Love Internationale

Our lovely girl….

She might be two, but she still eats yogurt like a one year old….

And apparently finds me taking a picture of it hilarious.

At two Sophie is spot on for everything. She’s even on target for speech and has over 60 words. I signed her up for the summer reading program at the local library today and we checked out two picture books.

Things she loves right now (off the top of my head):

apple juice
cheese
telephones
water, water, water!
climbing things
slides
animals of all kinds
balloons
Cinderella and Pocohantas
playing dress up
playing with her dolls
being outside
bananas
her nana
books/being read to
her polar bear
shoes
stacking and organizing things
brushing her teeth

Things she doesn’t like very much:

Sweet stuff. (Can you believe it? No cupcakes for this girl… so sad! I keep trying even though her dentist would want to shoot me.)
Swings
I know there’s other strong dislikes, but I can’t remember any right now.

Overall, she is a very good natured, good hearted child who is a bit shy around others, especially other children. She’s starting to tantrum some and is becoming more opinionated, which is normal for this age. Luckily I have the patience of a mountain. When she tantrums I just let her go for as long as she’s got the energy for it and deny her whatever it is she’s throwing the fit over. I won’t ever do time out with her, but I’ll let her fit until she’s tired of it. LOL.

We plan to celebrate her birthday this Sunday. Saturday we’re attending the birthday of a friend’s little girl. Today I bought her a balloon and a new pair of shoes (she’s in heaven). Now I’m taking her to the pool.

, thank you so much for the card, sweetie. Sophie kept looking at the kitty kats and going awwww.

We’re off to splash in the water now and hope there aren’t any pop up storms.

An Update…

I have blogged at length about Sophie’s sleep issues–waking up in the middle of the night and not going back to sleep for two hours at a minimum (more often it was a good three hours). This usually occurred during the nights before I went to my day job or the over the weekend preceding those days.

Well, I have been free of my day job for about a month and a half now and the sleep issues are GONE. *Knocks on wood like crazy* They more or less ended in Pittsburgh at the hotel in a fireworks display of non-sleeping. It was pretty bad. Once we got home and we settled into our new pattern, which did NOT include waking up on Monday morning to Nana and not to Mama, and which did NOT include being dropped off at Grandpa’s very early on Tuesday mornings, the waking up STOPPED.

Not only does she not wake up in the middle of the night anymore, I can put her in her bed for naps and just walk out of the room. I tuck her in, I kiss her little cheeks, I tell her I love her, I give her the Woobies, and I walk out. She gives not a peep and within five minutes she’s sound asleep. I haven’t tried this at bedtime yet, just because I like to rock her to sleep too much to let it go quite yet. Though soon she’s going to be too heavy for me to lift into her bed, so we’ll have to end it.

I honestly am not sure if the improvement of the sleep situation owes to simple development (she’s almost two, after all), or if it’s indeed because I’m not working anymore. However the fact it coincides with my quitting so perfectly makes me think it’s the latter. Perhaps it’s a combination of the two. Whatever it is, I’m not complaining!

Speech issues…

She is finally starting to put two and more words together. Yay! Sometimes they’re not very understandable, but she’s trying. She’s also finally starting to say her name. It comes out SO SO. We’re still thinking about doing speech therapy, even though some of her delay undoubtedly comes from the two languages at once thing.

Oh, and she’s saying, MAIS, NON! Heh. That’s French, obviously picked up from James. Literally it means, but, no and is usually used to mean but, of course not! Sophie uses it when I tell her no for something. She’ll respond, mais, non. Or, alternately, maisnonmaisnonmaisnon!

She’s got quite a few French words now and mixes them with English (as she will and as is normal). She stills calls me Maman instead of Mama (there’s a slight difference in pronounciation which Sophie nails pretty well). She says Attends! a lot too (wait).

For Father’s Day we went to the Renaissance Festival. Here are some pictures….

Last at this time of year Sophie had just learned to crawl. She rode in her stroller for Ren Fest. This year she walked pretty much the whole way and we used the stroller to cart our stuff.

Sophie at the joust last year.

And…Sophie at the joust this year….

Wow. What a difference!

Oh…and she wore her wings (which we couldn’t get off her until bedtime)