Birthday

Sofi's birthday was last month and I never blogged since I figured Cathy had it covered, but one thing:

Dada: How old are you today?

Sofi: Three!

Dada: Very good! You get it. How old will you be tomorrow?

Sofi: Four!

Sofi's Already Starting To Fetishize Money

Left some money on the desk after paying the housecleaners.

Sofi started playing with it this morning.

Sofi: What does money mean?

Dada: It can be traded for goods and services.

Sofi: Yeah. But what does it mean?

Sofi later gathers up the money and runs out the door.

Sofi: I have a lot of money and I'm going to play now.

Blitzkrieg Bop

Thanks to Rockband, Sofi's singing Blitzkrieg Bop around the house. This is her interpretation of the lyrics:
"Hey ho, let's go. Shooting in the backpack."
Repeat.

Sims 2 & Potty Training; Hot Chocolate; Coffee;

We're potty-training Sim Sofi and real Sofi at the same time, and they've made about the same amount of progress - neither of them are potty trained yet, but they're on their way. Sofi digs it: "I want to play Sims 2. I want to finish potty training Sofi." Don't tell her, but while she was napping I had to delete our entire family (where Sofi was a girl) and rebuild it with Sofi as a toddler to make the potty training work.

Skaff turned me on to making hot chocolate from scratch, using Hershey's cocoa - I use the recipe on the side of the box, but mix the vanilla in early (adding the vanilla late seems nuts to me, unless you want that alcohol kick...), a little less sugar, a little more vanilla & salt. Sometimes a hint of cayenne. Sofi & I used to make it together at night, but it seemed like it made her hyper, so we stopped. I'll make it by myself at night now as a comfort food and then have a lot left over the next day - Sofi can have some (she insists on it cold) and I can add it to coffee for a high-quality mocha. So that's where my disposable calories are going lately.

Sofi helps me make coffee in the morning, too - I'll measure the coffee grounds, she'll put it in the filter, put the filter in the basket, and turn on the machine. She gets really upset if I make it without her. Hmm...if only she could measure the water and coffee, she could make the coffee for me before I even get up...

My brother got me a South Park Stickyforms book for Christmas once upon a time - we were going to throw it out but then I figured I'd just remove all the really offensive stickers (Kenny dead, Mr. Hanky, the five-assed monkey) and give it to Sofi. She ignored it up until last night, and then discovered it on her bookshelf - stickers you can pick up and put down over and over? Rock! We'll have to take it away from her before she can read, though...

Energy: 60% (8 hours of sleep, interrupted once at 5 AM by Sofi needing a snack, plus 2 mochas)
Fun: 100%, Social: 100% (playing Sims 2 with Sofi before work)
Hygiene: 25% (haven't showered yet. Hey, something's got to give.)
Hunger: 10% (haven't eaten yet, either)
Bladder: 75%
Environment: 80% (clutter's starting to accumulate in the office, though it's a nice overcast day out so I've got the blinds open wide)
Comfort: 80%

Baby With Hearts

by Sofia

(Mama & I took dictation.)

Once upon a time, a baby with hearts.
I love you. I play under the blanket.
I can't play under the bed.
A baby with hearts.


I love you best, but I didn't want to
play with you. The words so high.
Okay. But Olivia can't find her best toy.

Nobody.
Nobody.
Nobody.
Today.
When I was a little girl me.

Diaper.

Whistle time. Hi!

The top of the beginning.
I can't. The play dough's so high
as the beginning of the book.
Today.

The flattened dough means
one in everything is so high.
Dough dough.
Double dough.

Pages so hard to best to read.

Underwear of try today.
Toothpaste is dough today.
The words go so wide today.

The penguin said, "Hi."

The End

The Verdict

She doesn't actually come into our bedroom - she opens the door, sees how dark it is in the rest of the house, and then wails on the threshhold.

Energy 50% anyway, Cathy took care of her this morning and let me go back to sleep...and coffee's kicking in.

Sofi English Dictionary

Nilla: Vanilla
Bwock: Block
Sindiler: Cylinder

In other news, she was in the bath with her bath letters the other day and said, "I'm going to spell DOG" and did! She got the D & the G upside down, but still. Mama has photographic proof. Of course, mama was the only witness...it could be a hoax.

