Love Internationale

…Sophie was, indeed, UNamused by Santa.

Do you concur?  GO HERE TO VIEW VIDEO OF SOPHIE’S FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH SANTA.

12-14-08 We went to a thai place for dinner. Aunty C brought a whole bag full of fun holiday toys that kept Sophie busy.

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12-15-08 Sophie puts her baby dolls (she calls them that now) in their strollers and takes them for a walk.

12-16-08 This morning Sophie put all her toy rings on the dog’s back, said “hat!” and then burst into hysterical laughter. Toddler humor. *shrug* It’s cold and icy today and the only time I’m leaving the house is to get the mail. Yuck.

And this one isn’t a 365 pic, but I love it. She looks so mischievous.

10-11-08 We go to visit my grandmother, Sophie’s great-nana, who is slowly losing her mind in a (very expensive and very nice) assisted living facility. Sophie is telling great-nana, “Toto do boo boo,” on her hand. Kokopop (Toto) scratched her a millenium ago, but Sophie still gets a lot of mileage out of the story and lots of kisses.

10-12-08 Sophie sits on Santa’s lap for the first time. She just went right up to him and allowed him to lift her onto his lap. She wouldn’t smile at all for the picture, though, not even scrunchy face. For the whole time afterward, far as long as we were in the mall, she wanted to go back and watch him, however. Now whenever she sees this picture, which we have on the fridge right now, she gets excited and yells, “Santa!”

10-13-08 Sophie displays a couple of her favorite books. That’s Not My Dragon! and Goodnight Gorilla. She also really loves this book below. It’s probably her Number One Fav, Kitten’s First Full Moon. a Caldecott winner about a kitten who mistakes the full moon for a bowl of milk and tries to chases it down. After much travail, the kitten returns home to find what he was looking for all along was on his front porch. Very sweet book. Every time Sophie sees the full moon she says, “Milk!”

This is some vid from the night before Sophie goes to see Santa. We went today and she was either…erm…underwhelmed or overwhelmed, not sure which. She didn’t cry and wasn’t afraid at all (though we’d done a fair amount of explaining what would happen beforehand). Anyway. I’ll post the Santa video as soon as I find the cord to recharge my dead video camera.

In this one she’s wearing her very well-loved princess dress. This thing is just falling apart. She’s getting a new one for Christmas. My ultimate goal was to get her to say ‘applesauce’ because I love when she says that word.

HRM…I can’t embed the video directly, so please GO HERE TO SEE THE VIDEO.

Sophie just walked up to me and said, “Ni Hao!” LOL. That’s Chinese for hello. Apparently Ni Hao, Kai Lan is having good effects.

12-08-08 — We put the Christmas tree up.

12-09-08 Sophie loves her first Christmas tree. She (and the cats) have been very gentle with it, erm, so far. Of course she loves the faery ornament.

12-10-08 Sophie ready to go to play group this morning. She’s got her purse and phone and everything. LOL. Man, she’s tall. I mean, she’s really tall…and growing every day. She was 35 inches at her last exam, but I swear she’s grown since then.  , as you can see, she loves her purse.

I can’t decide whether or not to take Sophie to sit on Santa’s lap or not. We didn’t do last year because we were in Belgium. If I do, one of two things will happen.

1.) Sophie will freak out, struggle, pop Santa in the jaw and clamber down off his lap before a pic can be taken.

2.) Sophie will sit with a deer-in-headlights look on her face long enough to snap a pic, then she’ll freak out, struggle, and pop Santa in the jaw.

Either way, knowing my girl, Santa’s probably getting popped in the jaw.

I like this project because it keeps me posting.

Snapped this morning. 12-06-08

Sophie still sucks her thumb. The day we got her, her thumb was red, raw and swollen from her sucking it. Poor punkin was so nervous. She continues to have calluses on both thumbs, though these days she sucks her thumb much less. Normally she does it when she’s tired, feeling snuggly or is upset. The rest of the time she’s a typical two and a half year old and she’s too busy using her hands to touch things/play with toys to bother with sucking her thumbs.

This is the other thing she’ll do….

She puts her arm over her hand this way and walks around. She’s done since the first day we met her (well, minus the walking around). She also used to use her fingers as toys in the beginning. I think she learned in the SWI that was the only real entertainment she could get — making strange configurations with her fingers. She doesn’t do that anymore (now she’s got plenty of toys).

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12-05-08 Unfortunately I took this at twilight. All those black spots in the tree are black vultures. My town is famous as a black vulture roost. They all fly around on days when the thermals are good. The sight is beautiful — hundreds of black vultures circling in the air. They’re gorgeous in the sky, very long wingspan. Vultures get a bad rap and they’re ornery as hell, but I love them. The roost, ironically, is over a cemetery. I always wonder how funeral attendees feel about the vultures circling their loved one’s grave. I think it’s a beautiful symbol since vultures are considered ambassadors to the afterlife.

12-04-08 Sophie enjoys water coloring, but that glass of water makes me nervous.

12-03-08 Sophie was very pigtailicious this day. As you can see, the scrunchy face phase hasn’t yet ended. When I snapped this picture she’d dragged a whole stack of books out from the office and was pretending to read them.

12-02-08 This is one reason why the dog loves Sophie. She shares her food with Sedna whenever I’m not paying attention. *sigh* It was Cheerios this time.

12-01-08 On Mondays my mom (Nana) watches Sophie. So it was just me, my laptop, and my manuscript. (and the telephone, my hand lotion, face lotion, Kleenex and water. All my “necessities”.) Oh…and a chocolate cookie! (not a necessity, but yummy!) Lastly, the cat. They’re always around trying to laying on the keyboard or something.