, life is going very well for us. We are all happy and healthy, enjoying our time together. It's hard to believe how quickly 15 months can go until you have a baby!

More visits

We LOVE visits. Last week Grandma and Grandpa Gerhard came to see us. Well, first Grandma came and then Grandpa drove out after teaching all day Friday. Can we say dedicated Grandpa???

We had a lovely time with the parents Gerhard. There was lots of fawning and adoring and loving going on. There was a little initial shyness, on Sophia's part, not Diane and Arthur's! But that was soon shed as soon as Sophia found out that these new people would read her stories --usually the same one over and over again. Honestly, I think we all have Lentil memorized by now. Although, I think it is right to say that Grandpa was the preferred reader, as more often than not Sophia could be found sitting on his lap with book in hand. I think Arthur read that Dog book of hers about twenty times in one day.



One of thing we did with the whole family was pile into the car for a drive out to Lumsden. There we found Pumpkin Hollow...a place with multiple kinds of pumpkins to look at and buy. We all had a great time, but I think Sophia was happiest by far...she found cats to chase, little pumpkins to cart around, paths to walk/run down, and other children to play with. She was in her glory. Daddy and Sophia picked out the pumpkins which will be carved sometime this weekend, just in time for the 31st.








One of the fun things I got to do was to put my cake decorating skills to work. We had a little celebration dinner for both Arthur and David's birthdays. After a wonderful salmon supper (Arthur's favorite) we had cake. And boy did we have cake. I had purchased a teddy bear shaped pan and decided that it would be the cake the boys would get. It took me over two hours of work....but I think it was worth it.




It was a great visit, and we can't wait to see them again.

Next to stay in the guest room: The Grandparents Mantel!

What a face...

No one can accuse my child of being a poser (insert rolly eye emoticon here)...






BTW...I didn't take these pictures, the credit goes to Grandma Gerhard. How Sophia got her hands on a pack of gum is really beyond me. Sigh.

Later that day

So after her musical introduction this morning (see previous post), we went out and did some errands and had a generally entertaining day. When we got home and started to make dinner, Sophia made a bee-line for the harmonica, picked it up, and started to play. Seems she had been mulling over technique all day.



I think she has the hang of it now...