Humpty Dumpty

Why is Humpty Dumpty always depicted as an egg? There's nothing in the nursery rhyme that explicitly says he's an egg.

Sofi was fairly disturbed by the picture of the fallen, cracked open Humpty. She kept turning back to that page and saying "Oh no" and looking sad.

I give up on citysearch

For the third time now, I've tried a top-ranking restaurant on citysearch and been immensely disappointed. How does one find good restaurants, anyhow? Zagat's, I suppose.

Stocks; "Wahvu"

A year ago I pretended to invest in some stocks - if I had really done it, I would have beat the S&P by a factor of two, because one of the stocks was Merck. So suddenly I find myself being one of those guys who thinks they have a system...who think they're smarter than the mutual fund managers and big computers on Wall Street...when really I was just lucky - I had a 50% shot at beating the S&P, right?

Still, nagging voice. Did I have a 50% shot at beating it 2x? I shouldn't have played this game. That's how Vegas gets you.

Something Sofi's been saying a lot, insistently, is "Wahvu" - and she gets more and more upset as we try to decode it. "You love us? You want something? You want food? You want to go driving? You want to be picked up? WHAT?" Any ideas what it means? She won't tell us.

Sofi To English Dictionary, Volume 2

"why" - water
"dan" - dragon
"bobo" - diaper (no idea where she gets this one)
"doggie" - doggie
"woof" - sound a doggie makes
"mow" - sound a cat makes
"moo" - sound a cow makes
"beeeee" - sound a bee makes
"beh" - bear
"guy" - guy
"pee" - pig
"no" - nose
"no beess" - nose beast
"buh-bye" - bye bye
"go" - go
"uh-oh" - uh-oh
"okay" - okay

Not a comprehensive list, just some of the highlights.

Latest Art

Cathy bought Sofi new markers the other day and she took her art to the next level!

"Autumn"

"Surface"


"El Pollo Diablo Surveys the Void From His Parapet"

Hobo Spider (or - I'm Going To Hell)

I heard that hobo spiders were the Washington equivalent of scorpions - so recently when I saw a spider crawling around our home I looked up just enough on the internet to get kind of anxious. This morning the spider was just hanging out on the wall and it looked just like the photos of hobo spiders on the internet. Oh my. But how to be sure?

I captured it under a glass and went to a website on spider identification and it turns out that the differences between the more common "large house spider" and the hobo are barely visible to the naked eye. They recommend a magnifying glass. I tried to tell the difference anyway and couldn't. Then the pdf recommended submerging the spider in alcohol to kill it and make the differences more obvious.

So I did. And, yikes, it thrashed around in there for a while. It was not a pleasant, quick death. It was a knuckle-biting sort of death.

Oh - and - not a hobo spider as it turns out.

So, yeah, going to hell.

Cutest Thing

I make little 'dragon' hand puppets to entertain Sofi - just my bare hand with the forefinger and pinky sticking up - a habit I got from Ed Del Castillo back in college. I open my hand, say, "Where'd he go?" and then make the dragon again - "There he is!" Much delight.

Then Sofi started doing it too! She makes tiny baby dragons with her little hands, and she can't stick her fingers up, and she says, "Wha go?" and "Dereeih!" So cute!

"My kid could do that in five minutes"

Sofi's discovered abstract expressionism:


She quickly moved into pontillism:
These are from her purple period:
Later, her work went in new directions:

More words

"Ein" - onion. I didn't start liking onions until I was in college - although I suppose mom snuck them into our spaghetti sauce and we didn't mind. Tonight she made me hunt for bits of onion in the chili and give them to her, one by one.

She's learned the sign for "I love you", sort of - she can't do the pinky finger. Still, awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! And she's not just mirroring us, I found out tonight. "I love you," I said, without doing the sign, and she did the sign back.

"If you didn't blog about it, it didn't happen."

-Cathy Pascual

Thought we jumped the gun on buying Sofi legos - we went for the 2-and-up recommended Duplo instead of the Quatro - seemed like they'd fit her hands better. She couldn't actually snap them together at first, but she liked arranging them and carrying them around. But just now I saw her succesfully connect one. Woo! Legoized.

She's got a technique, by the way - I don't think she has the strength to snap two together by themselves - she has to set one on the floor, put the other on top, and then press with both hands.

More Sofi Words

"E" - any letter of the alphabet. We can impress our friends by pointing to the letter E in a given word and saying "What letter is this, Sofi?" "E!" Pointing to any other letter ruins the illusion.

