MORNING PLAYTIME

Every day, after Sophie's morning nap, we go to the living room and have a little play time. Sophie lays on the sofa, usually on her tummy because that's her favorite position these days, and we listen to her sing-a-long CD. I do most of the singing. Sophie generally just stares at me and laughs a little. I prefer to think she's laughing because she just loves playtime so much rather than at my singing. Her favorite song is "The Wheels on the Bus." I hold her hands and do the round and round motions with the song and am rewarded pretty much every time with smiles and gurgles.

She started playing with one of her toys today. This sounds silly, but up until now, she may have held onto, and possibly even shook, things when I wrapped her little fingers around some part of it, but not really at her instigation. But today as I was changing her, she reached out and grabbed a hold of the little dolly that sits on the edge of her changing table that has about 30 different textures and a variety of noises including squeaking, crinkling and rattling. Of course, her control of her arms isn't spectacular, so I had to help her a little (Read: keep the hard parts from falling onto the soft parts of her face.) I want her to learn from her actions, but I also want a child with two eyes. Call me overprotective, but I think depth perception is a pretty important skill.

I have a cold right now, so I'm trying hard not to kiss her too much for fear of giving it to her. How she doesn't have it baffles me, considering leading up to now I kissed her face about a thousand times a day, (look at those cheeks, how could anyone resist?). But so far, she's hale and hearty and has actually given me a couple of nights of nearly uninterrupted sleep. I think she knows I'm sick and is being considerate, my mom thinks its just coincidence. I prefer to think the former.

I BELIEVE I CAN FLY!

It's just the cutest thing. Neil picks Sophie up and holds her over his head and sings the R. Kelly song, "I Believe I Can Fly," which, frankly, I'm surprised at how many of the lyrics he knows. She does her part and holds her body ramrod straight out from his hands and just smiles and smiles. Its moments like these when I look at my husband and think, "what a dork."

(I've been trying to get a video of this but every time Sophie sees the camera she stops smiling, so the picture will have to do.)

Addendum: Neil had me change the last sentence to its current form because he thought what I had written was too sappy. Probably true. Honestly, though, when I see him and our daughter playing, cuddling, whatever, it really touches my heart.

PARDON ME, DO YOU SPEAK WOOKIE?

So, my sweet Sophie has been chatting more and more over the past month or so. She is really finding her voice. A friend of mine says her baby speaks Klingon, personally, I think Sophie has developed a rare pidgin dialect of Croatian-Wookie. Neil and I get such a kick listening to her as she has long drawn out conversations with her left hand or the little jingly stuffed elephant that is hanging from the toy bar on her bouncy seat. Occasionally, I will try to communicate in her language, but Wookie is a very difficult language to master, one I think that only the unblemished ear of a child can truly tame and so we have some difficulty. I keep trying to catch her on video but she is a bit camera shy, too many flashes have left her a little shell-shocked, I think.

I wonder what she will sound like when she starts talking for real. What will her voice sound like, and her laugh? Likely the curiosity of every parent, everywhere. I hope she has a laugh like my sister, Briana. She has one of those laughs that is so infectious, it just gets the whole room going. She has started to laugh a little, but they are mostly a kind of grunting laugh. She hasn't quite got the hang of it yet.

I don't want to wish away these early days when she is still so little and everything is so new, but it is hard not to be anxious for all that is to come.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

Sophie is four months old today. In some ways the time has gone by so quickly and in others it feels like it has been forever. I can't remember life without her. I mean, of course, I can remember it, but I forget what it was like to just run out of the house, or even from floor to floor without thinking about how and what she was doing. Or what it was like to sleep through the night. Ah, those halcyon days of sleeping late.

We transitioned her to her crib nearly two weeks ago and it went as well as I could possibly have hoped. As I was changing her into her nightclothes that night, we had a little talk and I told her how she couldn't sleep in Mommy and Daddy's room anymore, that she was a big girl now and had to sleep in her own room. She was very serious and didn't say much as I cried a little. I tear up now thinking about it. She went right to sleep after I put her in her crib. I have to admit, a tiny part of me wanted her to be unhappy, wanted her to miss having her mommy right next to her. The bigger part of me was so very happy, though, that the transition had been so smooth.

I do watch her a lot, on the little video baby monitor (thanks Mammom!) as she sleeps in her crib. Sometimes when we're laying down for the night, Neil and I will sit and watch her on that little screen, waiting for her to move or twitch or something. No more Leno or Letterman, it's all SophieTV these days. Not to mention the fact that we're in bed by 9:30. Pretty pathetic.

VISIT FROM GRANDMA AND GRANPA!

Over the weekend of February 8-10, Sophie's Grandma Susan and Grandpa Alan came for a visit for the first time since she was just a few days old and were just amazed at how much she had grown. At nearly four months old, she's now almost 13 pounds and 24 inches long.

