My obsessive compulsive toddler

For those of you who feel like I make my kid out to be too entirely perfect, let me point out that yesterday, my little one:

• Had two thirty minute tantrums, one over the wrong kind of diaper being applied (who knew?) and the other over the fact that we were out of oranges.
  
• Spent the whole day yelling "BOOGER!!" whenever her runny nose needed to be wiped.
  
• Spent all of dinner waiting until I sat down then demanding some new food that had to be fetched and cut up, then rejecting it and insisting on something else. Fun, fun dinner games.
  
• Showed her obsessive-compulsive streak in a host of new ways, including stopping after her bath to make sure that all of her froggie-suction toys were positioned with their heads up and their feet down before she'd let me wrap her in the towel. Because it's just much better that way.

She also insists on all these strange routines, like touching each doorknob of the three-door business on the corner when we go on a walk, and immediately fastening the clasps on her high chair after she gets out of the chair after a meal. We call her "Monk" sometimes. True OCs have nothing on two year olds.

We met the lady who owns the business on the corner the other day after Sofie had just rattled all of her doorknobs.

"Sorry about that," I said to her. "I hope that didn't startle you!"

"Oh no," she said. "It did the first couple times but now I just look for the little shadow going by and I know it's her."

We have a reputation. :)

Sofie at the wedding

Sofie in the dress she wore to the wedding this weekend, eating a peanut butter cookie outside the barn where it was held:




What?

Sofie's uh-PRIZE

Just a reminder to go to this post to sign up for my mini-quilt giveaway! I've got 45 entries so far! You can sign up until Friday night.

In the meantime, Sofie's got a new playset in our tiny little postage-stamp backyard, seen here in all it's weedy glory:


It's just the right size for both the yard and for Sofie, who *adores* it and calls it her "uh-PRIZE!" (for "surprise"). It took her a little while to figure out how to climb the ladder, because she was trying to use her knees instead of her feet, but once she got the hang of that she was off and running.



Bless her heart, she also loves to have her friends over to play with it. I was a little worried that she wouldn't like sharing it, but she's had her playgroup friends and now her neighborhood peeps over to try it out and she's been great, saying "Share! Fun! Share!" and waiting at the bottom of the slide to cheer on the other kids as they slide down.



Oh, and it also has a steering wheel. How cool is that?

And the best part -- I can sit at the patio table with a cup of coffee and a magazine and read while she runs around it going down the slide fifty gazillion times in a row and we're both happy.

Random cuteness

Random adorable moments in the last 24 hours:

• I pull out a yellow and orange striped teeshirt (a la Charlie brown) that’s so freaking cute and which I've been dying to get on her, but Sofie refuses to wear it. With a bit of sudden inspiration I tell her that wearing it will make her a bumblebee. She happily accepts and buzzes off and on all morning.
  
  
• After her own lunch lunch, she gathers up three of the committee and one small lego guy (whose name, apparently, is “guy!”) and sets about laboriously buckling them into her high chair. Lunch, she announces. Then she goes to get another little guy to be with the first guy. Because no one should have lunch alone.
  
  
• Today is apparently the day of laughing REALLY LOUD in this exaggerated “ha HA HA HA” way that most resembles a maniacal superhero villain. And she has been doing it without fail the entire day, whenever something strikes her fancy. And – if you want to see funny, you should see two twenty month olds making fart noises at each other and cracking up. Let's just say she and Jack had a good time this morning.

So funny, this kid.

Little Beethoven

Brett brought home this tiny little upright piano for Sofie yesterday. She took to it right away. Check out this wrist action:




Is she a pro or what?

She also likes the applause, of course:

Time to take the plunge

Sorry, father-in-law, this is another quilting post. I'll start and end with some gratuitous cute baby pictures for you, ok? Here you go:

Begin cuteness:

End cuteness.

***

So I've been quilting on and off for about ten or eleven years, but only quilting in what I would call a serious way for the last two years or so. Ever since my wonderful husband gave me a Pfaff Quilt Expressions for Christmas one year. Now I sew almost every single day, and am getting better at this bit by bit. And yet, still, I have never made a bed-sized quilt. Just little things. Little pretty things, but still little things. Crib quilts and wallhangings are a lot of fun, and I'm not set up well to quilt a larger quilt on my machine.

The largest thing I've made is probably Sofie's birthday quilt, (below) which still isn't finished because I foolishly decided to hand quilt it. It's darn close to twin-sized, I think.



Apparently I'm ready to take the plunge, though, since I've suddenly found myself working on two double-bed-sized quilts at the same time. How did this happen? I've already posted about my Sunny Lanes quilt, which I'm a quarter of the way through now and which is SO UNBELIEVABLY EASY that I can't believe I didn't make something from this book before now. No real pressure there since I don't have to have it done until my nephew's birthday in October. I'm trying to make one block unit a week. They're large blocks, so it goes fast -- only 12 in the whole quilt.

