Sophie

Last March, Justin and I stood in the pediatrician’s office with Sophie. She was a mere 6 or 7 days old. I remember so clearly Justin expressing concern over the fact that Sophie cried all the time. She didn’t really cry all the time, but when she did cry it was so intense, so full of fury that hearing 30 seconds of this ear piercing stomach clenching screaming was akin to about 10 minutes of your typical newborn cries.
Our pediatrician smiled in her laid back way, shrugged her shoulders and said (as much to us as to the writhing, kicking, purple ball of rage that was Sophie, naked on the weight scale) that she was just “feisty”.
Justin and I smiled at each other. We liked that, feisty. A year later Sophie has proved herself to be just that. Feisty. Or to borrow a term from Tyra Banks: she’s fierce.
Sophie is not afraid to stand up to Jude. We went through a phase where Jude wouldn’t let Sophie play with any of his toys. He’s still not much for sharing, but Miss Sophie girl can more than take care of herself.
(As I type this, they are bickering over Mr. Potato Head. Sophie as usual, is wining).
In a rare move last night, I made us a dessert to eat for after dinner. I made cherry Jell-O with grapes inside. Justin fed Sophie her Jell-O and he literally could not scoop the Jell-O in to her mouth fast enough. He would give her a spoonful, and then try to take one from his own dish. Before he could get his spoon to his mouth, Sophie was hollering at him. She’s not talking yet, but does she ever know what she’s saying. And we’d better figure it out fast, if we know what’s good for us.
Sophie has moments when absolutely nothing or no one will substitute for mummy. Sometimes I am just not able to take her at these times and Justin will have to do until I finish whatever it is I am doing. During these times, Sophie will scream and scream and then when I become available she will get over to me as fast as she can and more often than not she will stop to turn around and yell at her father a few times. The tears are gone, the sobbing has stopped but this girl is still angry. And she is not afraid to let it be known.
Now, I don’t want to paint a negative picture of Sophie.
She is the sweetest, most cuddly baby you’ll ever meet. She smiles at anyone who smiles at her. She flirts with people in restaurants; she will rest her head on your shoulder if you pick her up. She will wave hello when she hears the front door open regardless of where she is in the house. She will share her last bite of cookie with you and give you a wet kiss on the nose, cheek and chin.
She plays peek-a-boo with strangers and laughs at all her brother’s knock knock jokes. She is so proud of herself when she accomplishes things and when she is allowed to do things she sees her brother doing. She gets up and dances at the first sound of music – whether it’s on the radio, TV or if she’s hearing one of us singing. She will blow on any exposed bit of belly she sees.
She is my pretty baby girl, the prettiest baby in the world and it breaks my heart that I have to leave her (and her brother) in a week and a half to go back to work. I know I should just be thankful I got to spend this year with her, to get to know her and watch her develop into this distinctive little personality that she is but I can’t help being selfish. I don’t want to leave either of them.

My Sophie Girl

She's walking! Sophie started walking last week. She's taking it slow, she doesn't walk every day, but she loves to stand and absolutely loves to sway back and forth to music.

We've been hit by the Wiggles bug in our house so we do a lot of singing and dancing. Jude loves to rock out, but Sophie girl, she loves to dance.

Here she is dancing (note Jude: rocking out)

Sophie playing the tambourine

It's hard to tell in pictures, but she's actually walking in this sequence

a wee bit more

And just a quick update:

Sophie girl is months old today. She is still not walking, but man! Can she ever crawl like the wind. She's fast. Especially if she's got one of Jude's toys and she's trying to get away from him.

She is crawling up and down the stairs with ease, she knows to back off the couch and my bed. She's getting there. I think it's in her nature to hold off on doing something until she knows how to do it right. She was slow to roll over, but when she did there were no quarter turns for her. She went from motionless to 360 rolling in a day. Same with crawling. She didn't do the commando style pull herself along or push backwards, she just crawled. (There may have been a bit of bum crawling, but not for more than a few days).

Honestly, I think she can walk. She just doesn't want to do the precarious tottering. When she lets go, she'll be gone.

She can also hold her own against her big brother. The other night Justin and watched the two of them struggling over something. We didn't know what they were fighting over, but we were curious to see how it would end. Suddenly, Jude went down and Sophie made a grab for something. When she came up she crawled away and sat up a little ways from Jude. In her hand was a box of raisins.

Unfortunately the box was closed so before she could eat her spoils, Jude composed himself and came over and snatched them. We gave her her own box after that.

It's Sophie's Turn!

Finally, something about Sophie!

Sophie has been able to sit up unassisted for quite sometime now, as long as you put her down in a sitting position. Of course, inevitably she would reach out for something or someone and manage to work herself onto her stomach. She would roll around down there happily for a while until she realized that she couldn't get back up. Then the tears would come.
Over the weekend it occurred to me that even though she still sometimes cried on the floor, it was more because she noticed that everyone was in the kitchen and she was still in the living room. Or perhaps it was because her big brother yanked a toy away from her.
But yesterday while I was typing the goose post I sat her down in front of the mirror. And then I looked over at her and she was lying on her stomach trying to get a hold of the vacuum cleaner nozzle. And then I looked again and she was sitting up? What?
So I watched her like a hawk all day. And finally right before bed, she did it. She sat up all by herself! I am trying to remember how Jude did it, but I can't quite picture it. I think he went from his stomach and sort of rolled over into a sitting position. Sophie gets up on all fours rocks back and forth a bit and then just sits on her bum. Congratulations Sophie! October 15th is your official sitting up day!

