Saturday we went to Battleground to visit Grandma and Grandpa for Grandma's birthday. Barry and Jess joined us too. Sophia had fun all day even in the car on the way up. She played with her sunglasses, very proud of herself when she got them on her face, which she could only do with them upside down. In Battleground we played all day, and cooked Grandma dinner, since I didn't think it fair to make her cook her own 
birthday dinner. (As Darla gets such pleasure out of cooking for others, she may have actually preferred to cook.)As always, Sophia basked in the devoted attention of 6 adults. Boy is she going to have a rude
awakening when Barry & Jess' baby comes in January! We've told her about the baby, and now when we mention Aunt Jess, she says 'Jessica, baby" which I think is toddler shorthand for "Jessica is having a baby." Lately we've been trying to teach her that when she eats food, it goes to her tummy. So on Saturday as we told her that Jessica's baby is in her tummy, Sophia looked both confused and concerned.She had a great time playing with everyone, especially Grandma and Grandpa. She loved the
Christmas decorations and spent a long time playing with long strands of beads. Yes, we know this is not the best toy for her to have, but since she was supervised full-time by 6 people, we 
thought it fairly safe. She enjoyed "decorating" Grandma. Later, she had fun combing everyone's hair. She's not very gentle at this process. She and Grandpa invented a new game Sophia calls "boom boom." She sits on the landing in the middle of the stairs, and Grandpa throws a ball up to her and it bounces around and falls back down. Sophia laughed, laughed and 
laughed until her face was all red. 
She had a great time all day and was in one of the best moods we've seen her in for a while. If only we could give her this much attention all the time, she'd never be grumpy!
