Time with Aunt Sue

Friday was a very mixed day for me. We started by attending a memorial service for a much-loved family friend, Barb, who died a week ago. It was a lovely celebration of her life but it was very hard to say goodbye. After the service Sophia and I went to Scappoose to my aunt and uncle Sue and Jim’s house. My cousin (ok, if you want to be technical, 1st cousin once removed) Justin is the quarterback for the Scappoose High School football team and we wanted to see him play at least once. The plan was for Paul, Sophia and I to race up to Scappoose after work Friday in time for the game. But the memorial meant that I didn’t go to work at all Friday and Sophia and I were able to have a wonderful, relaxing afternoon with my aunt, and time with Sue is always time well spent. I know few people who are more likely to cheer you up when you’re sad. We had a fun afternoon with lots of playing with Sophia and looking at old pictures. Sue’s daughters Cheryl and Amy and my uncle Jim were all with us for dinner and Paul made it just in time to scarf down some soup and head off to the game.

It was Sophia’s first live football game, although as you may have noticed since she is a Smith she has watched a few football games on T.V. Since the game didn’t start until 7 and she usually goes to bed between 7 & 7:30, and she’d had such a strange day with the memorial, reception afterwards all the time in the car, and being in a new place, we did not know what to expect from her at the game. She was perfectly behaved! She looked around with wide eyes all the time, and frequently seemed to be watching the game. I’m quite sure she understands football better than I do. She and I left at halftime because we didn’t want to push our luck, but she was very good. The red snowsuit she is pictured wearing was mine when I was little. It kept her nice and warm.

Saturday morning we hung out with Sue and Jim and had a lovely time with them. Sophia and Sue had some good time to bond. I am really lucky to have such a good relationship with my aunt and I hope Sophia will too!

Grandpa Weekend

Sophia's Grandpa John stayed with us this weekend. He was in town to attend a Willamette University Board of Trustees meeting and instead of going back and forth to Portland each day; he spent Friday and Saturday night with us. My mom’s friend Brenda stayed with her. It was quite a treat for all three of us to have him visit and Sophia seemed quite fascinated by him. Granted, for these few days, he has been the most interesting and strange member of the household, so who can blame her?

Today we tried to go to a farm that has all kinds of fun fall activities, corn and hay mazes, a hay ride, a pumpkin patch and other things. Unfortunately, by the time we got there it was pouring and we decided not to wander around outside. We did take the opportunity to pose for a few pictures in their gift shop and buy fresh corn to have for lunch. At least Sophia is too young to be heartbroken by the change of plans. But the ride to and from the farm was fun for Sophia since with my father here, she got to have someone ride in the back seat with her and she loves to have company back there.

I don't think we reported on Sophia's six-month doctor's visit which was held on Tuesday. She had all of her vaccinations and weighted in at 18 lbs 13 oz. She is 27 3/4 in tall with a head circumference of 17 inches. She remains slightly above the 90 percentile, the same place she has been since birth, which is one of the things doctors look for. They don't want to see dramatic decreases in percentile position. She is quite healthy, but we think she may have a skin allergy to apples. Her six month visit was a little late because the doctor wanted to wait until she was over her ear infection.

Lately we have noticed a tendency for Sophia to create what we are calling a "blast zone" of toys around her: whatever toys she is playing with end up spread in about a circle just beyond arms' reach. It certainly increases the mess around here!

Things continue to go about on schedule for her. She really loves eating her finger foods, but we've only got her on the veggie puffs so far. Today we gave her some mashed potatoes. She seemed to like the taste but have a hard time with the thickness. She isn't crawling yet, but looks like she's about ready to sit up from lying flat on the floor. That will be a big step since one of the things she's doing a lot lately is falling over and bonking her head into things that are giving her bruises. It's awfully hard to see her with bruises on her face, but I guess we'll just have to get used to it as she gets more mobile.