Energy - 1% (fixing TCRs sucks my will to live)
Bladder - 60%
Environment - 90% (Cathy's been slowly and steadily organizing the house)
Social - 50% (I already miss all the people I saw in San Francisco & Oakland)
Comfort - 80%
Fun - 1% (did I mention the TCRs?)
Hunger - 80%
...what am I missing? Too tired to figure it out.

My Morning In Sims Terms

Environment: 95% (Just cleaned my office for the first time evar.)
Hygiene: 30% (Skipped my shower this morning - don't tell anyone.)
Energy: 30% (Stayed up late coding with Greg Taylor, our man in Tokyo...and playing Guitar Hero 3...waiting for coffee to kick in...)
Fun: 80% (See aforementioned GH3.)
Bladder: 90% (The coffee is starting to get there.)
Comfort: 80% (Decent chair, flatscreen monitors...)
Hunger: 60% (Haven't eaten yet today, but feeling fine so far...)
Social: 90% (Yay family, yay GH3 co-op, yay Skype.)

Not bad! Always room for improvement, but not bad.

Halloween

[08:46] brett_douville: This was you and Sofi, right? http://www.gloob.tv/games/2_dad_reenacts_bioshock_girl
[11:16] jdfristrom: Now how'd that get on the internet
[11:16] brett_douville: I figure it was Cathy. Who was probably a slicer.
[11:19] jdfristrom: Sofi had her first halloween candy last night
[11:19] jdfristrom: About 100 calories worth
[11:20] jdfristrom: She threw up on her pillow around 11
[11:20] brett_douville: Oh man
[11:20] jdfristrom: I said, "I hope this doesn't put you off candy." Think my reverse psychology will work, there?
[11:21] brett_douville: LOL
[11:21] brett_douville: Good luck with that

Favorite Color?

Sofi: Is this your favorite color, dada?
Dada: Which one? The green? Ok.
Mama: If that's not your favorite color, tell her.
Sofi: Is this your favorite color, dada?
Dada: No, my favorite color is black or silver or something.
Sofi: No, your favorite color is green.

Bedroom Door

Sofi just learned how to open the bedroom door, repeatedly and consistently.

Her bedroom-door-opening kung fu is strong.

So we enter into a new era of parenting. Will she come into mama & dada's room while we're asleep now? I'm guessing not - she usually doesn't even get out of bed when she has a nightmare, she just wails. But we'll see.

Dinner Conversation

Mama: There's a famous skunk named Pepe Le Peu. Get it? Peeee yuuuu.
Sofi: Two letters.
Mama: That's right! It's two letters. P. U.
Dada: Another word that's two letters is OK.
Sofi: I clicked on it.

Geek Gene

Sofi: (Looking at clock.) Where's the O come from?
Dada: Um...Zanzibar.
Sofi: (No idea what association led to this.) I want to play Dungeons & Dragons with you.
Dada: Maybe when you're older.
Sofi: I'm two years old.
Dada: Maybe when you're ten years old.
Sofi: Okay.

Product Recalls

Looking into the possibility of doing some Hasbro games got me thinking about the Easy Bake Oven recall. Cathy still resents her parents for not getting her an Easy Bake Oven as a child, and has repeatedly said, "Sofi's going to have an Easy Bake Oven, damn it!" (Well, not in those words.) Up until the recall, anyway.
So I started browsing various toy recalls online and am just damn thankful that Sofi never seemed to have an oral phase. She hardly ever put things in her mouth. Which is great, because if she did, she might be dead by now. We were very negligent in making sure she stayed away from small objects. (Our big collection of not-for-children-under 3 legos, for example.) Of course, if she did put things in her mouth, we would have been less negligent, but still.
Makes me worry about having a second child. What if the second one isn't so easy? And it just doubles our chances of something going horribly wrong.
Imagine being the inventor of the Hasbro Play Workbench thing, which has killed two with its cute little toy "nails". Ugh.

Cathy Didn't Get It

That last post, by the way, was about something that Sofi does regularly -
I ask her, "Do you know such-and-such"
and she always says, "Yes"
and then I ask her, "Oh yeah? What is it?"
and then she makes something up.

I've got a new plan - instead of asking "Do you know?" I'm going to ask "Do you want to know?"

Roman Numerals

The Winnie The Pooh books use roman numerals for chapters.

