Poll Results

I think we now have a good idea of the answers to both poll questions!

Regarding the first question: sorry to disappoint all of you who thought Sophie would follow in her mommy's early footsteps, but Sophie is still not officially walking. BUT over the past week or two, she has developed a love of walking (with help) and standing up from a squat (alone), and she has actually taken a few steps by herself! So we expect that she'll be walking tentatively by her birthday, and she'll pretty much have it down by 13 months.

Regarding the second question: the majority was correct! Sophie is going to become a big sister this year. Our new baby is due to be born at the end of September. We'll find out in 5-7 weeks if it's a boy or a girl!

More Sophie updates: last week was kind of rough for Sophie. Her third molar tooth has broken through, and I have a feeling the fourth one is on its way. So her mouth has been pretty uncomfortable. This makes 11 teeth for her.

Also, she disturbed me by clawing her best friend in the face every time she saw her last week. I don't think it was done out of hostility, but I felt bad that my child was hitting someone else's child! But I have talked to other moms, and it seems like a short phase that a lot of kids go through around the one year mark, when they don't understand yet about being gentle and respecting other people's personal space -- after all, nobody respects theirs!

On the other hand, we had a really fun visit with Sophie's grandma and great-aunts this weekend! At times, Sophie really showed her shy side: crawling to the corner of her crib whenever Grammy went to pick her up, clinging to her mommy and daddy, etc. But in general, everyone had a great time! We went to a state park, where there is a big gardens section that is beautiful at this time of year. We also went to our next door neighbor's first birthday party, where Sophie got to play with some new toys, including a dancing, talking Elmo! She LOVED that doll. Up until then, she had only seen Elmo on the TV screen. The next day Sophie had her own early birthday party, since the aunts won't see her again until summertime. We gave her a tiny piece of cake, and she gobbled it! Then she had a sugar high, then she crashed, haha. I'll post some pictures later!

The last thing to report is that Sophie is getting more, um, expressive about her preferences. She has started to making this kind of scream-squeal noise when she is not getting what she wants. Not something I really want to encourage!