"I'm very, very, hot!"

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to take many good pictures of Sophie this month.  Her hair is always in her face... I'm finally considering taking her to get a haircut.  John thinks I should just cut it myself, but I've never cut hair before and I don't want to screw it up.  It's worth $10 to me to have someone else do it!

In my mind, Sophie has stayed about the same since Ben was born, but obviously that isn't at all true.  When I read back over the blog, I actually feel a wave of sadness that all this time has gone by so quickly.  I guess this is how it will be from here on out!  I'll just have to try my best to document it as much as possible.

New things in Sophie's world:

She really isn't made to handle hot, humid weather.  It has reached 90 degrees here already, and on those days she gets flushed and sweaty almost immediately.  It takes her about 10 minutes to lose all of her energy, at which point she gets downright panicky about hydration.  You can tell by looking at her that she's really suffering.  I'm trying to get into the habit of always having a big bottle of water wherever we go.

It's the end of an era: she's losing interest in SuperWhy!  Now she prefers Sesame Street and Between the Lions, another PBS show.  We're also taping one called Dinosaur Train because she seems to like dinosaurs.  She always says she wants to watch it, but it's heavy on plot and light on music so she often ends up wandering off well before it's over.  But she still loves her Super Readers, especially AlphaPig.

We're having more trouble than usual with her diet.  These days, she basically wants to eat only Cheerios and crackers for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.  Just a couple of months ago, she was eating lots of things that gave me hope that she was moving in a positive direction, but all of a sudden we're having problems again.  I have no idea what changed.  Currently the only things Sophie will eat are:

• Cereals, crackers, and chips (as many as we'll give her, though we almost never give her chips)
• Plain bread or toast
• Strawberries, apples, pears, a couple of bites of a banana
• Ground meat, especially with ketchup
• Fried egg, only with ketchup
• Hashbrowns or french fries (usually we have sweet potato fries at home) with ketchup or bbq sauce
• There's some chance she'll eat a grilled cheese sandwich or a quesadilla if she gets lots of ketchup to eat it with... although she's just as likely to eat only the ketchup

I'm particularly frustrated that she doesn't like pasta, ice cream, cheese, other fruits and any vegetables at all.  We've tried many tricks, like showing her how we eat things and helping her learn the names of different foods.  She couldn't care less what we're doing.  She does enjoy naming the foods, and she was really interested in helping me pick tomatoes from our garden and picking things out at the grocery store.  But it just doesn't translate into wanting to taste it.  I think it would really help if I could teach her to use utensils.  A big part of what turns her off to many foods seems to be the way it feels when you touch it.  I think if she felt comfortable using a fork and/or spoon, she would be less apprehensive about eating.

But I suppose she makes up for it by being such a good sleeper.  I hear that many parents are still having problems getting their kids of Sophie's age to go to bed without a fight, and/or to sleep through the night.  We NEVER have problems with Sophie.  Maybe that will change when she transitions out of her crib, but I literally cannot remember the last time she gave us any trouble related to sleeping.

I made some mild attempts at starting to potty train Sophie.  She doesn't seem ready at all.  Oh well.

We're past the point where she has favorite books.  She basically devours new ones, memorizes them in a matter of days, and then loses interest.  I think we'll be making a lot more trips to the library.

Sophie LOVES water!  She loves to run under the hose as I'm watering our plants in the backyard.  This past weekend, we were invited to a birthday party at a private pool that was basically a mini water park, and she had so much fun.  We were there for about 2.5 hours, and she could have stayed much longer.  If only I had brought my camera!

Her current obsession is videos of They Might Be Giants songs ("Here Come the ABCs," "Here Come the 123s," "Here Comes Science").  We watch them on YouTube.

Sophie can play the entire alphabet song on the piano.  She also knows all the planets, in order.  She can spell all the colors of the rainbow, and now she's learning about ROY G BIV.  She can pretty much count to 100, although for some reason she skips the 60s and puts them at the end.  She knows all of the straightforward letter sounds, and can tell you what a word starts with if you stress its first sound.  And she's always surprising us with her memory!