Sofi: There's two I's!
Dada: That's right. That's roman for two. And look, there's three I's. That's roman for three. Do you know what roman for four is?
Sofi: Yes.
Dada: Oh, you do? What is it?
Sofi: Snuggle.

Lego Vikings

Lego Vikings
by Sofi

"There's a little guy and he has a stick for poking a hole."
"It's not a boat."
"It has a shield."
"It's not a boat yet."
"It's not a boat yet."
"It's a boat!"
"And they made a little dragon."
"And they're still making it."
"The End."

(That's the story Sofi says when she reads the instructions for building the little Lego Viking set.)

Useful Sims 2 Cheats For Toddlers

Just came across this - Sofi wanted to move our sim-family into a new house that we couldn't afford.
So: Ctrl-Shift-C opens up the cheat window, and then "Kaching" gets you $1000, "Motherlode" gets you $50000.
There's also the aging problem - although it was cute the first time sim-Sofi grew up and I asked her what she wanted her aspiration to be -
Dada: "Do you want to be...popular...or...rich...or...smart-"
Sofi: "Smart!"
(I told mama later and she wasn't impressed. "She doesn't know what popular or rich means." Still, I was impressed by the snappiness of her decision.)
But we don't want our sim-Sofi grown up, so I haven't been saving the game after we play, to prevent sim-Sofi from aging, but turns out there's a no-aging cheat: "aging off"

Time Telling

Seemed like a lost cause, even though all we really care about is that she not get up before 7 AM. I'd say to her, "It's not seven yet," and point to her digital clock, but then a seven would show up in the minute place and she'd say, "It's seven!" And I'd say, "It has to be a seven on the left side," but though she can tell her left hand from her right hand I don't think she can generalize.
But this morning, at seven-twenty-something, we heard her shout from her bedroom: "It's seven o'cwock! It's seven o'cwock!"
I suppose we might still get the false positives...

I want the ol back

Sofi (crying): I want the ol back!
Dada: You want the old back?
Sofi: I made one with my hand. (Holds up 'O' shape.)
Dada: Oh, you want the O back? Where'd you leave it? Does mama know where it is?
Sofi: There's an O! (Points to digital clock: it's now 9:10.)

English - Sofi Dictionary

Friend -> Sriend
Farm -> Sarm
Funny -> Sunny
Disco Ball -> Dikso Ball
Chocolate Souffle -> Yummy Pessert

The Sims 2

Sofi's really getting into the Sims 2, it's her favorite thing to do with me now.

We got the idea because we were playing with legos and trying to build our house but we didn't have enough pieces. Then I remembered The Sims. We've made our family, including our cats - Cathy, Nermil & myself are totally recognizable as us - Sofi & Zoe not so much. And then I play, getting direction from her. A couple days ago the social worker came to take sim-Sofi away because she was failing school - and the quit button was disabled - so I ended the process and managed to save her. We started doing her homework then - and then real-life Sofi wanted to do real-life homework. So we gave her a sheet of paper and crayons and she made her Best Art Yet - she's gotten pretty good at filling large areas with color. She can also color inside the lines, when we get crayons at restaurants.

This is pretty awesome: most play I do with Sofi is somewhat mind-numbing for me--stacking blocks, playing very simple games, hide-and-seek, etc--but The Sims is a pretty challenging game, so trying to keep the family going and entertain Sofi with it at the same time is totally engaging.

But one thing we haven't done yet is make our own house - the starting family couldn't quite afford it. We'll have to work our way up to that.

Diaper

Sofi sometimes insists that I be the one to change her diaper
"Ask mama", I said
"No, you"
"I don't want to"
"You have to"
"You have to" is a new one, today's the first day she said that

It takes a village...?

I hear it takes a village to raise a child.

Anybody know where we can find a village?

With our parents and friends scattered all over the continental US . . . you might as well tell me it takes a luxury yacht to raise a child.

Grr - any help?

Not sure how to look this up.

I feel like my tax accountant is overcharging me.

They screwed up, so they've already lost my business. So I can't exactly say something like, "If you want to keep my business, lower your bill."

I'd happily pay them, oh, 2/3 of what they're charging. Which isn't a big delta. It's the principle of the thing.

I never agreed to pay this much for their services...

What happens if I threaten not to pay them at all?

