Hula Girl

So every year Ross' office has a trick or treating potluck for the families. The kids get all dressed up and go from office to office collecting candy. Then, they eat it, bounce off the walls for a while, and then crash. This is the phase my daughter is in. Those quiet little baby- in- your- arms days seemed to slip away so suddenly. Now I watch while other children sit on their parents' laps or pose for pictures... not mine. She likes to run in the opposite direction of wherever you want her to be. I'll have to remember that when she's a teenager. Of course I love that she is the way she is though. My baby's got sauce...

Anyway, here's my little hula dancer. We picked her up a grass skirt while we were in Hawaii... she might have been the cutest sight I'D ever seen.

Tonight Ross and I are going to my first "murder myster" party. He's the Prince of Dimness, a devil who's afraid of the dark and has asthma, and I'm Angela Deth DDS, a dimented dentist who makes victims out of her clients. Scary.... I'm sure we'll take some pictures of that one.

How did that happen?

So I just thought this was too funny, I had to include it. I went in to get Sophia up from her nap the other day and this is what I see. She'd gone to bed in this slightly baggy t-shirt and I guess maneuvered her arm out of the wrong hole while she slept. She seemed a little frustrated and confused when I got her. It may not have been helpful that I was laughing and snapping photos. I couldn't help myself.

Pumpkins!

So living out here in the desert, we're not exactly surrounded by anything that makes you feel like you're actually part of the season. While summertime for most is outside play and barbecues, ours is indoor play, $400 electric bills, and fear of heat stroke in our children. While our winters are beautiful , still, a 70 degree winter doesn't exactly give that Christmas feel. Our springs are nice as well, in the 70's and 80's, but it's a little hard to enjoy when every day you're terrified that will be the day it goes back to the triple digits. So right now we're enjoying the fall, and it really is nice, the days are cooling off to the the high 80's and the nights are even nicer. There are even some clouds in the sky today (a VERY rare occasion in the desert). But we were desperate for something to give us that Fall feeling and were hoping for a really fun pumpkin patch experience with hay and cool weather, and maybe some colorful leaves, even if they were fake.

We didn't get exactly that, but we found a local church that created a little pumpkin patch experience in Palm Desert. No leaves, and not really cool weather, but they had hay and lots of pumpkins, and the night was comfortable enough to put Sophia in long sleeves without making her sweat... so close enough. It was actually a beautiful setting right against the mountains and Sophia loved running around and playing with the pumpkins. We went with our friends Lizzie and Shad and their little boy, Tanner. The news was actually there shooting the local event and asked us to move out of their frame so they could shoot Sophia playing around in the pumpkins. Our little girl was on the live news... she's famous.

Lickin the plate...

This is Sophia eating applesauce. She doesn't want to miss any so she skips spoons and fingers and goes straight for the bowl-- mouth to bowl... it's the same way she eats leftover ketchup on her plate. Yum.

At 13 months, she's getting closer and closer to talking right back to us. Although, the whole talking issue is kind of confusing to me. I don't really understand how you know when your baby has said their first word. I'm beginning to think everyone just has their own idea-- so you can't really compare what other mom's tell you. Mama-- Dada... sure she's been saying that since she was like 4 months old along with nana, papa, baba and some other baby babble that while exciting to hear, definitely didn't hold any of the meaning we connect to those words. So do mothers count the first word as when they really think the child understands the meaning of it? That would make sense to me but if so, it's just kind of hard to know when that first time is. It's different than I expected. I thought one day my little baby girl would look at me and say "mama" and I would know she was addressing me, and by doing so first, I would know I was her favorite. :) Not that simple.

However--- while she's been saying these words for a while, I do think lately her "mama's" are only said to me, not when she's with her Daddy. And the other day we were at the park when a white car drove by, similar to Ross' white car that he drives off in as we wave "Bye bye" to him in the morning. Sophia stopped what she was doing and ran toward the street (ahhh!) saying "Dada Dada Dada" so I'm thinking she's smarter than I thought.

She has also gotten the tone thing down so while she's not mimicking my actual words yet, (except for "uh oh") she does mimick the intonation really good when she wants water, yogurt, or to say "bye bye". Also any time I say "yay" or "good job" she starts clapping. It really is amazing just to see how many little things they pick up on. My daughter's a freakin genius. Just kidding.

An eternal marriage

My mom and Kirk were sealed last month in the San Diego Temple. It was so incredible because it actually felt just as sweet as when a new young couple gets married... they were a couple of kids in love. :)

She knows where her head is...

Sophia turned a year old on September 2nd and it seems like she's been developing at warp speed since then. She seems so much older now that she's upright and walking around, and she's understanding so much more of what I say. I asked her to bring me the remote the other day and she did... not that I'm that lazy, she was just closer. ;)

Her newest trick is that she can show us where her head is when we ask her and then she claps like crazy for herself. I never could have guessed that a chubby little girl with two hands on her head could make her parents so proud.

Here we go

This is my first blog. We'll call it a test run... to see how it actually goes and to see if I have it in me to keep one of these things up. I wish I had started it when Sophia was born, I think I would have had a little more motivation. She's over a year old now and I've lost a little of my fire for taking pictures and journaling every move.... gotta get it back because she's only getting more amazing. She's walking all over the place and as "they" say, "getting into everything!" I didn't really think it would change much from her crawling because she could already reach anything she pulled herself up on. But it's different. Walking around, knowing she has two free hands to cause trouble with... she does. And then she brings me the incriminating evidence. She brings me bark to let me know she's knocked over the orchid. She brings me toitlet paper to let me know she got the door open and unraveled the roll, and she brings me a wipe to let me know she's been so kind to empty the entire container of wipes all over the bedroom... at least she's honest.