just saying "hi."
Guess who I met a year ago today?
I can't believe it's been a year. Seems like yesterday. Seems like it's been forever.
(Of course, despite a whole year passing, I'm still 29.)
She isn't walking, but she's started taking her hands off of support objects when standing. She's strong, though. When we have to give her medicine, it takes both of us to hold her down and give her the medicine. When she wants out of her car seat, she can launch herself out.
Even as late as Christmas, I didn't think she'd ever eat solid food regularly, but as the teeth came in, so did her enjoyment of food. Her favorite food so far? Broccoli. With french fries a close second. We've noticed that kids' menus are pretty much of the format "X and french fries," which is convenient. I hope children can live on starch alone, because there are definitely days all she'll eat is Cheerios and french fries.
She's been saying "Hi" for months, but it's only the past few weeks that we've become convinced it really is "Hi" and she's saying it deliberately.
Best evidence of the innate superiority of my baby: Every book she picks up, she turns right-side up. Including books she's never seen before. She's done this since she was eight months old.
How she reminds her parents not to form a religion around her: She still doesn't hold her cup well enough to drink a lot of water on her own.
And just to prove that she hasn't done us in yet:
Sometimes in the mornings Darin brings Sophia downstairs, to our bed. And sometimes Sophia will fall back to sleep between us. More often, however, upon arriving in her room all she can see is a big neon sign flashing, "EXPLORE!"
She likes to crawl over our pillows to get to our headboard, where we have stored (among other things) piles of books, a box of Kleenex, and some toys. Sometimes she doesn't go over the pillow. Sometimes she goes over our faces. Crushing our faces is no impediment to her enjoyment of her task. She forges ahead, determined to discover what there is to see.
One of the first times she clambered over the pillows (and us), Darin shouted, "She's going to the Pole! Get out the sled dogs!" Over time, this became shortened to, "Sled dogs ho!"
This is Sophia's personality in action: she's energetic, she's determined, she's happy, she's enthusiastic. I wouldn't change anything about her for the world.
I could write a ton about how I've been doing. Log-lining it for you: I've been great. I've been writing. I've been making some changes. I'm feeling pretty good.
There are good reasons why, for the moment, I think this hiatus is going to continue (and it's not just because I can't pin down my brother-in-law to help me with a redesign). It's not that I can't tell you, it's more along the lines of "To explain this well, I either have to ask Karen Meisner to do it (because she explains everything well) or spend a lot more time getting the words right than I'm willing to spend at the moment."
When I do start up again, it'll probably be closer to a weekly basis than anything close to a daily one. That's what I feel I have the energy for, right now. Thanks for staying tuned so far and thank you for all the mail you've sent me -- I really appreciate hearing from you, even if I've been kind of distant lately.
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Copyright 2001 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@nobody-knows-anything.com