The dark side of popscicles

Poor bugaboo. My little lamb has another ear infection, so everything is difficult for her right now.

I thought sitting outside eating a "pa!pa!" would be a good distraction and maybe even enjoyable. And it was, until it melted faster than she could eat it.

I tried to "clean it" for her (lick up the dripping areas) That enraged her. Unfortunately, all the swinging that the ensuing tantrum brought on only encouraged the great melt.

Then, the melted popscicle fell off the stick. Poor dear was broken hearted and so angry.

How do you explain that it isn't anyone's fault, it just happens? Life just happens sometimes.

She was so beside herself that I dug out my one last hidden bpa-laced bottle, filled it with milk and decided that short term comforts were, in this case, more important than long term consequences.

It's supposed to be 24 degrees here today, after a long, wet, cold winter. Not that we'll know, we'll be stuck inside.

Help? No! Yeah! Mine! We did it!

sigh. Life with a toddler.

This morning we got dressed. Sounds simple enough.

First the shoes went on (with pyjamas still on and no socks). Then, shoes had to be tightened, with no help, but with yelps and howls of complaint.

Then t-shirt was used as a scarf/tie/shawl/coat; I'm still not sure what the purpose was.

Finally Sophia agreed to take her shoes off and her pajama bottoms off. Socks on, no problem. Leg 1 of pants on, easy, I'm homefree. Leg 2 and we come to a sudden halt. Sophia wants to do the pants up herself. OK, why not?

So starts a 20 minute process. In the beginning Sophia lies on her back and tries to do up the pants will they are still mid-thigh. Finally I convince her that they need to be pulled up over her diaper. She wants to do this herself. I say do you want help? No!

OK, let me know if you want help. Sophia proceeds to yell at her pants and grunt for a few minutes. Followed by a frantic Help! So, the pants go over the diaper.

Arrogantly, I try to button the pants when they are up. No! Mine! Want help? NO!

Leave her alone, in a few minutes: HELP!, ok, we get them buttoned.

Repeat with zipper.

Finally when pants are on, I get a high five and a big smile that we did it!

I'm ready for a nap and it's only 9:30am

And baby just woke up, screaming. Must run.

I'll Make a Sound, You Guess the Meaning

Sophia is working on the hard 'k' sound. Suddenly, her world is surrounded by fascinating objects that start with, or contain that sound.

key, car, cat, sticker, cow, quack, etc.

She will stroll up to me, make her "k" sound (which sounds a bit like a choking bird) and give me about 10 seconds to figure out what she is referring to. If I don't figure it out in time, I'll get a singsong "nooooooooo", with a head shake and a turn. Off she goes.

Yesterday, suddenly, while reaching for my keys she said "key" clear as a bell. You could tell she knew she got it right. She has this very proud smile when she knows she's scored. Today we talked about keys many, many times.

Now, we just have to get the rest of the car, cat, sticker, cow, quack, cookie, clap, going.

Halloween Helper

Sophia wasn't interested in wearing a costume and really didn't get what was going on today. Still a bit too young.

After lunch with Hannah and Woohoo, their bad influence convinced me to let her try candy. Good grief. I've never seen her sign a more clear "more please".

When the kids started coming to our door, we encouraged her to come to the door with us and look at everyone. Each time they'd leave, she'd sign for more, wanting more kids to come.

Eventually, I got her to give the candy away. This is big for a kid who can't share. One by one, each child asked her for a candy and my sweet babe placed one piece carefully into their bags. They were charmed by her and it brought out a sweet side to all those menacing goblins at our door.

The top of the bowl was filled with gummy treats, as it got near the bottom, the chocolate emerged. Funniest moment of the night, I hand Sophia a candy to give away, she does. I pass her the next piece (a Twix bar). She looks at it, looks again, and palms it in her other hand and asks for a different piece of candy. My girl was not giving away the chocolate! She is so my daughter.