Taking care of little sister

So unlike her brother, Buppy isn't such a fan of the cereal we've been feeding her. The first spoonful goes into her mouth with a big smile. The next one needs a bit of coaxing to get in there... All subsequent tries are met with resistance. Until Monday.

I set out Jude and Justin's dinner on the table. I went back to the kitchen and made Sophie's cereal and then brought that out to the table. I went back in the kitchen again to get my dinner and I hear Justin asking Jude where he's going. Jude says very matter of factly, "Bophie." He climbed off his chair, got Sophie's cereal and went back to his seat. Justin gave him a hand up and he sat and fed Sophie her dinner. And if Jude's aim was better, it probably would have been the most she had ever eaten. She opened her mouth wide at Jude's "Umm!" prompting and didn't even really get upset when the spoon slipped a little too far in the back of her mouth (Justin spent most of that meal saying, "Careful Jude! Not too far!").

The downside to this of course was that Jude didn't eat his own dinner. If we could only figure out how to get Buppy to feed Jude...

ch-ch-ch-changes

One of the things on my Things To Do List is to get a bunch of pictures printed of both of the kids for their own respective baby albums. Of course Jude has changed - you'd expect him to as he is almost 2 years older than he was when he was... ahem... born.

But Sophie!

Man, has she ever changed.

Take a look here at pictures of her when she was about three weeks old.

And now look at her, 4 months later.

I wonder what the next 4 months will bring...

pictures at last

Hanging out, watching tv


"The gang" - Jude, Sophie, Hannah and Marcus


My son is a lunatic



Pretty girl

Sophie's Day*

*Edited to add actual text and pictures. Whoops.

So I haven't posted much lately, we've been busy getting ready for Sophie's christening. Which happened on Sunday. It was a perfect day, and Sophie behaved perfectly.

She looked like an absolute angel:

Sophie slept through the entire ceremony. I have to be honest, I was pretty surprised. I thought she would cry through it. Long church services are pretty boring for kids. Especially ones who need constant stimulation.

But back to Sophie. I still can't get over how beautiful she looked. I mean, she's always an adorable baby, but she looked ethereal on Sunday. Maybe it was the dress, I don't know. She simply breathtaking.

Here's a picture of Sophie and her Godparents, Matt and Carolyn.

And here are some other random shots from that day. As you can see, after church no pictures were taken. This is because I was too busy feeding my daughter and family and Justin was too busy superhosting.

P.S.,

Some of these pictures were taken by my Aunt Colleen and others were taken by Carolyn, and the rest by either Justin or myself.

Reading the bible, what a good godfather. (It's actually a hymn book).

"What kind of fabric is this?"

Haley and Sophie - they look like Haley's to me...

Sophie and Mummy

And the group shot.

A bit about Sophie

We three were sitting on the couch this afternoon reading one of Jude's books. I had Sophie on one knee and Jude on the other - Jude was holding the book. Sophie kept reaching out and touching Jude's arm. At first I thought it was just involuntary movement, but I really think she wanted to touch him. Each time she grabbed at his arm, Jude would exclaim, "Oh!" (Like, "Oh! I didn't know you were capable of reaching out like that!"), and he would smile at her and she would grin her chubby little grin back at him. It was very cute.

Wanna see something else that's cute?

And here's poor Sophie

Who isn't poor at all, she's adorable. She laughs a lot more than I remember Jude laughing at that age.

She has the most beautiful smile. Her eyes crinkle and if you smile back at her, you're pretty much guaranteed a little giggle.

She loves her big brother and he loves her sooo much, one of our calming techniques for Jude is to get him to kiss her when he's crying. Of course he loves to kiss her anytime, so she almost always has a big slimy wet spot on her head.

She's a chubby little thing, so round and cute. I call her my little chub monster, but in a loving way.

When we lie in bed Sophie and I, she looks up at me and I look down at her and smile and she smiles and scrunches up her shoulders, like she's shy, but she also looks absolutely delighted to be there smiling up at me.

She loves to be sung to. And she's not discriminating about talent either. She gets just as much joy from hearing Nan sing Chuck Berry (is that right, Nan?) as she does hearing Daddy sing one of his many made-up songs (So-phie and Dad-dy, best friends forev-er) or Mummy singing Backyardigans songs.

She also loves her stuffed animals. I guess it's because they're all so soft, but she is so happy to just sit with a few animals and relax.

So there's a little bit about Sophie. My baby girl.

Jude's Babies

Jude saw Sophie fussing and ran to get his other baby to give to his sister. As you can see, it really cheered her up.

Happy Girl

She was actually smiling today ( one month old, if you are keeping track) but I had a hard time gett1ng the shot, I was busy trying to wrestle the camera out of Big Brother's grabby little paws. Speaking of Big Brother, he is currently trying to help me blog, so I will have to keep this short. Enjoy the pictures, hopefully we'll be able to get a better shot soon.

And while we're on the topic of cameras and Jude, when you hold a camera in front of his face, he yells "cheeeeesssseee." It's very cute.

She's awake!

Here are some pictures of Sophie... With her eyes open. As requested.

Welcome!

This is the first post on the new blog.

I don't think I'll be updating Jude's blog anymore. If you're looking to learn all about Jude's first year, you can click on that link and check him out there.

If you're looking to learn about Sophie's, stay tuned.

So Jude became a big brother March 10th, 2007 at 4:50 pm. Sophie was a bit smaller than her older brother, weighing only 9lbs, 4 oz. She's also a bit shorter, only 21 inches. Poor little girl.

Jude is a fantastic big brother, by the way. He loves little Sophie girl sooo much.

I'm making this post short, because both little ones are napping right now, and I want to grab a few minutes sleep myself.