I gather they'd send it to "Collections", whatever that is. And then my credit rating would be impacted.

But how badly? I've owned a home, I've paid all my bills, although sometimes a month or two late, (except for one $20 bill to Blockbuster for a late video...)...would I have trouble getting a home loan because once in my life I stiffed somebody?

S-h-y?

Sofi always avoided people, who would then say, "Oh, is she shy?" (And we could at that point give a lecture about how we don't like to use the s-h-y word because we're afraid she'll get a complex about it but we never do.)

Today, when running into one of our neighbors at the mall, Sofi cowered behind me and said, "I don't like people! I don't like people!"

That's right, looks like Sofi's inherited our misanthropy. Maybe it's genetic.

(Although, with one of our neighbors who turned out to be a stealth bitch, I have to wonder if maybe Sofi's just a good judge of character.)

It Doesn't Work That Way

I just showed Cathy & Sofi the Microsoft keynote speech where Bill & I were talking. Sofi said, "Where's mama?" and then, when it was done, she said, "I want to see mama at the dentist!"

I guess the logic is since there's video footage of what happens when I go off and do my thing, there must be video footage of when mama went off to do her thing?

Another Notch Smarter

We were playing with dice today and she started dictating the rules of the game - I had rolled a two: "You take two dice," she said.
I did, rolled them and got two three's. She then counted "One, two, three, four, five, six" dice out for me. Her first addition!

And she's getting more clever in her machinations to avoid bedtime. (Of course, there's the not eating dinner and then when it's time to go to bed saying she's hungry - but she's been doing that for a while.) Tonight, when I employed my standard trick - "Do you want to turn the light off or do you want dada to do it?" A tough question to answer - for a while she was turning them out herself - probably because she at least felt empowered that way. Later she realized she could say, "I want mama to turn the light off," because then I have to go get mama and that'll give her a few-minute reprieve. But tonight she said, "I want nobody to turn the light off."

I'm Old

Putting on a suit for Max's wedding I look in the mirror and realize I've turned into an adult somewhere along the way. What was it that give it away? The lost hair?

Jamie: I'm old.

Cathy: Daddy's old.

Sofi: Daddy's new!

Jobs

Dada: What's dada's job?
Sofi: Work!
Dada: What's mama's job?
Sofi: Scrapbook! (Or, sometimes, "Check e-mail!")
Dada: What's Sofi's job?
Sofi: Paz and airport!

Clearly, "job" means "what you do on a computer."

Swing Vote

Sofi: I want a new baby.
Dada: You want a new baby?
Sofi: Yes. Let's go get her.

The thing is, we're torn on whether to have another or not, and this'll probably push us over the edge into the "have another" camp.

I did try to talk her out of it, though:
Dada: You know we won't be able to pay as much attention to you if we have another baby?
Sofi: Yes.
Dada: You know a new baby will cry all the time?
Sofi: Yes.

Nightmare

Sofi: Ahh! Go away, dada! I want mama! (This is fairly typical Jamie-goes-to-Sofi-when-she-cries scenario.)
Dada: What's the matter?
Sofi: (Backing away.) I want the flower!
Dada: You want the flower?
Sofi: I want to eat it.
Dada: You want to eat the flower?
Sofi: Yes.
Dada: What flower?
Sofi: The sundaisy. (This is what she calls daisies.)
Dada: What sundaisy?
Sofi: The *other* sundaisy.
Dada: Where is it?
Sofi: I don't know!

But after that she calmed down and we snuggled.

Catch-Up

Did I mention that three or four posts ago the number of posts on "Fatherjamie" exceeded the number of posts on "Gamedevleague"? So that's a milestone.

Another milestone - Sofi figured out how the back button on the browser works, just from watching us. She got bored with the web-game she was playing on the fisher-price site and used the back button. I ran out and asked Cathy, "Did you teach her that?" No.

And this is weird - Sofi likes playing Warhammer Quest. Mimetic desire, I expect - she sees daddy playing with the "dada game" and wants to play too. So we just build the dungeon and move guys through it, we don't actually fight anything. I tell her the models' axes are for chopping wood.

She likes playing legos with me, and it practically degenerates into parallel play, I'll get so wrapped up building something myself. Guess I'm missing the point, there.

