Sophia has changed quite a bit in the last month. She made her first baby sign on Thanks Giving day after I gave her some pumpkin pie and she gobbled it up. Other than her sign for ‘all done’ she didn’t use signs at all until around fifteen months and then she only added the sign for ‘more’. It only took a couple days of making the sign correctly before she become so confident about it that she would drink from her tippy cup while making the sign one-handed against the tray of her booster seat. Creative little bugger. It was the baby version of a NASCAR fan being too busy drinking his beer to actually clap. Now it doesn’t sound as impressive, does it?
Watching her do the sign for ‘more’ is so cute. Sometimes she puts everything down, looks down at her hands to make sure she has them aligned properly, and brings them together as if it takes all of her concentration. After the first time she’ll look up and continue making the sign a few times until I say, “Oh you want more, ok.”
The sign for milk is supposed to simulate milking a cow, but Sophia has a problem making that sign. Instead, she does something similar to flicking a booger off her thumb. It took me a while to figure out that she was in fact trying to make the sign for milk. She only used the sign for ‘eat’ the one time, and after learning ‘more’ she uses that for ‘eat’ as well. If I’m not paying close attention to her she comes up, grabs my hand and bites me to let me know she’s hungry. After several times of telling her not to bite me, last night she took my hand and licked me. Much better, I guess. If I can only choose between the two, I’ll take the latter.
This last month she’s gone back to insisting that she feed herself. Thankfully, if I’m serving oatmeal or muesli I’m allowed to fill her up most of the way before she demands control of the spoon. Sometimes she’ll allow me to help her scoop up a spoonful of food for her to put into her mouth, always sideways or upside-down, of course.
She seems to have given up her old “tur lur lur shlur lur”, which I loved, and has taken up, “Doodle oodle loodle loodle”. Her original multi syllabic vocalization was for analyzing objects and it was quiet, almost whispered. It was cute and I loved it. It served as a great warning that she maybe getting into things I didn’t want her to get into. The new multi syllabic vocalization is more of a statement. Nah, a proclamation. Doodle oodle loodle loodle says, “I’m going to run around the house with your dirty panties on my head and there isn’t a thing you can do about it, mother.” Yes, she’s that snooty, and yes she has run around with my DIRTY underwear on her head.
She has a thing for putting stuff on herself. The new tote that her gramma gave her belongs on her head. Good thing it has a window. She walks around with ribbon like a seamstress with measuring tape, around the neck it goes. And she loves shuffling around the house with my slippers on her tiny feet. She puts her own shirts on by holding them up to her chest and walking around the room using her chin to hold them in place. It’s hilarious!
She managed to get her own pants on once. She analyzed the waistband round and round in circles until she finally put a leg in, then the second leg. She had one leg in for each pant leg. They were only pulled up to her thighs, but technically, they were on. Unfortunately, they were on backwards.
With her determination to do things on her own I’ve started having her put her own dirty diapers into the diaper champ and turn the handle. Sometimes she needs help with the handle, especially when the champ starts to get full, but she does it on her own after every diaper change. Even at the swimming pool, she puts her diaper in the pail they keep for that specific purpose. She’s such a great little helper!
I think the most noticeable change is that Sophia now allows barrettes in her hair, sometimes. It took a combination of allowing her to play with the other barrettes I keep in a bag, running to the nearest mirror to show her how cool the barrettes look in her hair, and wearing one of her tiny barrettes in my own hair before she would keep them in. But now instead of looking like this:
She looks like this more often:
But even better than that, she finally said her first word. Last night I was folding laundry while Sophia played in the empty laundry basket, climbing in and out. She picked it up, carried it to the other side of the room, and continued climbing in and then it slipped. She fell, hitting her head on the wood bed frame. After the crying began, I went over to pick her up, give her a big hug, and do the ‘kiss it better’ mommy thing. Kurt came up to see what happened and by the time he reached us she was ready to play in the laundry basket some more. Kurt took the opportunity to turn the laundry basket into a toddler car. Unlike most other fathers Kurt’s laundry basket toddler car had a slow gentle ride complete with a backup beep. After one cruise around the bedroom, I told Sophia, “We need to show daddy how this car really handles.”
I took control of the laundry basket car. “eeeerrrr” The car backed up. “EErrrr” Went around the corner. “yyeeerrooowww” Drove past Kurt and into the other room. “EERRRR” Blue laundry basket break marks into the next room and a sharp u-turn. Toddlers are fun to watch with the proper laundry basket driver because when they break hard enough the toddler bends in half and can touch their toddler toes with their giant toddler melon-head.
After we were done with the basket rides, Kurt and I were sitting on the floor with Sophia standing in front of us. She faced Kurt and said, “Da-E”. Kurt and I looked at each other, “Yes, daddy.” I told her. She turned to me and pointed. The expression on her face read, “And who the fuck are you?”
I’m just the one that she bites when she’s hungry and clings to at social events. *sigh*
About three weeks ago Kurt swore that he heard Sophia say, “Hi daddy” when he arrived home from work. I was standing right there but since I’m used to the usual “tur lur lur” and “Doodle oodle loodle” I didn’t notice. He thought he had heard it again about a week later but I was upstairs. This time it was clear and it was right in front of us both.
Earlier in the day I swear I was hearing her say, “key key key” which I assumed was her calling the cat, but I didn’t see the cat anywhere around nor did I hear him whining. I guess I’ll learn what it means later.
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