Our Valley View Home

Sophie has been acting somewhat interested in potty-related things lately, often making comments like "Daddy pee potty," so we figured it couldn't hurt to get her a potty. We don't want to push potty training, but we thought it might be good to encourage her to get familiar with the subject. She was fascinated with her new potty and spent quite awhile taking it apart and climbing in and out of it.

With last week's heat wave, Sophie spent much of her time in just a diaper. Here she is at the dinner table (outside on our deck) munching on her first ever ear of corn. It was pretty tasteless early-season stuff, but she loved it!

We took advantage of the hot, thirst-inducing weather to finally convince Sophie to drink from a sippy. For the last few months the only way she would drink was from an open cup, with one of us holding it or hovering close by to catch spills. Some yummy diluted apricot nectar with ice cubes proved too much to resist, and after a minor tantrum ("Opent! Opent!") she was sold on the sippy. And now she prances around the house with it, wielding it like she's some tipsy medieval noble with a flagon of ale.

We eat Indian food fairly often, and Sophie adores the shortcut raita we make to go with it (she loves anything yogurt). Here she is covered in the stuff. It's hard to see, but she has a chunk of cucumber in the clump of hair on the side of her head. Mealtimes are always a happening in our house.

With record-breaking temps in VT these past few days, we've done our best to stay cool. On Monday, Sophie and I hit Lake Bomoseen's Crystal Beach with Grandma. Sophie had a blast in the water and, true to form, even more fun in the sand. At one point she swiped a couple of buckets from another kid's sand toy collection and took off with them, exploring the far reaches of the park with mommy in hot pursuit. The picnic tables provided lots of climbing fun and Sophie enjoyed hanging out on them. I forgot to pack a swimsuit so she spent most of the afternoon in a t-shirt and swimmy diaper... ...and the rest of the time in her birthday suit. Who can blame her for wanting to be naked as much as possible in the 90 degree heat?

Lately Sophie has been getting into smells. She crinkles up her nose and breathes in & out dramatically several times before declaring what she's detected. Yesterday she came home from the store with her daddy to smell that I had the oven on (with the pizza stone in). To our great pizza-loving pride, she sniffed and announced "Pizza!" although no mention had been made of our dinner plans. Then this morning, on the way to Vergennes, she sniffed audibly then proclaimed "P.U. Cows!" as we drove by a farm. Then as we climbed the stairs approaching her babysitter's apartment, she inhaled deeply and spouted out "Breakfast!" anticipating the eggs and English muffins awaiting her at Sarah's. And finally, detecting her own dirty diaper this afternoon, she scrunched her nose and said "P.U." although when I asked about her diaper, she insisted "No poos" and ran away. Apparently she hasn't yet figured out how to smell something and keep it a secret, or to blame it on the cat.

Sophie and I (mommy) packed into Grandma's car last week and the three of us headed down to visit Grandpa Morris, Cindy and Aunt Louise in New Jersey. Sophie was a gem in the car and enjoyed all the sights and adventures. Her favorite thing was a great park they took us to, where she could explore lots of different playground equipment and watch all the big kids. And, of course, the dirt. She enjoyed dumping handfuls of dirt on all the animal ride-on toys.

I just wanted to take a quick second to post about some cute things Sophie has done in the last few days. On Monday, she was miserable with teething pain much of the day so in the afternoon I took her out for a distracting visit to a local playground. It turned out to be the best medicine and Sophie was quickly transformed to the happiest kid on the planet. She enjoyed going down the big slide with mommy and crawling (halfway) into a twisty tube, but her favorite was the sandbox and gravel that was everywhere. She doesn't even need toys. Within minutes she was distributing handfuls of sand all over the railroad ties around the box, shrieking happily "WEE, DIRT! WEE, DIRT!"

Yesterday, I rolled down the window for a minute and I heard from the backseat, "WINDY!" I didn't even realize Sophie knew that word and then she used it in context. She said it again during our lunch outside in the grass when a piece of paper towel went flying by in the wind. It's so neat to hear her saying words that we haven't tried to teach her. And it's of course nice when she finally says things we HAVE been trying to teach her. For a month or so now, we have been working on the signs for "I love you" and just yesterday Sophie said all three words, with signs, as I was putting her into her carseat. Needless to say it was a happy, happy moment. Sign language has been such a great tool for us and has seemed to help inspire her to use the spoken words, too. She does have some original takes on certain words, like "fladder" for "flower," and she tends to put an extra syllable on some words ending in D, as in "roa-dah" and "col-dah" and "foo-dah." And since she parrots nearly everything we say, we really have to be aware of what's coming out of our mouths these days. We'll keep chasing her with the video camera and hopefully have more to share soon.