More fun and excitement

Today we had more fun and excitement in the Wittmayer and Smith household. (Or as everyone else likes to think of it, Sophia's house.) This afternoon Sophia and I went to a lovely party with my friends who work at our branch library. They are not people I get to see a lot but I always enjoy them. They made the most lovely gift for Sophia. Pat painted the picture and Mary

Beth did the calligraphy. It is a very special gift and we'll hang it up in Sophia's room tomorrow. If you can't read what it says, click on the picture, which should take you to an enlargement so you can. The words are worth reading.

I was having such a good time that I forgot to take any pictures of Sophia with everyone. But she sat in the middle of the room and entertained folks the entire time. I think it's her job. If only it brought it more money!

Later in the evening, Grandpa Earl and Grandma Darla stopped in for a brief visit. They had been in Eugene most of the day with Barry and Jess. Sophia is always happy with the attention she gets from her grandparents!

Today Sophia is wearing this pretty new dress that Grandma Nancy bought her. Grandma Nancy takes her grandmotherly shopping duties very seriously and picks very cute clothing! This was the first day in this new dress and it was quite a hit. (The hem was quite nice to chew on for one thing.)

I've seen these very cute baby birth counters on websites and forms a lot and thought it would be a fun thing to add to our blog. Unfortunately, I'm not savvy enough with html to figure out how to keep it up top or someplace permanent, so it's going into this post. At the time I'm putting it in this post it shows that Sophia is 6 months, 2 weeks, and 2 days old, but I believe it will advance every day.

Big day in Eugene

Today we spent most of our day in Eugene. It is about halfway between Salem and Roseburg where our good friends the Simmons family live. We met them for lunch and a walk in the park.

Alex did an excellent job pushing Sophia in the stroller, although she kept a sharp eye on Daddy to be sure she was safe. Or perhaps she was keeping an eye on Daddy giving a ride to Gabriel wondering why he was sharing his shoulders with another child.

She also loved hanging out with Ann Marie and especially loved touching her sweater.
After the park, we went to visit Aunt Jess and Uncle Barry who live in Eugene. While there, Sophia had her first taste of ice cream. It was a big hit.

Also popular was playing with her aunt and uncle who seem quite taken with her. It had been a while since we'd seen Aunt Jess and Sophia got to show off her more hair, new teeth, and ability to sit up.

After the fun, full day, she slept all the day home. If only both Mommy and Daddy could, but one of them had to drive home!

Visits with the grandparents

Sunday Grandparents Earl and Darla came to visit for the day. They took care of Sophia for a few hours while Paul and I got a much-needed break and went to see a movie. This last week has been pretty tough with Sophia sick, and we're both quite drained. Tonight, my parents came for dinner.

Sophia continues to improve, although she is still a bit grumpy, tires easily, and her sleep patterns are off. The last few mornings she has woken up about 3:30 needing to eat. That's just way to early! She is also crying a lot in her sleep. It's almost like she's having nightmares. Do babies have nightmares?

Today her day care provider thought she had an allergic reaction to the antibiotic and that was causing a rash on her stomach. We think this is unlikely since Sophia hasn't had any antibiotics since Thursday. The day care person assumed she was still taking them. It seems that the rash is more of a heat rash from having a fever for so long. But it just seems to be one thing after another! We talked about starting a new food yesterday, but decided that with the way things have been going lately, it probably wouldn't go well, so we'd hold off. Hopefully things will get back to normal soon. Whatever normal is.

Sophia much better

Sophia is much better this evening. Her fever finally broke this morning about 11 and since then she has been vastly improved. She is still grumpy and tired, but that is to be expected. Most of the day she has refused to be put down, so we have reminded ourselves what it was like to have a newborn, except that she is much heavier now. She was 18 lbs 4 oz at the doctor's office on Wednesday. That's a bit heavy to carry all day long. She let us put her down while we ate dinner, but whined to be picked up when we were done. If she's feeling better tomorrow, we'll begin to remind her about self-sufficiency.