"Ashoo" - bless you. She uses it when we burp, too.

We're down to one nursing a day. Almost completely weaned! I'm handling naptime and most of bedtime: there was a while there where I actually had to physically hold her down, or she'd stand up and do her damnedest not to fall asleep. She didn't like it much - she'd fall asleep crying, and then sniffle in her sleep. After a couple days of it she caught on. "You mean if I just lie here I'll fall asleep? Ok." She used to run to mom when I'd say, "Story time!" because she knew it really meant bedtime. Now she's into it, running into the nursery ahead of me. Things are good!

Sofi To English Dictionary

Mama -> Mama
Dada -> Dada
No -> No
Dadee -> Thank You
Ba -> Ball
Mobo -> Motorboat
Duck -> Duck
Cat -> Cat
Nermal -> Nermal (one of our cats)
Bubbo -> Bubble (and maybe also yogurt and apple)
Ey -> Egg
Ishish -> Fish
Shoes -> Shoes
Go -> Go
Mo -> More
A or E -> Letter

No User Servicable Parts Inside

The Dugans gave Sofi one of those ball-popper-walker things a while go. Balls are Sofi's favorite thing in the world (imagine my joy when she was watching me play Kirby's Canvas Curse on my DS and she said, "Ba!") and today she rolled the ball popper up to me and started clawing at the plastic housing, saying, "Ba! Ba! Ba!"
"You want me to roll it around for you?" I asked, and started to, but no, she picked it up and handed it to me again. "Ba! Ba! Ba!"
I knew what she wanted. "You can't have those, they're inside."
"Ba! Ba! Ba!"
So I found a screwdriver and opened the thing up and gave her the little balls.
She was very happy.

Momobo

Sofi really likes the "motorboat" song, where you bicycle her legs faster and faster. She calls it "Momobo" or "Mobo" and laughs and laughs and kicks her legs. Sometimes she'll do momobo on her stuffed animals; today was the first day she tried to do momobo on me, grabbing my toes and saying, "Momobo!" Too cute, it kills me.

Scrapbook Published

Cathy and Sofi are, like, famous: Cathy just got a scrapbook page published in *Scrapbook Answers* latest issue - it's on page 47. She's big time! Well on her way to going pro! More on her blog.

How Sofi eats an orange slice:
* take one small bite
* mash rest in hands, getting juice everywhere
* put mashed slice in garbage
* ask "More?"

Once I've seen Sofi be selfish: our neighbors grandchild wanted to play with Sofi's pushcart-scooter thingy and Sofi took it away from her. But just the other day she wasn't: we were at the children's museum at the mall and she loved the ball machine, but even though it took her a long time of standing in line before she got her own balls, she started giving them to the other kids.

A couple times in a row last week I heard someone say that you're a bad parent if you nurse/rock your baby to sleep and then put them in the crib. You're tricking your baby, they'll be upset when they wake up in the dark, blah blah blah. Screw you people! It works. And I think babies are smarter than you give them credit for: sure, the first night they wake up and cry. Maybe the second night. But after a while they figure it out - "Hmmm...if I'm given a bath and put in my PJ's and fed in the nursery it means I'm going to end up in the crib."

Also, one of the books on sleeping, the one that says "Make sure your baby naps plenty during the day if you want them to sleep well at night", is a crock! My anecdotal evidence is that lots of napping during the day => trouble sleeping at night and little napping => good, long night's sleep. Mark Nau: "The only way to get something published is to say something wrong." Case in point.

Babysitter?

People act like it's easy to find a babysitter. I find it kind of intimidating to find that person you're going to trust your daughter with.
Anybody reading this from Seattle know a good one? jdfristrom@gmail.com

Entertaining Sofi, Part 2

 
She demanded I give her the guitar. But I'm afraid she's just not old enough.

We did get her a new keyboard that she likes, though. Unlike her previous one, which stopped the rhythm track when she pressed a key - it was like it was punishing her for trying to play! - this one keeps right on going. And it can play two note chords! All for $20! Science marches on. 

Entertaining Sofi, Part 1

 
Trying to wean Sofi means I've got to find ways to entertain/distract her when she wants to "snack". I got this idea because I thought I heard her say "bubble." We've gotten her down to four feedings a day. I know, that's not very impressive. 

Just Realized

I never put up a link to my wife's blog. Well, there it is now, on the right. paper-cat.blogspot.com, not to be confused with papercat.blogspot.com, which is something else.