Happy 15 Month Birthday Precious Girl

Today is Sophie's 15 Month Birthday. She is such a big girl now. She puts things in the trash when I ask her to do it. She says like a zillion words including cheese, purple, bubble, car, off, yes, bye, ice. She also has a couple unique words including "gah!!" which means "star" and "gah!" which means "quack". She plays "duck, duck, goose" and "hide and seek". She is beautiful. She is amazing. She is funny. She is sweet. She is strong-willed. She is loud, loud, loud. She talks a lot. She smiles a lot. She is sleeping really well at night. She's basically the best thing ever and we love her so very much. Happy 15 month birthday to our precious princess peanut butter!!

Happy Belated Fathers Day

I'm not sure why it has felt so crazy this past week... It could be the possible broken toe. It could be the summer cold I caught from Sophie. It could be the craziness of the new iPhones. Or, it could be trying to get ready for our upcoming two week vacation. Whatever it is, I can't believe it's already June 24th. Because I'm obviously a bit behind, I wanted to do a belated Fathers Day post.

We had a very nice day celebrating all the wonderful Dads we love. My step-brother Roger had us over to his beautiful house for a BBQ. It was a great time and Sophie had a blast exploring their house with Dee Ree and we also got to sing Happy Birthday to Pop Pop. All in all a very nice day.

Sophie loves her Daddy so much. She calls for him all the time (Dada dada dada). She lights up whenever she sees him or photos of him. And Jim sure loves and adores Sophie. He has such a "hands-on" role in her life. He gives her a bath every night and he brushes her teeth. He now has taken over the putting to bed role with so much success it makes me weep (more on that soon). He teaches her about her left foot and right foot. He drums with her. He plays on the swing and the slide with her. He reads to her and he tickles and snuggles her. They have a very special bond indeed. We hope Daddy had a very Happy 2nd Fathers Day!!

Bongos!

Sophie in the City

This past weekend we took Sophie for a weekend in the big city to join friends of ours for the Big Apple BBQ Block Party. It was a great weekend and really gave me a lot of good feelings about our upcoming vacation because Sophie handled all the disruption and new environments with grace and panache. She took to her hotel room like she'd be staying in one for years. She slept fine even despite later bedtimes and weird naps. She napped in the stroller in the middle of Times Square. She had a blast playing in Madison Square Park and hanging out with our friends and especially their son, Will and all his cool toys. She did great eating in public restaurants. She charmed random strangers young and old. It was a super time all around. And, then she got sick. I guess all those random strangers make for a pretty germy environment and poor kid started to sound a little stuffy and then had a full-blown cold upon waking up yesterday. She has a low-grade fever and runny nose and eyes but she's eating good and sleeping fine so I'm grateful that it seems to just be a summer cold. Summer colds are total bummers but they are much better than winter colds - no doubt about it.

In other news we are getting pretty darn excited for our big vacation in Ocean City, NJ coming up. Hopefully the weather will be good (um, please don't rain for two weeks... PLEASE!!) and even if it's not we'll still enjoy the first week of SnedikerOxenfordPalooza that is sure to ensue and the second week of visiting with other friends and family. Two weeks. Do you believe it? We are practically jumping out of our skins with anticipation.

We had a nice visit with Nanny and Poppy and Cousins Caely, Mikey and Jessica last week. We also had a couple of short but nice visits with Dee Ree and Pop Pop. Grandma Kathy sent another wonderful care package (thank you Grandma Kathy!!) with neat shoes and homemade barrettes in it.

Sophie's saying lots of new words it seems. On Sunday night we had a riotous time listening to her say "keys" except it sounded more like "KEEYSSTH?" Tonight she said "kids" or it could have been "keys' - not sure. She is also saying "please" more which just makes me melt in a million little puddles of mommy-love.

We've been trying a new bedtime routine which has been working pretty well. Jim has been handling the actual putting to bed and any nighttime wake-ups and he's got quite the system down. Unfortunately, when she gets a cold all bets are off and old ways creep back pretty quickly but we were having such success with the new routine for a while there that I just know it will work again when she is back to her normal not sick self. And, yes, Jim is a total rock-star daddy, isn't he?

Recent pix

Our Little Bathing Beauty

Sophie's first swim in the big pool for the season. She was a litlte dubious but seemed to enjoy her first dip in anyway.

Sprinklers and baby pools are where it's at


Here is Sophie having a fun week of swimming both in her baby pool and also in the big pool. She enjoyed her dip in the big pool and we look forward to many more swim sessions for the whole family this summer.

Many faces of Sophie in a day

Here were several different photos of Sophie from the same day. She had a hard time waking up from her nap that day so I carried her outside hoping that the sounds and light would wake her but they did not. I held her and then I had to wake her up finally and she wasn't real happy at first. (It's true you really should never wake a sleeping baby but when you read the next paragraph you'll understand why I did it.)

I am not going to lie to you friends.... It's been a tough week. On Memorial Day last week, Sophie was up from 1-5am. It was a tough tough tough night and really took us by surprise after such a great day and not having done that in a long time. Then, she was also up several times in the middle of the night for hours multiple times last week and then last night, she would not go to sleep at her usual 8pm time. It was 11pm when we finally got her to sleep. Yeah, it's definitely teething. We haven't seen any new teeth but she is clearly hurting a lot. We're using popcicles, ice, frozen peas and of course tylenol to help with the pain. Last night, she even pointed to her tylenol and her mouth and we gave her a double dose because it was the first time she ever "asked" directly for it. But, in addition to the teething, Jim and I truly believe she is going through a huge developmental spurt. She seems so different even just within the last week or two. Very independent and can play on her own for long stretches. Very creative with her toys and activities. Overall, a more even-keeled and happy happy kid. We feel so blessed and so very proud of our sweet little angel. Who needs sleep anyway, right?