Jump Out Like Ninjas! Sofi And Games

Is a new game Sofi and play. We hide in the closet and then "Jump out like injas." Am I teaching her bad things? I'm sure she still has no idea what a "Inja" is.

Another game Sofi likes is concentration - she can't play it with a full deck, but we used QuickCards from www.plaincards.com to make a deck of cards with various shapes on them. That was a fun process of me asking her: "What shape do you want on the next card?" And then either letting her choose an image from Google or drawing it in Gimp.

Tried to see if she could play a "Go Fish" variant with the same deck, and she sort of could, with much hand-holding (and revealed cards), but it seemed like it was stressing her out. She was biting her thumb and looking worried when I'd say to her, "Do you want to ask me if I have any squares?"

Now that she's talking in complete sentences and saying new constructions every day it's hard to tell what concepts well be too advanced for her. Frequently she'll say, "I want to play a new game!" And we'll try to make something up out of components from other games and it will almost always fall flat - she doesn't get the idea of rolling a die and moving that many spaces along a track (although she does love to roll dice just for the sake of rolling dice...hmm...maybe some kind of one-die craps?); she doesn't get the idea of "winning". One succesful game was just to pull Fisher-Price animals out of a bucket and put them in a "zoo."

I didn't realize how brilliant the "Melissa & Doug" wooden jigsaw puzzles really were until we got Sofi some other wooden jigsaw puzzles that were more photorealistic. The Melissa & Doug ones have big tabs and the things in the puzzle are carefully placed to overlap clearly across multiple pieces, so it's more obvious which pieces go together. Sofi can do Melissa & Doug ones but not the less abstract ones we got at the Seattle Zoo.

We ordered "Go Away Monster" and then decided not to play it with her - she doesn't even know what a monster is yet, as far as we know, so why ruin that?

I Really Need To Chew My Food More

Warning - probably Too Much Information:
Kind of a nightmare, a couple nights ago, some food not going down, but I'm like, "Hey, I can still breathe, so I must not be choking." But it's really bad, and a swig of juice doesn't seem to help. So I sort of give myself the Heimlich and retch into the sink - that brings Cathy running. But there's still some food in there. Then, after another swig of juice, suddenly I can't breathe. Cathy sort of ineffectually tried to give me the Heimlich but I had more luck just sort of punching myself in the diaphraghm - so now I can breathe again, but there's still food in there. And I'm panicking. Hyperventilating. Freaking out. Finally, I throw up everything, and then things are okay.
These episodes have been getting worse and worse as I get older - but no learning is occurring. You'd think I'd slow down and pay attention.

We Have Spelling

Last night Sofi said, "C. T. A. Is cat!"

Bad Father, Father's Day

Yesterday, at the park, Sofi was reluctant to go on the slide by herself, something she used to do happily. ("Bye bye daddy," she'd say, and slide on down.) This time she insisted on going together - so I admit it, I tricked her, and put her on the slide in front of me and let go. She clutched at my leg and screamed, "I'm falling! I'm falling!" So I rescued her and we went down together but it was too late, the damage had been done, trust had been sundered. She cried and I tried to comfort her and she said she wanted mama so I said great, let's go home and see mama. But she wouldn't let me put her in the stroller. "Do you want to walk?" I asked. No. "What do you want?" "Mama." I didn't have my cell on me, so even if I wanted to call Cathy and make her drive out it wasn't an option. I know, this usually works: "I'm going to go home and see mama," I said. "You can come if you want." And I walked out of sight around the corner with the stroller.
She didn't follow; she just stayed in the park and cried.
Great. Now what? If I go back that's just negotiating with terrorists. If I don't go back I'm an ass$#@! I choose to be an ass%$#@ for several excruciating minutes but then she finally comes after me.
"You want to go home to see mama now?"
"Yes."
"You want to go in the stroller?"
"Yes."
Thank God. I start to put her in the stroller and she suddenly changes her mind, arching her back and screaming "No!"
I freak out. "Okay, now I'm angry! You've made me angry! Good job!" I force her down and buckle her up and push her home as fast as I can, with her crying most of the way.
Later, once she calmed down and seemed to love me again, I tried to apologize: "I'm sorry I put you on the slide by yourself." She seemed to get misty eyed and said, "No." I guess she didn't want to be reminded. Maybe when she's older she'll read this blog and forgive me then. (Or maybe she'll take it as symbolic of our entire relationship.)

