Sophia Grace At 2 Years & 3 Months

A quarter of the way through her third year, Sophia continues to light up our life.

What's new since her second birthday? Quite a lot, actually!

For starters, she's certainly talking a lot more. Not quite as much as her twin cousins, but we're definitely able to communicate pretty clearly with her and her vocabulary has grown tremendously.

On the day of her second birthday, she came up to hug my leg and say to me "I wuh you, mommy." (I love you.) It was the first time she'd self-initiated that. On her birthday, no less! And now she does it all the time. She loves to give kisses and hugs and tell us she loves us.

Another sweet thing she's been doing lately is to come up and hug my leg randomly and then tell me "We're a family!" I have no idea where she came up with that but I think it's just the sweetest thing. Love!

Whenever we leave an outing where we were with a group of people (family or friends), Sophie always waves her hand and says "Bye, everyone!" :)

Just a few, short funnies to share:

1) Back in April, Sophie was getting a bath and managed to dump an entire cup of water outside of the tub, onto the floor. She paused as she looked at her mess and said "Oh, my!"

2) She loves to use the word "delicious", as in "Mommy, water is delicious!" Haha.

3) One day in June, Sophie and I were sitting in her room reading books. I had my shirt lifted up a little so I could scratch my back and Sophie wanted to start another book. She handed me one and told me "Mommy, shut the shirt. Read the book."

One of Sophie's favorite uses of language is singing! She LOVES to sing and be sung to and she knows quite a few songs at least in part, or completely. On Mother's Day weekend, I heard her sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" all the way through on her own. In short, she refers to that song (as well as any star she sees) as "Kwinkle Widdle Star". In early June, I heard her sing the ABC's all the way through by herself. Other favorites include "Jesus Loves Me", "You Are My Sunshine", "This Little Light Of Mine", "May There Always Be Sunshine", "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Happy Birthday".

Since her second birthday, Sophie has learned all her colors and can now count to 20 independently. Sometimes she stumbles into the pattern of the teen numbers, but once there, she can make it to 20. We've counted beyond 20 together and she seems to recognize the pattern of increasing numbers. I had been a little worried about her seeming lack of knowledge of color names. If I asked her to find the blue block, she could do it, but if held up a blue block and asked her what color it was, she couldn't tell me. She loved her color sorting game from Christmas and was definitely capable of matching colors, but it wasn't until I bought her a couple of great color books that she was really able to verbalize all the color names. We're still working on shapes...

Our girl has learned most all of the letter sounds in the alphabet, thanks to the Letter Factory DVD, which is one of her biggest requests. She also enjoys Numbers Ahoy and still loves her pals, Dora and Diego. I can ask her "What does the (choose a letter) say?" and she'll tell me it's sound, usually in the form of the little song in the movie. "Every letter makes a sound, the 'M' says 'mmm'".

Sophie enjoys doing puzzles, reading books and listening to music. She has a small Sesame Street "CD Player" that came attached to a book that she has been carting around all day, every day lately. She sways to the music and then sings her own songs. She also loves doing any sort of fine motor work I give her such as pinching clothes pins onto the edge of something, tonging pom poms between two bowls, transferring anything between two containers using various tools (her favorite is marbles with a melon baller) and dropping small objects into a hole or slot on a container.

Our girl had a two week phase at about the end of May (I think?) where she turned into a crazy tantruming monster. ;) You never knew what was going to set her off, but it was always scary to watch her lose her cool whenever you tried to put her bib on, change her diaper/clothes, get her into or out of the tub, etc. because you just knew the night was going to be rough after that. At times, she got so worked up, it almost appeared she was looking right through us (like what I've heard of night terrors) as she screamed and cried without really even knowing what she was upset about. She appeared scared and totally out of control - almost like a colicky baby - and it was so difficult to console her. Absolutely impossible to redirect either. That phase seemed to stop almost as quickly as it started and I'm so glad it's (hopefully) in the past. She still throws a typical two-year-old fit here and there, but nothing like those couple of weeks. It's weird how kids go through weird stuff like that. Must have been some other transition going on with her (that we didn't realize) that made her feel so out of sorts, because for the most part, she's always our happy, happy girl.

Sophie's eating habits are varied, but mostly pretty good. She loves her grains and, while Will ALWAYS eats the fruits and veggies first from his plate, Sophie definitely goes to the bread/grain first... unless there's yogurt there. Yogurt trumps everything. Current sleep routines (which are sort of out the window in the summer) include a 7:30-8:30 bedtime, a 7:30-8:30 wake time and a two-ish hour nap from 1-3. She's really been struggling with falling asleep quickly since moving into her big bed. Often she's still awake as late as (and occasionally later than) 10 p.m. She's not playing in her room at all after we tuck her in (or even singing like Will used to), but she gets up, turns the light on and lays down on the floor somewhere. We go in, put her back in bed and turn out the light without talking to her several times and eventually she falls asleep on the floor and we move her for the rest of the night to her bed. She's still really excited about her bed so I know she still likes it, but I think she's just getting used to the idea of sleeping in it. Will was the same way with getting up and taking forever to fall asleep so I know she'll likely pass through this phase.

Before we'd moved her to the big bed, Sophie was climbing out of the crib constantly. We still had the changing pad on the floor at the time, so we'd often come in to find her sleeping on that. :)

Now the changing pad is pushed under her mirrored dresser and this has become her new favorite falling-asleep spot: (haha)
Note, the legs are almost always stuck under the dresser when we go in. LOL

Sophie has been playing HARD this summer. She loves to run, jump and climb and she's recently learning to peddle the tricycle. The poor girl looks like a tomboy with all the bruises, scrapes and skid-burns on her knees and legs.

I continue to be in love with Sophie's lovely, growing locks... but the curls sometimes make it hard to tell how long her hair really is! Only in the bath tub are you able to get a glimpse at it's true length.

And the soft, wispy tendrils around her hair line make it pretty difficult to pull back. I manage (with the help of Dora or an intriguing book) to get it into pigtails or something of that nature, but the simple side clip is still my rushed morning, go-to style.

Sophie loves to play with our watering can. She helps me water the garden, the grass and (most often) her feet and shoes. :)

Taking a water break for herself after all her hard labor. ;)

Craig recently replaced our old-fashioned-looking wooden swing seats with form-to-your-booty rubber ones. These pictures were taken before that, but they show you the reason why he did that. Sophie still loves the baby swing, but she's fully capable of swinging on a regular swing seat. Probably her favorite, independent way to swing though is on her belly. She even gets a running start and drops her belly onto the seat as she picks up her legs and glides forward and backward. She loves this and seems to be impressively coordinated with it, but one time she fell forward off the wooden seat and it came back to hit her in the head (not a major trauma, but still a little sore) and that was the end of that swing in Craig's eyes.

Love this one. :)

The summer seems to be flying by and we're enjoying nearly every minute of this beautiful (active!) season. I am just loving the ages of my children right now. They just keep getting more interesting and more fun.