And now, I've signed up for the Orange Crush Mystery Quilt at Quiltville. Which is also full-sized. And I have no idea how fast that process goes -- if I'm supposed to get the whole thing done in a month or a few months or what. But I've pulled fabric for it and cut scraps and bought the little ruler I didn't have that was needed and so I guess I'm committed. We'll see how that goes! Here's my fabric for that one:



The orange and rust-red are batiks, and the blue in the back is much darker than it looks in this picture. The turquoises are accents. These colors seem sort of strange to me but it's what was called for in the quilt, plus a ton of dark, neutral, and medium-toned scraps. We'll see how it goes -- the last mystery quilt turned out to be a stunner so I'm sure it will be lovely when it's done.

Anyone want to sign up with me and compare progress? :)

****

And now for my gratuitous closing cuteness, here's Sofie at the egg hunt at the zoo last Saturday. She had a great time trying to clean up the whole zoo by herself. This is right up her alley.

New things

Sofie is learning all kinds of new things this week. Here are a few highlights:

• She's having a major language explosion, trying to say everything that I say and picking up dozens of new words a day. Yesterday I swear she said at least twenty new words, which is a first. One of them is "trip", as in "Daddy is on a trip."
  
  
• Last night, between dinner and bedtime she disappeared into her room for a while. I peeked around the corner to see what she was doing when it got suspiciously quiet, but she was just playing with a book so I went back to clearing off the dining room table and doing some pre-bedtime chores. She came out a few minutes later and we played and danced until bedtime.
  
  An hour or so later when I took her to her room for our bedtime routine, I found out that she had located and stacked her bedtime books neatly next to the chair, and then dug the four animals who go into her crib with her at bedtime out of the toybox and laboriously hoisted them each over the edge of the crib. They were all in a heap in there waiting for her.
  
  Perhaps not remarkable to anyone else, but she's never taken the initiative before to prepare her room for bed this way. When I noticed she gave me this big delighted smile and looked really proud of herself.
  
  
• Today she made her very first attempt at pouting to get me to do what she wants. She has a small container of bubble liquid and a wand that blows dozens of little bubbles at once, and yesterday we played with it in the living room for a while. Today she saw it sitting on the windowsill and pointed and grunted and basically asked for some bubbles.
  
  "Not right now," I said (because it makes a huge mess I didn't feel like cleaning up just then) and she stopped and gave me a huge, big-eyed pout, corners of her mouth all turned down. Like she might cry. Except she clearly wasn't about to cry. And she was watching me intently to see if it was going to work. And when it didn't, she gave me a smile and went on with her day.
  
  I see the terrible twos looming ahead, I do.

Hi Grandpa Kitty

Hi Grandpa. You asked my mom to stop putting up so many quilt pictures and put up more of me -- so here you go.


With a lego tower I built, and one of the committee


Sniffing a dandelion I picked


Wearing Daddy's hat

Rivals

Rivals, originally uploaded by Brett&MeganZalkan.

We had Kate and Steve over last night to watch the Packers game, and the girls wore their respective cheerleader outfits -- Sofie showing her Patriots pride and Molly cheering on the Packers. Darnitall, though, it turned out they won't be playing each other in the superbowl. Shoot.

Everyone had a good time, though, even though it involved staying up a little past bedtime for the little ones.

Molly touches the screen for luck


A little reading break - Sofie signs the word for water while looking at doggies drinking in her book.

Butt naked

After subjecting Sofie to the torture of a shower this morning (the kid hates showers!), I put a shirt and a diaper on her and left it at that for a few minutes while I got myself dried and dressed and ready for the day. In the midst of this, I barely noticed when Sofie walked up to me and handed me a diaper. Hrm - a diaper? Ok. It was clean. She probably got it off the changing table. No biggee.

Ten minutes later, I took a good look at her and noticed that she was totally naked from the waist down.

Apparently our little adventurer has learned how to remove her own diapers. There she was, just enjoying the breeze, casually perusing the books in my bookcase. La la la la. I don't need a diaper. No, not me!

Great...

My baby has v-chipped Oprah

My daughter, who has been changing channels with the remote control almost since she was a zygote, has this week managed to activate the parental controls and completely lock out Oprah.

Yes, that's right. Mama can watch anything she wants, except for Oprah. That's been v-chipped out. By a toddler.

Now I'm not an Oprah fanatic. But 4-5 is the longest hour of the day for many of us home with toddlers, and I occasionally cruise by NBC at 4:00 to see what the subject of the day is. Just occasionally. And sometimes we half-watch it, while playing with blocks or reading books or otherwise having a good time.

But no more.

