Brush Teeth

We weren't sure how we were going to brush Sofi's teeth - she pulled away and resisted whenever we got a toothbrush close to her face.
Just handing her a toothbrush seems to work, though - she likes sucking on the bristly end. That's good enough, right? I mean, she's going to lose the teeth anyway.

Whoops

So we took Sofi to McDonald's today, and were peeling the fried stuff off the chicken and giving it to her. She loved it; ate a lot. And drank a lot of milk. And threw up. A lot. Of undigested chicken and milk. "Never coming here again," Cathy said. Sofi seemed unfazed by the vomiting; then I bumped her head when putting her in the car. That upset her. I don't know what happened - I've put her in the car many, many times without bumping her head...so I've been feeling guilty all evening.
Side note - we discovered that dipping the baked apple pie into the sunday makes for instant apple pie a la mode. A taste treat. Too bad we're never going back there.

The word for the day is...

"Smart". Whenever Sofi does something smart, we say, "You're so smart!" and make the sign for smart. In the elevator just now, she parrotted it back to us. "Marrrrrr." She said. And then later, in the bedroom, I noticed her do it out of the corner of my eye. "Marrrrr."

Sign language waste of time?

Sofi just learned how to say "more" yesterday. She's only been signing "more" for a month or two (guess I never wrote in the blog when she learned that one), so it almost seems like trying to teach her sign language was a waste. But it's not, really...the way she says "more" sounds like "mohhhhh" so it's good that she's got the hand gesture to make it clear.

Big Day

Today:

I sucked some food off my finger this morning with a popping sound - Sofi imitated me, right afterwards.

At lunch, she walked down steps while mom held her hands - then she went down a step by herself using the rail post.

I think something 'clicked' re: mouse usage. Reader Rabbit For Toddler up until today, has been pretty much a TV show for her where we click on stuff and she watches. Today she started using the mouse herself and really getting it - she was able to paint the screen and find the animals and move the shapes. Definitely lacking in fine motor control but she gets the idea!

Good Taste

I made the spaghetti alla carbonara extra garlicky / peppery tonight, and Sofi just ate it right on up and wanted more.

Again, she doesn't get it from me! I was a very picky eater at her age.

Already Fashion Conscious At Fifteen Months

Sofi's having a tantrum right now - she found a moccasin that doesn't fit her anymore and when we put her normal shoes on instead she threw a fit.

Also, sometimes she'll bring me a sweatshirt to put on her. And then she'll change her mind and bring me a different sweatshirt.

February In Review

Just noticed I haven't posted in a month.

So -

Sofi is WALKING.

She was taking tentative steps around Christmas, but she didn't really start to walk until later, and now she's toddling at a brisk pace. Every now and then she likes to crawl just for fun, with a smile on her face that says, "I know I'm not supposed to be doing this anymore but I like the variety."

On our morning walk I'll usually take her out of the stroller in the park and let her explore. She also likes to explore on our floor and the garage of our condo, but doesn't like the first floor, even though it has the cool gardens and water features and whatnot.

Sometimes she'll find her shoes and bring them to us and try to put them on her feet. What could she be implying?

She didn't used to notice stuffed animals. Around Christmas that changed - she started getting attached to her Peter rabbit. Now she's fully attached, usually whining unless we give her one or two to play with. Her favorites:
- the Siamese cat she's had since birth
- a tiny bear
- a bright pink pig
- a Pooh she picked out herself at Disneyland
The cutest thing she does with the animals is she'll try to feed them and give them milk from her sippy cup. Then she'll hand the sippy cup and the animal to us, as if to say, "You feed him now." And when we do, she'll laugh.

Speaking of Disneyland - we're planning on moving to Seattle soon so we thought we should take Sofi before we left - VERY crowded, even though it was a Wednesday. Was it Spring Break or something? Maybe we needed this. She didn't have a terrible time, but she didn't really appreciate it, either. We took her on the carousel and the teacup ride and both times she just looked puzzled. "What is this? I don't get it." She has more fun when I toss her in the air. (You know the toss, the you-throw-her-up-in-the-air-but-you-don't-really-let-go toss. I'm not a bad father, really.) She seemed to be really fascinated by the outside of It's A Small World, though, and various other stuff.

On the we're-bad-parents front... Cathy and I make them for ourselves almost every day, and the first time Sofi put mom's straw in her mouth and took a sip we thought it was very cute! "Oh, how cute, she's drinking your mocha!"
And that led down a slippery slope, and now Sofi's a mocha junkie. If she sees mom has a mocha she'll start to bleat until mom breaks down and lets her drink. Chocolate and coffee, great for babies. Mom now has to stealth drink the mocha - wait for me to take Sofi on her walk or whatever and then make one for herself in secret.

Adjustment

Trying to wean Sofi since she was biting Cathy too much. We've been working on it for a month now - just yesterday we decided to stop the morning feeding, which is an adjustment, because normally I'd just get her when she woke up and hand her off to mom and we'd all fall asleep again. Now I'm feeding her, which means waking up at 6 and staying up. Which means she gets tired & upset earlier, which means - what? Earlier nap and bedtime, or two naps? Yesterday we tried two naps, which was fairly effective, but she's kind of used to getting a feeding at naptime, so we're still on three feedings...
We'll get there. Just a little setback.
It's the neighbors - they always clump around upstairs at six, and we're sure that's what wakes Sofi up. Cathy wants to complain but I don't feel right asking them to not walk around their apartment.