Sick Sophie

Poor Sophia. She is very sick. She has an ear infection and a high fever since Tuesday. The last time we took it, the fever was 102.4. She saw her doctor on Wednesday and was prescribed antibiotics. Unfortunately, she refused to take them, vomiting every time they got into her mouth. Thursday, Paul took her back, got a different form of oral antibiotics and had the same reaction. Finally, late Thursday afternoon in their third trip to the doctor, the doctor gave Sophia a shot of antibiotics and we won't be giving her any more orally. Why they didn't do this in the beginning I'm not sure. By the way, Paul is a saint. He was home with her all day Thursday, dealing with the projectile vomiting, the crying, the high temperature, and all the trips to the doctor. He is my own personal hero.

She is a miserable little girl. She doesn't want to sleep. She doesn't want to eat. She doesn't want to be put down. If you jostle her or move her or change anything she cries uncontrollably. Today my friend Liz said that we have been lucky that we've gotten to six months without Sophia getting sick. This is certainly true. This, however, is no fun. I wish we could help her understand what is going on. It's so sad to see her in such misery.

Time Stands Still For No One...Especially Not Sophia

The six-month milestone has brought new, big changes to our lives and Sophia's life! She has now officially outgrown 3 large boxes of clothes, her Snugglie, her bouncy seats, and her car seat! As we phased out the bouncy seats, her "Command Centers" have become bigger parts of her life, and she seems to enjoy that most of the time. Today, however, we had to get replacements for the Snugglie and the car seat. That meant a trip to Portland to Babies 'R' Us. After putting Sophia in and out of several different car seats, and taking a trip to the car to make sure the one we liked best fit, we got Sophia a new "convertible" car seat. That means Sophia can continue to ride backwards in it until she is 1 year old (as is required), and then, after she turns one, the car seat will turn around so she can face forward! Won't that be an exciting day. Anyway, here is Sophia modeling her new car seat.

She was pretty skeptical of this new contraption on the ride home from Portland. But, I'm sure she'll get used to it. It does not have any place to hang her favorite toys in front of her, but she is getting better at holding onto her own toys, and, her friend Bailey (age 7 mos.) gave Sophia a "kick pad" toy that sits against the back seat and does entertaining things when she kicks it. Thank you Bailey (and Bailey's mom and dad)! The biggest drawback to the new car seat for mom and dad, is that this seat stays in the same car all the time. So, now Sophia will generally always be traveling in the same car, and mom and dad will have to trade off cars depending on who is driving Sophia to day care that day. I guess we'll get used to it.

In addition to car seat shopping at Babies 'R' Us, we also found a new baby back pack to replace the Snugglie. Although Sophia really loved the Snugglie, it was scrunching her legs and it was killing daddy's back. After we got home, we took a walk with the new back pack.

Sophia seemed to enjoy the new view (and once she figures out that she doesn't really need to hold on for dear life, she'll probably enjoy tugging on dad's ears and hair!). As you can see, Sophia is really fascinated by trees.

Finally, after cursing Nebraska's defeat to USC for the last week, Sophia decided that it was time to take charge of the team this week.

Although we could not travel to Lincoln to supervise the team in person, Sophia decided that she could call the game just fine from our office. Wearing her new Nebraska outfit from Great Aunt Cheryl and Great Uncle Doug, Sophia coached a near flawless game, as Nebraska beat Troy 56-0. Next week, revenge on the Jayhawks!

We hope everyone had a good weekend. Sophia continues to keep us busy, but she also continues to be the light of our lives!

6 Months old!

Today Sophia is 6 months old. I don't quite know how that happened. It seems that the past six months have rushed by, while some of the individual hours and minutes have gone very slowly (especially those involving dirty diapers and crying). We have had a wonderful six months, and the past few weeks have been especially great. Sophia has been very happy and lots of fun with lots of laughter and smiles, except when it came to our most recent food choice. We've tried her on Gerber chicken. That has been rather firmly rejected, and frankly I don't blame her. It looks and smells disgusting!