Is there a message here? Did she come up with this on her own or has Brett been secretly training her in this very mission for months now? And how long does this parental lock stuff last? It's been blacked out for almost a week now.

Invisible things

When do kids start pretending? I seem to recall reading -- but can't recall where -- that they don't have the cognitive development to actively pretend until they're well over two years old. But Sofie is starting to make me wonder. One of her newest tricks in the last week or two is to hand me invisible things. She'll be playing somewhere and she'll get a huge grin on her face and walk over to me with her fingers pinched together, as if she were holding a small bead or piece of fluff, and ceremoniously deposit nothing in my hand.

She especially likes it if I say, "Oh THANK you, Sofie!" and pretend to put it in my pocket. And off she toddles to whatever she was in the midst of -- sorting books, putting shoes in the laundry basket, building a space shuttle. Yknow. Kid stuff.

Molly and her mom were over to play today, and I asked Kate if Molly does this too.

"She just did this! Just now! But she's never done it at home," she said. "It must be something about your house."

Maybe we really are surrounded by small invisible things? Or maybe our tidy little Virgos are attempting to pick up individual cat hairs off the floor. Messy messy.

Games we play

I read in a book I got out of the library called "Your One Year Old" something along the lines of how your one year old might have a slight sense of humor but probably not much of one yet. Um, what?? Sofie has been making jokes and cracking herself and us up for months now. I'm guessing this book might be a little outdated.

Here are a few examples of the laugh riot that is Sofie these days:

• Sofie's newest game is to roar on command when you ask her, "Sofie, can you roar like a lion?" She puts her whole heart into it. ROOOOOOAR! So funny. She picked this up from a page in one of her books where there's a lion - I roar when we get to that page and she started to do it back after she heard me. But it's cool that she does it on command now.
  
• She also thinks it's just hysterical if you stick your tongue out and then move it from side to side of your mouth. She practically doubles over laughing. This is something she has not yet figured out how to do. Ah, the ease with which one can amuse (and amaze!) a baby.
  
• Every morning, she takes Franklin (her beanbag moose) and shoves him bodily behind our bed's headboard. My job, which she will then wait pointedly for, is to then pull him back out between the slats, and make him pop his head up and say, "Heeeeey! Quit it!" She then dissolves into laughter, only to grab him and shove him back there again. Repeat about 200 times and you have the first 30 minutes of my day.
  
• She's also taken to waving hello at me while she's breastfeeding, with an impish little grin on her face. Hi Mommy. Just letting you know I'm still here.

No sense of humor yet, my foot.

Work

The first day of returning to work was surprisingly good. I felt terrible when I left the house about leaving Sofie for a whole day, but I have to admit that when I got to work, I kind of enjoyed it. Despite my moaning about how I haven't been away from her for more than an hour for the last four months, the other side of that is that I haven't been away from her for more than hour for the last four months.

So, in a way, yesterday was kind of a nice little vacation. I got to slowly eat a healthy lunch, instead of grabbing for bread and peanut butter and wolfing it down in between baby needs. I got to go to the bathroom by myself and take as long as I wanted. I got to read mail and do stuff on the computer using both hands and without simultaneously feeding someone.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Of course, when I got home, I was so anxious to see/smell/touch her that I greedily snatched her up and didn't let go of her for hours. But overall she and Brett did just fine, and Sofie was happy (but not desperate) to see me when I got home. Work is in a manageable state right now with the impending holidays, without a whole ton going on. The commute has been okay. I think I'll survive this month just fine. And so will Brett and Sofie.

It also helped to discover that I accrued vacation while I was out, so I can now take a day or two off the week of Christmas. Yay, corporate policy!

Sofie's Ode To Santa

(with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)

When Sofie Met Santa

T'was twelve days before Christmas, and all through the mall
Old Santa was selling fine photos for all.
And little Miss Sofie thought hard to herself,
I might be a baby, but I know he's no elf!

She got into line with the other young tots
And used all her free time to work on her plot -
When I get to his lap I'll kick him with glee!
I'll pull on his beard and I'll puke on his knee!

Her eyes how they twinkled as she thought of her scheme
But alas, this mall Santa was not what he seemed!
When she yanked on his beard it stayed put just so,
And when she barfed on his lap all he said was "ho ho!"

Could it be the real Santa? Could it be she was wrong?
Could this be the hero of story and song?
Then she looked in his eye and saw true Christmas cheer,
And knew in a moment there was nothing to fear.

So she smiled for the camera and held the man's hand
This was clearly the moment to give up her tough stand
And when Santa asked what she wanted this year
She told him "A pony!" without even a tear.

She returned to her stroller, to her mom gave a whistle
And away they both went like the down of a thistle
But I heard her exclaim as the crowds they grew thick -
Watch out who you puke on - he might be Saint Nick!