All night I watched proudly as she would run to the door, grab candy and give it eagerly to the kids waiting. We had about 200 kids come by, and I think she would have liked another 200 after that. She never got tired of them.

She did develop a rating system of her own. Most children got one piece of candy. If a certain child got her attention, she'd slip them an extra piece, or two of candy. Then, there were the scary ones. Fully masked, tall, big kids, no matter what they said or did, would not impress her. When she really didn't like them, she would put the candy into her daddy's hand and make him give them the candy.

I can't wait till she gets to go trick or treating next year!

Sophia-ese

Thank god most people aren't fluent in Sophia-ese. Today's Costco adventure would have been much more embarassing.

Sophia has been fighting a cold lately, making for long nights and sicky days. She's been a trouper for the most part and has been in a great mood. Today we had some errands to do and after a failed nap attempt I decided it was time to go to Costco.

Sophia brought her baby and her bottle and was quite content for about 1/2 hour arranging everything and checking things out.

Then she got tired. One by one she handed nme everything in her cart: baby, bottle, 2 jackets, coupons, diaper bag. When that was done she leaned forward, reached with her hands and started saying "bo!bo!bo!" This is a brand new word and it took me a few minutes to catch up. She was getting more and more insistent and loud.

What did she want? Only her most prized possession in the world, my boobs. Most kids adopt a soother, blankie or stuffie as a lovey. Not Sophia. She'd rather put her hand down my shirt. She does it like I rub earlobes, almost subconsciously. We've talked about how she can only do it at home, only sometimes. Until today she didn't have a word for it. sigh.

Luckily I was able to distract her with some well-positioned Dora junk. crisis averted.

I think I'm going to have to get a lot tougher about this no boob thing. She had no problem weaning from breastfeeding, I wonder how tough it will be to wean her from boob-fondling.

My Husband's Genes

Sophia looks a lot like Scott. So much so, she's referred to as Scottie Jr. There's no denying the Gilbert hair, cheeks, the Hunter jawline.

But it isn't just looks that she's inherited from her dad. She has an amazing talent for hand-eye coordination and a knack for spatial recognition. We've got another Jean-Machine on our hands.

Sophia will find two completely unrelated objects, several rooms apart and decide they are a perfect fit. One will fit into the other like they were made to be a pair.

I don't think she sets out to find a fit, I think she holds an object, takes its shape in and then notices when something similar crosses her path.

All day she will bring me things that she has fit together. Sometimes the fit is so exact, I can't get them apart.

Last night I showed her a cool dominoes set that Scott's cousin brought back from Africa. They are made out of carved wood and are gorgeous and quite small. Sophia was thrilled with them. She took them all out in the living room and lined them all up. Then, for the next 45 minutes, she carried them across the house to the family room, and back, putting them all where they belonged.

This afternoon she was playing quite quietly on her own for a long time, which always makes me a little nervous. I peaked into the family room to see what she had found.

She had the dominoes all collected and sitting beside her. In front of her was a child's plastic muskoka chair. The chair looks like a wooden one with small openings between each slat. Sophia had found that if she held a domino at a precise angle, it would fit through the slat and fall below. She was entranced.

Then, I moved the domino box under the hole, so the dominoes would fall into the box. She was thrilled!

More Water Please

Sophia strung three signs together as a sentence: "more water please". She seems to be picking up the signs as fast as words right now. It's really cool to see her using both together.

It has helped me understand her new words. Many times she'll be saying something quite insistently and I won't be looking at her, and won't know what she's saying. If I look at her, she'll often do the sign while she's saying it and I get it. I think she's also making up signs for us. There's one for "where", one for "ball", I'm fascinated by her little brain.

I've just decided to try and get her to start signing "come". Having her charge me, grab my hand and start pulling in a direction is getting tiresome. If she would sign "come please" I'd be more apt to comply.

Right now, she will stop and sign/say 'please' (which sounds more like meeeeeeeeee), and it helps.

She's quickly learned that please is a magic word for getting what she wants and is pretty quick to add it on to any request that I'm ignoring.