Temper, Temper!

Sophia continues to be quite strong-willed. I'm guessing she'll grow out of this one about never. Oh dear. She has learned where the cookies (actually rice cakes, but it's all in the name) live and frequently points to the cupboard demanding one.

She also prefers to hold her own books, often picking it up and throwing them on the floor when we try to hold them for her. Aunt Meghan and Uncle Patrick sent her a wonderful Baby Einstein book for her birthday that she never lets us read to her. She looks at it all the time, but only by herself.

One of her favorite games is finding Daddy's belly button. Generally, any mention of "belly button" will cause her to start tugging on Paul's shirt.

Tonight she had a massive, 10 minute tantrum. She was angry that Paul wanted her to sit next to him to read a book; she wanted to sit on his lap. So she screamed, and screamed, and cried. When he left the room she followed him so she could continue to scream out us. We had to remind ourselves the inspiring words of our friend Derek, "I will not negotiate with terrorists."

Frequently as Sophia has started to talk more I have quoted to friends and family a passage I once read in a book about baby babble. I thought it would be funny to share it with you. It's from The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde. (Fforde is one of my favorite authors, although I admit I don't like this book as much as his Thursday Next series). The Big Over Easy takes place in a world where nursery rhyme characters and ancient Greek gods live among us. The main character, Jack Spratt, has invited Prometheus (yes, the Titan) into his home where Prometheus encounters Stevie, the one-year-old, and they have the following conversation:

Stevie then stared at Prometheus with all the serious that one-year-olds can
muster, with is quite a lot.
"Da-woo," he said at length.
"A-boo," replied Prometheus with a large smile.
"Da-woo!" said Stevie with a shriek of laughter.
"You speak baby gibberish?" asked Jack.
"Fluently. The adult-education center ran a course, and I have a lot of time on my
hands."
"So what did he say?"
"I don't know."
"I thought you said you spoke gibberish?"
"I do. but your baby doesn't. I think he's speaking either pre-toddler nonsense, a form of infant burble or an obscure dialect of gobbledygook. In any event, I can't understand a word he's saying."

I think it expresses how many of us feel about speaking to a toddler. Sophia clearly knows what she's saying, and most of the time we understand her. Certainly other toddlers understand her quite well. I think toddlers speak their own language that we then train out of them by teaching them our language. I wonder if toddlers speak the same language all over the world, or if it's different in each country?

New Pictures

Not much is going on at the moment. Life is slowly returning to its normal schedule as I get better. I don't have much to report, but I have Sophia pictures to share, and I know that's what many folks come to our blog for!

We went to Portland and Battle Ground for Father's Day. On the ride up I took a picture of Sophia sleeping in the car. I think every child does this, but it's still funny to see her contort herself into what appear to be agonizing positions while sleeping soundly.

While in Portland my parents gave us the rocking chair that was my mother's. It was repaired and cleaned up by my family's good friend Bob who builds beautiful furniture. (He built the end table behind Sophia in the photo to the right.) Sophia loves her chair and sits and rocks in it quite frequently. She also climbs on it and this frequently results in her being tipped out onto the floor with the chair on top of her. We tell her no, and she does it even though it makes her cry every time. I'm hoping sometime she'll learn from experience and stop doing it, but I think there's a good chance she'll learn from experience and do it better so the chair doesn't dump her onto the floor. (Try clicking on the photo of Sophia and Paul so you can better see Sophia's expression. She's giving him quite a look of mischief.)

This week has been fairly warm, and one evening I gave Sophia her first Popsicle. She was quite entertained by it and ate about half. She was also quite a sticky mess afterwards, but she's a toddler, she deserves to be a sticky mess from time-to-time.

Life Goes On

I continue to heal from my surgery, albeit more slowly than I'd like. I went to work today for the first time, but, sadly, did not make it the entire day. Hopefully next week will be better.

Sophia has handled the change in our routines the past few weeks quite well. She's been a bit more whiny and grumpy than usual, but that's to be expected under the circumstances. We saw Grandma Darla and Grandpa Earl last weekend and Sophia had great fun stealing Grandpa's glasses. Tonight Uncle Barry is here and Sophia, after taking a while to warm up to him, happily climbed on the playground with him, and brought him books to read. When it was bath time she had a massive tantrum until Uncle Barry came to entertain her. We think that she was upset about missing Uncle-Barry-fun!

Recently she has become quite excited about taking things out of drawers to play with them. We try to limit this fun to the drawer with the plastic storage containers. It's currently her favorite game.