So, had a great father's day, anyhow! Whether I deserved it or not! Breakfast in bed (poached eggs); fish tacos at Coho's; and Nishino's for dinner, which was a big surprise, since last time Cathy ate there she got sick, so I figured we'd never go back again. Best sushi I've found so far in Seattle, IMO, but I guess you should avoid the bivalves.
Sofi's now old enough to say, "Happy Sather's Day."
And Cathy gave me vouchers redeemable to play boardgames with her. And we're talking geek games like Emperor's Treasure and Battlelore. That's love.

Tag-Team Snuggling

Since Sofi prefers to sleep on the mattress on the floor of her bedroom, we can both snuggle her at the same time at bedtime, but she usually prefers to send me away. "Go away daddy!" And then she asks for me later when she's done with mama.
Just found out at a party last weekend that we're not the only parents who do this, who get the "Go away daddy" and do the tag-team snuggling thing.

Uh-Oh

Today Sofi learned to say, "I want to go somewhere new."

Boardgame geek in training

Since Sofi likes to play with my Tigris & Euphrates and Carcassonne sets we figured it was time to get her her own boardgame - boardgamegeek.com steered us away from Sorry and to Orchard. She does seem to dig it - she knows how to roll the die and take the right color fruit, but she gets confused if she rolls basket ("Shoe!") and can choose any two fruit - we've had trouble explaining to her what to do then.

Important New Words

Sofi learned "pretend" the other day when she was eating pretend milk and pretend cookies with mama. Sometimes she prefers pretend milk.

This morning I taught her "cub", "psade", "king", and "joker" - she already knows "heart" and "diamond" - now we just need "queen" and "jack". Maybe we'll skip Candyland and go straight to Bridge.

Tired

Sofi freaked out last night at 3 AM so we brought her into our bed where she woke us up every hour or so because mom wasn't snuggling her correctly.

This morning she saw me slumped on a stool in the kitchen:

Sofi: "Daddy's tired."

Jamie: "That's right, Daddy's tired."

Sofi: "Go back to bed, daddy."

My Math Must Be Wrong

So, if the Calorie Restriction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction) people are right - or even partly right - let's say someone who would ordinarily live to 70 on a 2500 calorie diet would make it to 90 on a 2000 calorie diet. (This is actually a pretty tame claim compared to what some CR people say.) That means those 70 years of 500 surplus calories a day took 20 years off of Scenario A's life. 70 years * 365 days/year * 500 surplus calories/day = 12,775,000 calories. Cost him 20 years. 12,775,000 calories / 20 years = 638,700 surplus calories / year lost. 638,700 calories/year / 365 days/year = 1750 surplus calories / day lost. 1750 calories/day / 24 hours/day = 70 surplus calories per hour lost.

WHAT? That extra slice of bread just cost me an hour of my life? That's worse than smoking! (They say a cigarette takes anywhere from 3 - 20 minutes off, depending on who you ask.) Here's an idea - smoke that cigarette to keep your appetite down so you don't eat that highly toxic slice of bread - you just added forty minutes to your life.

Did I forget a divide in there somewhere?


In a side note, Kurt Vonnegut died of an accident despite smoking all his life. One of those guys where smoking turned out to be the right choice all along - it didn't take a minute off his life (although maybe it gave him a nasty cough or something)! He got to enjoy that nicotine rush for all those years and didn't have to pay for it. Kind of like the guy who goes for the inside straight and actually wins - Kurt got a bad beat over on us all.

Catching up...

Sofi thinks the potty is where you sit to read magazines. Her magazine is actually the instruction manual for Cathy's camera.

We solved our nap issues by taking a page from Bill & Marlene with Kyra - Sofi has to have some "quiet time in her room" in the afternoons...if she bangs on the door and wants to be let out 45 minutes later, well, ok. 9 times out of 10 she naps.

Milestones: Sofi's succesfully ridden in the big-girl swing although she still prefers the baby swings when they're available. "Wanna go sast!"

Lately she pretends to read stories - (usually with that camera book) - she moves her hand over the page and babbles, occasionally throwing a recognizable word in there like Mama, Dadda, Baby, Nermal (the cat), dragon ("gagon")...she's doing it right now...sitting on the bed in the guest room (where I also have this computer set up.)

