A Little Post About A Sophaloaf

I have meant to post about Sophie for a long time. I wrote that post about Austin and his interests and ideas, but when I started to write about Sophie, I sort of got hung up. She just changes all the time! So every time I tried to start this post, it'd be wrong, like a day later. But she deserves a post, so here it goes... because I do not want to hear about this later from her therapist.

She's super cute.

She walks like a champ. She even runs and kicks!

She sings when she's going to sleep. "Ni Ni See See." She also likes to lay down randomly during the day and pretend she's singing herself to sleep.

Occasionally we watch "My Cat From Hell." This is only relevant because Jackson Galaxy discusses the difference between "Bush Cats" who hide on the ground and "Tree Cats" who need to be up on shelves or whatever. Sophie is a tree toddler. Also, Austin thought the guy who came to do the contract for some work we had done on the attic was Jackson Galaxy. And later, he thought the guy in the hazmat suit who came to remove the old insulation was an astronaut.

STOP. STOP. This post is about Sophie!!

There are less flattering things I could share... like the fact she beats us up when she's going to bed every night. And then laughs hysterically. She also likes to poke you in the eye, while she says, "eye!"

She is utterly fearless. She steps into pools, off edges of play structures. Unless you're a friendly person who wants to say "hi." Then she buries her face in the nearest parent. Weirdly, she is not afraid of our chickens, even though one has pecked her almost every single day we've all been out together.

tree toddler

we do this every time we go to breakfast

business business business... numbers...

I also am starting to get opportunities to take her on her own adventures... While Austin goes to preschool, she gets to explore the city.

But I think her favorite times are still with her brother <3

Sophie Fan Service

She may not mind if her brother opens her presents now, but this isn't going to be the case forever. So if I don't want to hear about it for 20 years, 20 years from now, I need to get my act together on a Sophie birthday video. Extra points if you can name the song without looking...

First Birthday Party!

You know what's great about 1 year olds? They have no idea when their birthday is, so when everyone gets sick, it's not a big deal to shift that party to the next weekend.

You know what else is great about them? They have no idea what presents are, so when their 3 year old brother is completely losing his marbles about festively wrapped packages he's not supposed to touch, you can relent halfway through the party and let him unwrap everything while she sleeps in a cake coma.

That about covers it. Oh yeah, they're pretty cute too.

even when they have chocolate all over 'em

and especially if I'm not holding them. (Thanks, Mere!!)

90% asleep

The unwrapping

100% asleep

The table of snacks and cake. We had a polka dot theme. A whole platter of candy dots, a jar of M&Ms...

Plus Kix and Trix and Rainbow Chex Mix, which was astonishingly easy to make and came out beautiful and delicious! The polka dots on the cake are more M&Ms...

#Pinterestwin!

Note that everything has now been crammed together in the middle of the table. It was very very hard not to touch the cake. Very hard.

Why is everyone looking at me?

I wonder what the neighbors are doing?

Polka dot cascarones

I was super proud of my balloon chandelier, so I took way too many picture of it. I got a huge crochet hoop at Goodwill a while back, (like, 18 inches in diameter maybe?) and that thing has been great fun. It was the crow's nest for Austin's pirate party, with some black cloth and skeletons. For this, I tied ribbons all around the inner hoop and then tied balloons on the ribbons and then slid them around until it looked dense enough. Then I put the outer hoop on and suspended it from our chandelier over the table. Very easy! And when Daddy took it down, he put the balloons to good use in the play pen.

The fungeon

If You're Going to San Francisco

Be sure to wear flowers in your hair...

or pitcher plants

and butterflies

and maybe you have a fat lip too, but on you, it looks good

and maybe flowers are happier on the ground

where you can run (or crawl) through them

That was our trip to the Conservatory in Golden Gate Park, without even including any shots of the awesome playground, the carousel or the trip to Haight Ashbury, where we saw "Jack Sparrow" according to Austin. There were a lot of "pirates" in the park that day, and the ones in earshot were pretty good sports too.

Labor Day!

Well, you wouldn't know it from the photos, but we had some kind of bug this weekend. Little dude was hot and fevery on Friday and Saturday, had a cough Saturday but only at night today. So he was not his usual boisterous self and we spent a lot of time watching Octonauts and whining. Octonauts is kind of our new thing, and we spent about two days watching it, which averages to three viewings of all the episodes on the DVR. But averages don't matter here, because we watched our favorites about 8 times each. Go ahead, ask me about The Great Penguin Race.

Anyway, Labor Day was actually great, even though the Sophieloaf is still awake.

And crawling!

No, wait, she's standing!

And we got a shot of Sophie with her first rainbow!

It's sort of an ongoing project of Mom's to recreate photos we took of Austin with Sophie. It's not something I do a ton of, but it is fun, kind of like a treasure hunt. Here's Austin's "first rainbow picture" from February 2011.







Anyway, we had a great Labor Day. Although neither Mom nor Dad got much of a day off...

And we did get one raised bed built and filled and planted with a little bit of a practice garden, since it's really late in the season. Austin had fun watering!

 And we enjoyed having a little time outside after being cooped up so long.