One Year Updates

We recently had Sophie's one year photos taken. I was very pleased to find a photographer to come to our house to snap the pictures, where we have an endless supply of Cheerios, puffs, and other enticing baby food to keep our little one happy. Here are her current stats:

Height- 30.5 inches- 90%

Weight- 23 lbs-80%- yes, she is taller than she is wide, phew!

Teeth- Still 8, I say still because it seems like she has been teething her back molars forever. Still waiting for those suckers to pop up and make life less painful for everyone.

Sleep- We have entered the good life, Sophie now sleeps from 7:30-7:00. She is still not a very good napper, she takes 2 naps and we are lucky if each nap lasts an hour.

Food- Meals are the highlight of her day, she often cries when the food is gone. Bananas are her favorite food, and she can easily wolf down the entire 'nanner. She often will give me a glare if I try to share her nanner with her. Right now we are trying to wean her off formula, which is proving difficult as she does not like milk. I have been sneaking a little into her bottle everyday, we are now up to 2 ounces of milk per bottle. Sophie now stops drinking from her bottle at the last 2 ounces. We can't really sneak anything past her.

More one year photos:

Mommy's Helper

Now that Sophie is very mobile, she follows me everywhere I go. It is like having a little shadow, a messy shadow who creates mass destruction wherever we go. Good thing she is so darn cute. Right now her favorite thing to do is to take things out of places. Laundry out of laundry baskets, items out of purses or diaper bags, things out of drawers. When I am of positive mind, I like to think she is helping me reorganize. I am lucky to have such a good helper!

Sophie helping in the kitchen. Tupperware is very exciting and fun to put all over the kitchen floor!

Sophie helping me sweep. For the record, I don't get much cleaning done since she is constantly trying to grab the broom. I am thinking of inventing cleaning pads that attach to babies knees, and when they crawl around they magically clean the floor. Yes, I am a genius.

Ah yes, the laundry basket. Sophie loves to help me fold laundry- but she often runs off with a sock in her mouth. We are now missing several, I suspect that she is hiding them in mysterious places that only little fingers can reach.

Happy Birthday!

It's official- Sophie turned one on April 9th. We celebrated in style with balloons, streamers, party hats and, of course, the highly anticipated Birthday cake. Up to this point, I had resisted giving her any type of sugar. Yes, the person who had a whole desk drawer dedicated to all kinds of candy and chocolate somehow turned into her mother upon having a child. (Although I still have chocolate, I now sneak it during nap time). But I digress, the birthday was a great success, and Sophie thoroughly enjoyed her cake- thus proving that she is indeed my child. Here is some pictures of the big event:

Opening presents, she is just starting to figure out what to do- and yes, I did make her wear a birthday crown.

Trying out her new princess car- thanks Uncle Mac and Aunt Emily!

The big moment. She took one finger and tried some frosting, and then went back immediately for a fistful.

One handed feeding proved not fast enough, so she had to use both hands! Yes, we are so proud of her ambidextrous skills.

Here is Sophie using the baby approved method of packing in food with your fist approach.

And finally, Sophie stares at her cake in extreme sugar shock as she ponders whether she should have eaten that last bite.

Happy Easter!

Sophie had a wonderful Easter weekend at the cabin. She got to spend lots of time with her cousins- Vivi, Kyle, and Ellie, and get lots of lovin' from her Grams and Gramps. Sophie had a great time watching the big kids play, and they had a great time watching her cruise around the living room. They were also impressed by how much she ate, and watched in awe while she opened wide for broccoli. This was apparently something they had never seen before. Here are some of our favorite pics from the weekend:

Sophie and Daddy sharing a laugh before church. By the way, the dress was a big hit with the little old ladies at church. She also had on sparkly pink shoes, which they all adored.

We all know that Sophie is a professional passie thief, but she can now add Easter basket thief to her resume. She decided that the big kid's baskets looked much more fun then hers.

Instead of joining in the Easter egg hunt, Sophs decided to sit on the sidelines and eat a plastic egg.