She makes me do dragons for her all the time. Dragons are like hand puppets...without the puppet.

She can count to ten, knows her alphabet (but doesn't seem to know those cool little letter things combine together to make words)...she seems to know all the words that are useful to her...but she keeps surprising me with new ones. She's gotten the hang of gerunds. She can say, "I'm dancing!" and "Dance, dada!" This morning she said, "Jus' kidding."

She loves wearing dresses! Don't know where she got that - mom almost never wears a dress. She'd rather be cold and wear a dress than wear a sweater.

Sometimes she calls us Mom, Dad, Mommy, Daddy - not sure where she got that.

She stopped reading, now she's singing the "Roly Poly" song to herself.

"I wanna draw," she just said. Must find the Nintendo DS for her...

Memorize, No Crying, Puddles

Sofi has memorized the words to "Run, Mouse Run" by Petr Horacek. It's pretty crazy - when she turns the pages and says the words it creates the illusion that she can read.

She no longer has a giant entourage of stuffed animals - she's settled on two favorites: "Mama Cat" and "Mouseykins" - both puppets.

Lately she's started doing something strange: when she gets upset, instead of crying, she starts saying "No crying, no crying" over and over again. If she gets more upset she actually will start crying, and then she'll start to scream "No crying! No crying!"

I don't think *we've* ever told her "no crying" - so where'd she pick it up from? Maybe she just doesn't like to cry? Sometimes when she starts saying "No crying" I'll say "It's ok to cry" and then she'll just say, louder, "No crying!" Or maybe she doesn't mean "Don't cry" - maybe she means, "No! If this condition persists, I'm going to start crying!"

One of her favorite things to do is splash in puddles. If she discovers a puddle she'll run and jump in it and she'll get upset if we try to take her out before she's done. Good thing we moved to Seattle.

And yesterday she learned how to use the Wii remote: they have a little drawing program built in the dashboard in the photo channel. I just handed her the remote and left the room - later, when I came back, I discovered she'd painted a lot of scribbles and heart stamps. Something that took me forever to figure out about the program - moving the remote closer to the screen makes the pen / shape bigger and vice-versa. I was spending many minutes mashing buttons trying to figure out how to change the pen-size while Sofi was yelling, "Too big! Too big!"

Lately naps have been challenging. She doesn't get tired until around 3 or 4 PM - if we let her nap then, she'll nap for an hour or two, and then we won't be able to get her to bed at night until 10 PM! On the other hand, if we skip her nap, she'll get tired twelve hours after she woke up in the morning. She'll then sleep eleven hours. So each day she goes to sleep and wakes up one hour earlier. So we've been giving her a nap every three or four days. I think the books say we're not supposed to do this, because kids like structure...and she's supposed to be getting more than eleven hours of sleep a night anyway...but when I was a kid my parents stopped giving me naps at an early age and I turned out ok. I think.

Cutest Voice Mail Evar

Cathy: Hello, it's your wife. Sofi, you want to say hi say hi daddy?
Sofi: Hi daddy.
Cathy: Say 'I love you.'
Sofi: I uv oo.
Cathy: Say 'I love you daddy.'
Sofi: Bye bye.
Cathy: Oh, ok, say bye bye.
Sofi: Bye bye I uv oo.

Unfortunately, Cingular (now AT&T) deletes the message after ten days whether you want them to or not. I even tried holding my computer microphone up to the phone to see if I could record it but no luck, it was too quiet to pick up. Sigh.

Moving Up

Cathy is moving up in the cutthroat world of competitive scrapbooking.
Not only is she on a design team - I guess that's the equivalent of an athlete getting sponsored - she just found out she's going to be in the #1 scrapbooking magazine soon.
Won't be long before she's supporting me.
No doubt she'll blog about it too at http://paper-cat.blogspot.com.

Cream sauce?

I think cream in spaghetti alla carbonara is a crime against humanity. The *New Best Recipe* agrees.
Apparently Sofi doesn't, though - tonight she started dipping her noodles in her milk. "Mak noodle!"
"Looks pretty gross, honey," I said.
She ate it up and liked it enough to keep doing it Then she started doing the same thing with the bacon. "Baton mak!"
She liked that too.
None for me, thanks.