A collection of updates:
- Sophie has been going through a phase of being very anxious when people she doesn't know talk to her or her mom or dad. It's especially bad when people come over to our house, probably because she feels the most familiar here and is freaked out when that feeling of safety is violated. But there are some places where she seems to be almost completely comfortable, and depending on her mood, I think she's slowly coming out of the "stranger danger" period. I hope so, because she's about to have to deal with strangers A LOT more than she's used to.
- She knows ALL of her letters and digits. She even knows many lower-case letters and the sounds they make. I think SuperWhy! has a lot to do with this, because I've made no other attempt to teach her lower-case letters. She's even clever enough to be able to flip around N/Z and M/W and still identify them correctly. When we go out, I try to point out letters and numbers as often as possible so that she realizes how ubiquitous and important they are.
- Our next project is to master colors. In some contexts, she seems to know them very well, but not in others. This week I bought her some sidewalk chalk so that she can learn how to draw... I'm too afraid to let her use inside coloring utensils!
- Sophie is beginning to love Sesame Street almost as much as SuperWhy! She especially loves Elmo, but she also likes to see Abby, Ernie, Cookie Monster, and Grover. Her toothbrush has a picture of Elmo on it, and periodically throughout the day she will stand at the bathroom door asking for Elmo. Anytime we go out shopping to a store that sells Elmo merchandise, she starts squealing "Ummuh! Ummuh!" I finally decided to buy her an Elmo doll. I chose one that sings the alphabet and has letters on his clothes... she loves it.
- She is still a very picky eater, and we're all still trying to find a happy medium between things that she likes to eat and things I would like her to eat, or at least taste. Every morning, she has Cheerios, soy milk, and a banana, so that's no hassle. For lunch, I give her some YoBaby yogurt mixed with pureed carrots or sweet potatoes, plus some toast or one of the healthier types of crackers. Dinner is always a little tricky. "Chicken" nuggets always work, and sometimes I can get her to eat half a PBJ sandwich. After that, I'll usually try to get her to eat some dried green beans, and then finally I'll let her have some kind of fruit. Over the past few weeks, the three of us have been managing more often than not to eat breakfast and dinner together, which I really like. When we all eat dinner together, I always first offer her some of each thing that we're eating. The thing she's most likely to eat from our plates is ground meat. A few times, she's been willing to try a cooked green bean or a piece of broccoli. And the last time I made risotto, she definitely ate several bites. I have more success if I let her pick up the food herself and put it in her own mouth. Also, if we have anything like bread, she'll eat lots of it. On the other hand, there are still all kinds of foods that I really wish she would eat, but she won't: pasta, potatoes, cheese, tomatoes, avocados, and corn, to name a few.
- She's not particularly verbal yet, but over the past week she has started babbling a lot more, and also she has gotten much better at saying two-syllable words that she already knew. I'm not worried about her speech, because she obviously understands so much of what I'm saying. She just doesn't seem quite interested in articulating it herself just yet.
- Her new favorite thing to do is climb onto the couches or the beds and bounce on them. It's pretty funny and she laughs and laughs while she does it, but at the same time we're always very anxious because she has no sense of how close she is to falling off those pieces of furniture each time!
Well, I'm sure I've forgotten some things, but John will certainly be able to fill in the omissions. Lots of people ask if Sophie realizes she's going to have a baby brother soon. She's just too young, though. She knows what babies are and seems to like them, so I'm hoping she'll feel the same way about the one who's about to live with us.
Pregnancy update: my due date is next week. For some reason, everybody seems to expect the baby to come early. Fortunately, I learned from last time not to think that way. The only thing I'm worried about now is that the baby will be so late again that labor needs to be induced, and that would make me sad because then I'd have to go to the hospital and I'd much rather just stay home. But I guess that's the nature of labor: it's unpredictable, so I'm really trying not to develop expectations about how it will go, or idealize any one scenario.
Great update!
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