All About Sofia at 18 months

Here's what's going on with Sofia at just about 18 months old:
* She talks all the time now! Her latest cute saying is "I love you" which sounds more like "I love lou". So she's putting strings of words together. She loves to sit on her rocking chair and do "Row Row Row your boat" - she calls out "Row Row" and she moves her arms like she is rowing a boat. She also says "Ashes Ashes" when she wants to do "Ring Around the Rosies". Lena at daycare says she also excuses herself after meals like the big kids do by saying "scuse" :) She still does babble and when she's is mad she will spew out a whole lot of harsh sounding babble that is surely baby cursing. It's pretty funny!
* She has started to count a little bit and says some ABCs - if we say 1, she's say 2. And she'll put up her fingers up to 5 to go along with her favorite Elmo song "Transylvania 1-2-3-4-5" with the Count. She loves the ABC song and will randomly yell out letters. We have a book called "What Does Baby say?" and she will now say what each baby says before I get to the part ie I say "what does the busy baby say?" and before I lift the flap she says "Uh-oh!"
* She no longer is content to eat something different when she sees mommy & daddy have something more interesting. So we try to avoid eating any junk food around her! While she eats pretty healthy overall, she has tried some goodies like French fries, chicken nuggets, cookies (once!) and pie. But her favorite snack is definitely Ritz crackers, she likes the kind with peanut butter between two crackers a lot. She is a carbo-holic. Pasta, bread, fruit and potatoes - she loves them all.
* She loves to try to put on her own clothes and shoes, and to put my shoes on me. Most of the time she picks shoes that don't go with my outfit so I have to tell her to get me other shoes.
* She is still obsessed with dogs and will kiss my mom's dog Riley on the mouth. Ew!
* In fact she is a kissing machine. She loves to give big kisses on the mouth. Now combined with "I love you" it's almost too much to handle, it's so sweet.
* She's finally started sitting on her butt to go down stairs vs taking a header off them.
* She will get weighed at her doctor's appointment next week but we think she is between 28 and 29 pounds. She's very active, always running around.
* She is still in swim lessons, we've moved them to Wednesdays to free up the weekends and Nelson takes her while I'm still at work. She is starting to kick her legs and blow bubbles. She loves the water. We are looking into possibly starting a Gymboree or music class this fall.
* Elmo is still #1. But now she also says "Big Bird" and "Abby", her two other favorites on SS.
* Next week we are moving her into the next size up 18-24 months clothing. She still wears a size 5 shoe.
* She now has 8 teeth, 4 top and 4 bottom - no more vampire baby! She has been teething this past week so more should be coming in.
* We've started to take away the pacifier. She doesn't take her daytime nap with it. But it's about 75/25 at night time. We are going out of town this weekend so we figured it was a bad time to take it away entirely, so we've kind of used that as an excuse to give in, but we're going to try cold turkey next week and see how it goes!
* She will sit on her potty (in her diaper) and say "potty" and sometimes go potty in her diaper. Soon we'll try to start taking off her diaper. She also likes to flush the toilet and say bye bye after someone has gone on the grown up potty :)
* If we give hre a napkin she will wipe her face and mouth (sometimes followed by her tushy! she will rub the napkin over her fully clothed behind!)
* She loves to dance to music, shake shakers or play her piano, and as everyone saw in this past week's posts, she got a play guitar and "rocked" with her Daddy. She's very musical. She will now mouth the words to songs that we listen too, and even remembers lots of the words to her Elmo CD that we listen to in the car. She'll say "Ta-Ra-Ra" when the music starts for "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay" or "La la la la" when "Elmo's World" comes on.
* She is very social - in the mornings she always wants to go say hi to the construction workers working on our house and won't leave until she's said bye bye at least 10 times. She says hi to strangers in the store or neighbors walking by.
* We keep telling her that Mommy has a baby in her tummy. The other day Nelson showed her how to kiss my belly, which she did repeatedly, then she became obsessed with sticking her finger in my belly button, that was much more fun!
* And lest she sound entirely too perfect, she has her moments. The independent streak continues - she has been known to throw a temper tantrum by throwing herself on the floor or throwing food/drink she doesn't want off her high chair. She only wants to feed herself now, which is challenging. And when she is mad, she is vocal! She went through one week where she bit Nelson, me and a kid at daycare but it hasn't happened since (knock on wood). For the most part when she lashes out we just tell her it's OK but we don't hit, bite, etc. and she eventually gets over it. She hasn't learned how to share and at daycare she takes toys away from the older kids sometimes. I don't know why they let a baby boss them around but they do! So we're trying to get her to learn that she can't just take what she wants. A younger sibling should help with that. She also hates when we put her down for bed - she cries as soon as we leave but it rarely lasts more than a few minutes. But even a few minutes of her crying is enough!