Here is a picture of Kyle playing with Sophs. He is asking her where she wants to go. He soon found out the answer, Grandpa's shoes. Kyle quickly realized that Sophie just can't pass up an opportunity to pull laces, especially with an easy target like Grandpa.

Kyle, Sophs, and Ellie playing in the mirror. A great time was had by all.

New Activities

Sophie has been very busy lately. Very, very, busy. She now has no time for toys. She is far to busy to stop and play as she is constantly on the move. We have now baby proofed our entire house, so she can pretty much roam free. I do however close the doors to the bedrooms and bathroom, as that is just asking for trouble. In all of her busyness, she now has a couple of new favorite activities:

Circling the coffee table. She will do this many times to get what she wants as we constantly move it out of her reach. Her record so far is seven laps.

Crawling in her room to take books out of her book basket. This activity is especially fun when the books have just been put back.

Tackling pooh bear. Carl started wrestling Sophie with Pooh bear a couple of months ago. I never dreamed she would enjoy it the way she does. She will even crawl into her room and go over and push Pooh bear over, I think assuming that he will spring to life and start to get her. She laughs, giggles and lets out little screams when she is getting Pooh bear. I now have fears that she will be the lone girl on the wrestling team. Here she is eyeing Pooh, and deciding how best to attack him.

And here she is successfully pinning pooh. Yes, I am very proud.

Since she has been so busy, she has been eating us out of house and home. She will eat just about anything- except cauliflower, this is the one food that we have found that she does not like. I have read books that tell me that babies stop eating when they are full, we have yet to reach that point with Sophie. She will just keep eating until we stop giving her food. Last night for dinner she had an entire pancake, half an egg, two tablespoons of peas, Cheerios and puffs. We think that she is in training for a baby hot dog eating competition.

In other news, Sophie has started sleeping better at night! Hooray! Some nights she will wake up to stand and move about, but we are able to lay her back down and she has been falling back asleep. Thank goodness, only getting a few hours of sleep did not work for anyone.

Why sleep when you can stand?

Sophie is currently obsessed with trying to stand. It is all she wants to do. Toys are not very interesting right now, unless she is holding one while trying to stand. Even sleep is now secondary to standing, which is very upsetting to Carl and I. She now wakes up every night and tries to stand and crawls around in her crib, waking herself up. Unfortunately it then takes up to two hours for her to go back down. We are hoping that this is just a phase and will pass very, very quickly.

Sophie blowing berries at me from her crib, quite pleased with her standing self.

This is her main toy that she likes to play with right now, as she can try to stand to play with it. It has a lot of annoying songs that she can listen to happily for hours. I have woken up singing them in my head. The batteries are now starting to die, and I am trying to decide if I should replace them. Hmm...

Pneumonia

Our sweet little baby has had pneumonia this past week. It all started with a cold, since Sophs has had colds on and off since the middle of December this was not a big deal. The cold then turned nasty and we made our first trip into the doctors. She was given an antibiotic and we were sent home. Four days later she was still not any better so we went back to the doctor, told it was croup, and given a different antibiotic. She seemed to be getting better but then got worse seemingly over night. Sophie was now having trouble breathing, not eating and no longer wanting to play. We went back to the doctor- third times a charm- and were told that she needed to go into the hospital to receive oxygen and that she now had pneumonia. We spent 24 hours under an oxygen tent, Carl and I taking turns every couple of hours, holding Sophie on our laps. By the way, there are several things that Sophie did to entertain herself while under the tent: try to escape the tent; stick your fingers in the unsuspecting adults ear, eyes and nose; try to grab and pull down the tent; eat the tent, as it made a delicious crinkly noise.
Sophie now is much better but still requires breathing treatments every 6 hours for 2 weeks. The breathing treatments are not fun and they require us to hold Sophie on our laps for 30 min. This was impossible at the beginning, but we have now found the secret to having her sit quietly and still for a half hour- simply watch basketball on TV. Yes, it is sad but true. Sophie is riveted by basketball and will even shift around in her seat to get a better view if you happen to block the TV. We have tried Sesame street, and Barney but she could care less about them. Carl is of course thrilled. Sigh.