Adoption Day!

Yesterday was the first anniversary of Sophia's adoption day - the day we went to court to finalize her adoption. This is a date that many adoptive families celebrate, in one way or another. June 6 will always be a special day to us, the day our family was made permanent. This year, to celebrate, we got Sophia a balloon which was a big hit.

My surgery went quite well, and I'm not in too much pain. It's certianly much better than it was after my hernia surgeries! They did discover that I have endometriosis so there will be continued treatment for that. So we'll have to see what happens.

My parents were here most of the day that I had surgery. Sophia discovered that Grannie's wheelchair is very climbable. Grannie didn't seem to mind! Also, Sophia is now saying "Grannie" and sometimes "Grandpa," but she still mostly calls my father "Ba-Ba." Boy did they like hearing her call them by name! She also enjoyed having them there. Grandparents are always a big hit with Sophia and Paul and I appreciated their help.

Fun with Daddy

I took some funny pictures of Sophia and Paul yesterday and had to share them. Yesterday, Sophia found a golf ball and discovered that it and Daddy's pocket made for a fun game. She must have played the put-the-ball-in-the-pocket-then-take-it-back-out game for about 20 minutes. Every time she'd drop it in Paul's pocket, she'd make a very surprised face as if she wasn't expecting it to disappear.

Also yesterday, she stared a new game of pretending to be asleep. I think this game has real possibilities!

Finally, yesterday she stared saying "Barry" when we point to a picture of her uncle. It was pretty cute.

Memorial Day Weekend & other excitement

I'm sorry it's been so long since my last post. There is more about that below.

We had a good, if very busy, Memorial Day weekend. I had to work on Saturday but Sunday, we were all quite busy. Paul went golfing with a friend, so Sophia and I went to Portland to hang out with Grannie Nancy and Grandpa John. Sophia has named him "Ba-Ba," much to his chagrin. While in Portland we got out of the attic this wonderful toddler-sized rocking chair that belonged to my mother as a child. Sophia loved it. It's being repaired by my parent's good friend Bob (who builds amazing furniture) and soon it will come down to live with Sophia.

Sunday my mother, Sophia and I went to the cemetery where my grandfather and other members of the Slayton family are buried. When I was a kid we went up there every year on Memorial Day. Every year we'd have the same conversation. We'd mark where my grandfather is buried, show the places where my grandmother will go when she dies, and then indicate where my mother and I would be buried someday in plots my grandmother owns. (Yes, I know this is a strange conversation to have. My family has always had an unusual way of dealing with death.) One year, I got very upset and wondered where my husband and children would go. So, my grandmother bought me four adjacent plots. I was the only kid in my grade school who owned burial plots. This year, for Sophia's first trip to the cemetery I was going to give her the whole speech, ultimately indicating where she would be buried someday. (I know she couldn't understand it, but it's good to start early). But, the best-laid plans are often ruined by toddlers, and she slept through most of the time at the cemetery. The speech will have to wait for next year.

In Portland, Grannie Nancy - the expert shopper - gave Sophia some beautiful new clothes. Sophia loved them so much that as we were showing them to Daddy that evening, she had to run around the house carrying them.

The other exciting thing we did Sunday was together with our friends the Maddox family, who have a little girl just a month older than Sophia. We played at a park and then had dinner together. It was a lot of fun. I think the cutest thing that happened was when Bailey went over to Sophia and gave her a hug. Sophia seemed a little confused, but all the adults were mushy about it.

Monday afternoon we had all the grandparents down for dinner, to share in a beautiful Copper River salmon one of Paul's law school mentees had give him. Sophia provided ample entertainment for the gathering. She even mooched some of Grandpa Earl's cobbler and seemed quite pleased with herself.

Tuesday, May 29th was my 33rd birthday and Aunt Amy's 30th. We send Aunt Amy this picture of Sophia and a short video. I hope Aunt Amy's birthday was better than mine. I celebrated with incredible abdominal pain. Wednesday I went to the doctor and they first thought it was appendicitis. As they were looking for that, they discovered a softball-sized cyst on my right ovary and the doctors (all of the 3 I've seen this week) are pretty sure that is what was causing the pain. So, Wednesday the 6th I'm going to have the cyst and my ovary removed. I'm sure it will be great fun! It's a laparoscopic surgery which should be easier to recover from than my previous hernia surgeries, which should be good.


So, it's been a long and crazy week. Next week doesn't look to be any less crazy. This will probably be the last post to the blog for a while.