We had a great visit with Grandma and Grandpa, going out to eat a bunch of times, going shopping and going to the Bodyworlds exhibition at the Science Center. For every outing, Sophie was on her best behavior. After a previous disastrous dinner outing with Neil's parents, I was a little nervous, but it seems there was no reason to worry. I was so proud.

BABY SMILES!

I swear that baby smiles are like sunshine. There is something so pure and absolute about the smile a baby gives. They do not smile to be polite or just to make mommy and daddy happy. They do it only because THEY are happy. When Sophie started smiling for real, it was the most amazing experience. For the first time in my life, I felt absolute joy for another person. I have experienced profound happiness and have had some really amazing experiences but never have I felt this as a reaction to someone else.

Her smiles give me a warm fuzzy feeling that can only be compared to the feeling you get when you sit outside on a warm day and just soak in the sun. It reminds me of a trip that Aparna and I took to San Francisco for her 3oth birthday. It was June, but unbeknownst to us, SF is quite cold in June, so we were there in our Baltimore summer clothes while all the natives were in pants and cardigans. Silly us. However, one day we went out to eat on Fisherman's Wharf and the sun was shining that pure clean way it only seems to on Spring and early Summer days. We sat outside and just enjoyed the cool air coming in off of the bay. It was glorious. That singular feeling is the one I get every single time Sophie smiles at me. This is why people have children.

Sophie loves to play on her activity mat. And doesn't she look chic in the outfit her Auntie Aparna gave her. The butterfly in the middle plays a little tune and the wings light up when you squeeze its head. Sophie just stares up at it transfixed and then when it stops kicks her legs and waves her arms like she's just been given a jolt of electricity. Its pretty entertaining to watch. I think it must be entertaining for her too, because she keeps doing it.

Tummy time has been an interesting process. She has been rolling over from her back to her stomach since she was just a couple of months old and does it now pretty much everyday, but once there, she's not quite sure what to do. She grunts and groans and gets herself onto her stomach and then she bows her legs and head up so her body is in a wide U shape. She rocks around like this for a little bit and then starts making unhappy noises because she hasn't quite figured out the rolling back over thing. She has done it, but not consistently and she doesn't seem to remember how. When I have seen her do it, it was quick, no fussing, and then she just lays there like she's thinking, "how did that happen?"

JOYEUX NOEL!

Sophie's first Christmas included a homemade card composed of multiple shots of the princess. Unfortunately, the little miss didn't care for her outfit or the poses and we had a LOT of pictures with this expression. Am I a bad mother to make my baby cry all in the name of producing a good Christmas card?








However, after changing things up a bit, we did get some fun ones. It seems that ditching the headband and pants make for a happier baby.







We spent Christmas day at Jen and Bert's and a good time was had by all. As usual the food was excellent and I ate too much. Sophie was fairly good for the festivities and only cried a little bit. Here's Grandy (Neil's dad) cuddling up to Sophie.

FALL COLORS

That's Daddy with his best girl in front of our house. The leaves were just beautiful that day!












Doesn't Sophie look ever so comfortable in this one with me? You'd never believe it took 20 tries to get one this good.

THANKSGIVING

Thanksgiving was at Aunt Jen (Neil's sister) and Uncle Bert's house. That's her holding Sophie, with the oh-so-lovable Louis looking on.









Cousin Tara had the soft touch and had Sophie sleeping, well, like a baby, in no time at all.

LIFE WITH SOPHIE

Early on, like most newborns, Sophie slept ALL the time and we thought, "how lucky are we!" We thought we had won the baby jackpot and had the one that slept through the night from the beginning and didn't cry much. We thought we'd be those rare lucky parents who when asked about their baby's sleep habits, they could say that she was just a dream, absolutely no trouble at all.

Well, the tide turned pretty quickly. And then she only slept when we weren't sleeping and cried A LOT and we thought "well, crap, maybe we're not so lucky." And then I thought that this was my payback for being such a difficult baby myself. My mom has often said that I did nothing but cry for the first year.

And to top it off, she was tongue-tied, making nursing an absolute nightmare. Tongue-tie is when the frenulum, that thin piece of sinew or whatever that connects the tongue to the bottom of the mouth, is too short. This causes the baby to be unable to push their tongue out far enough to latch on right, which means they use their gums. Ouch. Luckily a visit to a lactation consultant who correctly identified the problem and then off to an Ear/Nose/Throat doctor for a quick laser cut and she was good as new.

As with all things, these troubles passed and she began sleeping a little more consistently and nursing got better. Finally, things were starting to look up and we could settle into a regular life. Neil went back to work after 2 1/2 weeks home with me. Now begins the scariest of scary: that uncharted territory known as my life as a stay-at-home mom.