We love our Sofia - can't believe she's almost a year and a half. She doesn't seem like a baby any more. She's officially a Toddler.

We have the start of a room!

In one day of framing - the whole room is almost up! Check out the pics:

The inside of the room

Future Rock Star!

Claudia gave Sofia this guitar today and she really gets into playing it. Then Nelson showed her how to put her arm in the air and yell "Rock On!" except it sounds more like "Rot on!" It was the funniest thing I have ever seen, there were so many funny pics we had to post them all!

Fun at Playgroup

Today we went to Jenna's house for playgroup - Max & Griffin were also there. It was fun. It's so funny to see how much they change and grow each month. Sofia definitely needs to work on her sharing skills! She has so much energy and was running around screaming nonsensically at their dog too. What a hoot she is.

Coloring with Max

Giggling with Max on the playset

Dancing with Griffin

Down the slide!

Stacking with Jenna

Celebrating September Birthdays

Tonight we went to Palmdale to celebrate my and my mom's birthday belatedly. As usual Sofia ran around the place like crazy, playing with and feeding Riley (her own food unfortunately). We had dinner, watched some Elmo, played Ring Around the Rosies - Sofia even got to try a little bit of cookie and apple pie! She also was very generous with kisses, showing everyone her pucker up face (wish we had gotten that on camera!)

Ending the Week with Smiles

What a long and tiring week! So there is nothing better than coming home to Sofia. She is doing so many new things - she is talking so much, singing, and starting to count numbers and recite ABCs. Tonight we were playing on the kitchen floor and taught her to say "cheese" to smile for the camera - so here is her Cheese face:

Then I said give me a high 5 and she kissed my hand :)

Then fist bumps!!

Ready for our First Inspection

The forms for the foundation are complete and our first inspection will be on MONDAY! Then we pour concrete and start framing.

Construction underway!

Construction officially started today! Before they arrived, Nelson had to remove a portion of the deck so they can build our new room, most of it will be put back so the deck comes right up to our room (we'll have a door exiting from our room to the deck):

Sofia learned how to lock Daddy out - oops!

Today on Day one they dug the whole trench for the foundation:

Pretty in Plaid

Wish I had taken more pics because she looked so cute! We headed off to a housewarming at my friend Dorthe's. Once we got there she was all over the place, and kept wanting to get near and go into the pool - and we didn't bring swimsuits. So needless to say it was a short visit because meltdown city! She even bit Nelson on the finger - ouch! She certainly is starting to test our limits! But she's still the cutest thing ever :)

Ready for Construction!

We have selected a contractor to start work on our bedroom addition next week! We sign the paperwork and put down the deposit this weekend.

If things go as smoothly as wel all think, we will be done in November, way before our Christmas deadline. Then we'll have plenty of time to paint and redecorate our new Master bedroom and the baby's room. We've been checking out furniture and bedding (for us) and are finding some really cute stuff!

Happy Birthday to Heather!

Today is my 33rd birthday, both Nelson and I had the day off and boy was it jam packed with fun stuff. First we went to our ultrasound...it's not 100% but the ultrasound tech said based on the best angle she could get, she thinks it's another girl! We were kind of surprised, we had been thinking it would be a boy. But we certainly love our little girl so two would be divine :) I have another ultrasound in 3 weeks to check the heart, and I'll have them check the "parts" again to be sure!
Here are the 3 pics from the ultrasound:

Profile pic - 18 weeks old

I love this one - see "her" leg kicking all the way up to her head? That's flexible!

Nelson loves this one, the Terminator pic where you can see the skull bones

The rest of day was really great - we went by Babies R Us and looked at some furniture and bedding. (We decided to leave both boys and girls stuff on our registry...for now!) Then we had a yummy lunch at Cheesecake Factory, and I was off to a prenatal bath and massage at Burke Williams. I picked up Sofia from daycare and we played for a few hours, then Nelson and I went to our fave, Benihana, for dinner. YUM YUM YUM! Great day!

Busy Day of Music & Family

Sofia and I had a busy day today! While daddy was working on prepping the yard for the addition, we headed down in the morning to a kids' music show called StoryTime FunLand. One of my co-worker's husbands is in this group. Sofia really like the music and danced and clapped! She even wandered around and checked out some of the other kids - giving out a few hugs :)

She was doing this funny dance where she picked up her legs and stomped

She crashed on the way home and it wasn't even naptime yet!

Then in the afternoon we headed up to Palmdale to see my mom, aunt and uncle. She ran around their place like a crazy woman and kissed their dog Riley about 100 times!

This is her "UP!" face

She was fascinated by their swamp cooler

I have some cute naked butt pics but don't know if I want those on the internet so those will be for embarrassing her as a teen later :)