Today I read that at about this point babies will begin to be able to hold something in each hand so this evening Paul tried putting a toy in one hand while the other was already holding something. Like magic, the hand already holding a toy would drop it. It was pretty funny. A few times she held on to both toys for a few seconds. Apparently, once she learns to do that, it will be no time before she learns to bang them together and make noise. Our house will never be the same again. Our poor kitty!

Our little girl loves to stand. She is capable of sitting but doesn't particularly enjoy it. She likes to stand, thank you very much. She is gradually learning to stand without someone holding on to her. But she has to be very focused on holding on to a piece of furniture to stay steady. She's usually not that capable of concentration, so she'll pick up one hand, and over she'll topple. But she thinks falling down is funny, so all is well.

She is celebrating being 6 months old with her first runny nose. Considering that several times today I told people that she had never been sick, I believe this is all my fault. Hopefully the runny nose won’t develop into anything more major. She’s also been sneezing. Luckily, she also thinks sneezes are funny, so that’s ok.

What a funny little girl we have. Boy are we lucky!

Reunion Weekend

L This weekend was our 10 year college reunion. We did not attend. We have quite fond memories of our time at Willamette, but many of the people we would want to see we're still in contact with and the reunion events were really expensive. Maybe we'll go to the 20 year reunion. The one thing we did attend was a Debate team reunion dinner which included people not just from his year but from any year who wanted to attend. Sophia and I visited for about 30 minutes just to show her off. It was fun to show off our cute baby!

Some of our friends we did want to spend time with who were in town for the reunion see were willing to see us at non-reunion activities. Liz and Tye came over and had breakfast at our house Saturday morning.

Saturday turned out to be a very busy day. We had Liz and Tye over for over for breakfast. Then we took Sophia to our other friend Liz's house and she watched Sophia for a few hours while Paul and I had some much-needed date-time. (Yea Liz!) We went to lunch and a movie. Then Paul's Mom, Dad and brother Barry came over to watch the Nebraska football game on TV. They lost to USC. But the family wasn't devastated, something about Nebraska beating the spread. I try to be supportive but I don't really understand. Sophia just loved all the attention from her fan-club.

Sunday we were going to attend a Northwest Adoptive Families Association event but after the busyness of Saturday we decided to hang out at home. We also swapped out all of Sophia's summer clothes for fall and winter clothes. She has a lot of clothing she'll never wear because it won't be the right size at the right season. Oh well. It's just very hard to predict that sort of thing. Most of her warmer clothing is 12-month sized which is a bit big, but that's better than buying a bunch of new clothes.

Sophia has two developmental updates. The first is that she has figured out how to play her "piano." Granted all she has to do is press a key and it plays about 5 seconds of music, but she has figured that out and has spent a lot of time this weekend greatly delighted by her ability to do it. The other fun thing she got to do this weekend was play with a spoon. Yesterday when we were feeding her lunch we gave her a spoon to play with and it immediately went into her mouth. She's not yet feeding herself, but she does seem to understand what the spoon is for. Of course, she's also using the spoon to smear food all over her face, but it's a start.

Recent Round-up

Not much is going on around here except the usual day-to-day routine. Sophia continues to grow and amaze, of course, but what else do you expect?

The big news is that she has two front teeth. Unfortunately, we haven't gotten any good photos of them. She was pretty cranky for several days before they came through, but ever since has been in a very happy mood.

Her vocalizations have recently become more than just squeels and other noise and she has started making recognizable word-like sounds. I'm quite certain that she is calling me "Ma" but she's probably just playing with sounds. She does like that sound quite a bit and I'm only mildly smug about it. Paul says that I won't be so smug when she wakes up at 3 a.m. some morning calling for "MAMAMAMA" and he sends me in to tend to her. So I've been saying "Da Da" to her a lot to help her learn that sound too.

She has developed a really funny new facial expression (shown below right). I'm not sure what it means but it does not seem to be an angry face. She'll make it when she's quite happy. Perhaps it's just a "look what I can do with my nose!" face. Either way, it's hysterical to see her do it.