Actually, that reminds me of a funny story. The previous upstairs neighbors used to make this loud pounding noise at the ungodly hour of 7:30 AM (I used to get to sleep in to 7:30? Luxury!) and I did go up to complain. His wife answered the door, I asked about the pounding noise, and she said, "Oh yeah, that's Tom getting his leg on. We'll do it in a different room from now on."
I was too stunned to say the right thing, I mumbled something like, "Yeah, thanks, because it's been waking me up in the morning." It wasn't until months later that I was talking to her and said, "You know, if Tom wants to put his leg on, he can do it wherever he wants, really."

A Normal Day

One time in junior high I got obsessed with the idea of having a normal day - a day where nothing even slightly out of the ordinary happened, no class cancelled, no pep rally, no hot dog lunch. This meant it could only happen on a Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday because Wednesday was the hot dog lunch and Friday was, well, Friday.

But something would happen every day - a substitute teacher, illness, something. It went on for weeks. It got to the point where, on the brink of being about to have a normal day, my mom suggested I do something - I forget what - and I freaked out because it would ruin the normal day.

I'm not like that anymore.

I like the google maps hybrid

And since it won't print out by itself, I like doing alt-printscreen to bring it into photoshop to print it out. I'll do it even for places I've been before, just because the nice printout pleases me so.

Too Smart For Toy

Sofi doesn't put the blocks through the block-shaped holes through the lid - she takes the lid off and then puts the blocks in.

Biting

Sofi's been biting while nursing for the past few weeks. Our attempts to "punish" the behavior - stop nursing for a while - have been ineffective. Enough's enough: time to wean her.
Since Sofi used to snack on and off all day, this is kind of tough. What we're trying today is everytime she asks for milk (the one sign she knows, and to her it doesn't mean milk-from-a-bottle, it means mommy milk - shame that the one thing she knows how to ask us is going to always be met with denial) we give her food instead. So far, it's been going great, and she's been willing to accept the surrogate. Of course, it's only noon.

Learned to dance before I could walk.

Just like the Abba song!

Well, actually, seems like she's learned both more or less at the same time - she was bouncing to the Black Eyed peas (she has rhythm, I swear!) and from there realized she could take little mincing sidesteps...and then some tiny real steps.

We have steps.

Sleep

I expected I'd be getting full nights of sleep by now. Now that it's been more than a year. But I've been going to bed at 11 or 12, and Sofi gets up at 4 or 5, so no. Overall, total, yes, but that break in the middle. And then I have no energy in the mornings.

And sometimes - like now - I stress out. "If I don't get to sleep soon, I'll only get such-and-such hours of sleep!"

Last few mornings, trying to sleep through the 4 AM crying. Gave up this morning. Sofi wins again.

Which is fine, really, co-sleeping in the morning is a pleasant family feeling.

Screw it. Guess I'll get up and write a blog entry.

Sofi can't get enough cheese

One thing she likes to do lately is feed us - she'll stuff the cheese in our mouths whether we want it or not...

One Year

Haven't written in a while. Brain dump:

Sofi is one year old as of 11/27. I should go back and read through the blog archives. Her grandparents (on my side) were down for Thanksgiving and her birthday - and she seems to hate them. She cries when they hold her; she doesn't play the "giving game" with them - in fact, when she gives me something and I hand it to her grandma she'll immediately snatch it back and give it to me again. If I persist in handing the item off to grandma, she'll start to get upset. Hoping this will pass with more exposure. We'll see them again at Christmas.

She's starting to amass a small collection of toys - nothing compared to her cousin, but more than enough. She likes balls and musical instruments. (One toy, where if you put balls in receptacles it plays music, is a real winner.)

She's starting to show some signs of language - she makes the "milk" sign all the time, now - we think she thinks it means "mommy", because that's who she gets when she makes it. Started giving her cow milk yesterday when she made the sign and noooo that's not what she meant. Words I think I've heard her say include "ball", "book", "turkey", "zoo". We've also taught her how to stick out her tongue and say "ah" - recorded some video footage yesterday of her holding a car adapter like a microphone and singing "ah" into it.

Recording video is a pain, by the way. Unlike photography which is more fire-and-forget, with video you've got to download it and edit it and it's a bit much. I'll record video when she's extremely cute but that's about it. I do somewhat regret the purchase of the camcorder.

This morning, when she was trying to put a baby food lid on a yogurt container and getting a little frustrated that it wasn't working, something occurred to me. I always imagined we start out seeing the world as it really is, and as we get older we grow filters and make abstractions and turn the world into symbols. Like, when we're young, instead of seeing "table", we see this brown wooden platform-and-legs shape with a grainy texture. *The Scientist In The Crib* says this isn't the case, but it didn't really hit home until I saw Sofi trying to put the baby food lid on the yogurt container. It seems like, to her, "baby food container" and "yogurt container" are the same - so why can't she take the lid from one and put it on the other? It's like we're born with the abstractions and it's not until we're older that we start noticing refinements. Which is why at first we draw stick figures and it's not until later that we can draw people with thickness and lighting and so on.

Baby Bach

Baby Bach is like heroin. I've never seen Sofi sit so still for so long with such focus.

One word we're sure she knows the meaning of is "Kiss" - she will kiss us on command, now, although she prefers mommy. Maybe because of my beard.

Hit the zoo on Friday. Whoops - turned out it was Veteran's Day. Crowded. Funny thing about being unemployed, you don't know which days everyone else has off too. Still, after we got through the line outside, it was fine. Sofi seemed to like it, babbling happily as the day wore on.

shake

Sofi's learned to shake her head no.

A natural progression, I guess, from turning her head away when we offer her food...

daylight savings time

Remember when I said that daylight savings time was great because it helped me fit to Sofi's schedule?
Well...
Why can't it be year-round?
Sofi's waking us up at 4:30 AM now...