The weather around here has been absolutely beautiful the past few days so we've sat out on the front lawn for a while each evening. She seems to find the grass quite intriguing, and that helps her practice sitting up for long periods of time. Soon the drizzle will start and we'll be trapped inside until June so it's nice to enjoy this perfect weather while it lasts.

Labor Day at the Zoo

We spent our day at the Oregon Zoo today with our friends Christina, Peter and Miriam. We had a wonderful time and returned home this evening happily exhausted. This is our second year of meeting them at the zoo for Labor Day and last year we were only hoping for a baby. This year, we have a 5-month-old Sophia to share it with!
This year was definitely better.

To the right is a photo we took last year thinking it would be a good funny picture to put in our adoption photo book. We did include it. This year we re-took that picture with Sophia. That felt good.











We parked across Washington Park from the Zoo near the rose garden and took the train in which was lots of fun for all except for Sophia who got a little scared and overwhelmed towards the end. The rest of us thought it was fun way to start the day and really loved not having to fight for parking near the zoo. The only bad part was the steep stairway we all had to climb to get to the train platform. There is no other access, and no handicap access.





We roamed around the zoo all day, having a great time observing the animals. Sophia was quite content alternating between her stroller and snugli all day. She took a few naps. She seemed to observe some animals and find them fascinating. Most exciting to her were the giraffes or as we like to call them "big Geronimos" (Geronimo is the name of her stuffed giraffe shown here.)



We ate lunch during their bird show and enjoyed watching the birds perform by flying over our heads. Some of them fly just inches above the crowd so I'm glad we weren't sitting in those areas!


After we separated, Paul, Sophia and I had dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory, which growing up was always one of my favorite restaurants in Portland. We can honestly say that Sophia had her first meal there, although she did not eat their food.

We're all quite tired after this long day, but we had a fun day with good friends, and what better can you ask for from a Labor Day?

First Football Game!

Well, just as night always follows day, football season--specifically, Nebraska football season--necessarily comes around this time of year. But for Sophia, this beginning of this year's football season is a new and wonderous experience. Thankfully, due to the wonders of digital cameras and the internet, you too can experience Sophia's introduction to the glories of Cornhusker football!
The day started like any other day. Sophia got up at 5:30 and enjoyed a little time in her "command center." From there, Sophia, mom, and dad drove up to Portland so that the day's festivities could begin. On the way to the game, we stopped by the nursing home to visit Sophia's great grandma Slayton and her great grandma Wittmayer. Sophia's visit made them very happy.

From there, Sophia and dad dropped mom off to spend the day shopping with Grandma Nancy. While there, they picked up Grandpa John so he could join the day's football festivities. Sophia, dad, and Grandpa John then drove up to Battle Ground to Grandma Darla and Grandpa Earl's house where family, food, and football were awaiting. Grandma began the afternoon by explaining the finer points of Nebraska football to Sophia.
Later, dad and Sophia discussed some of the finer points of Nebraska's new-found passing attack. As dad explained, Nebraska didn't always know how to pass the ball, but now even they have entered the 21st century of college football (check it out, even the play on the television screen was a pass play).

Of course, the mighty Huskers being what they are, Nebraska defeated their day's foes from Louisiana Tech. Sophia celebrated by riding around on Grandpa Earl's shoulders.

Yes, that really is grandpa's head. Not surprisingly, it was a little too big to fit into the picture. But, as you can tell, Sophia was quite excited about the victory (and the shoulder ride).

After a fun day of football, Sophia, Grandpa John, and dad returned to Portland where we joined mom and Grandma Nancy for dinner. Before dinner, Sophia and grandpa chatted about all that she had learned about Nebraska football that day. Clearly, grandpa was impressed.

Well, after all that fun, Sophia was all tired out and she and mom and dad went back home. But, surely she had glorious Nebraska football dreams all night (which is why she awoke this morning in such a happy mood.

Sophia is already counting the days until next week, when Nebraska faces the mighty Nicholls State!