Right, Mommy?

Sody logic, as of late:

"Dogs don't eat you, only rats. Right, Mommy?"

"If you have too much food in your mouth you choke. And then you die. And then you are sad because have no more kids. Right, Mommy?"

"A car can squash you because it has sharp wheels. And then you die. And you have no head and your head breaks open. Right, Mommy?"

Sody (after a very large man walked by the house): "That man was fat."
Me: "Yes, but it's not polite to say that."
Sody: "We only say that in the house. Right, Mommy?"


Uhh...so that's: animals eating you, death by food or car, and rudeness about larger people...we are laugh riot over here, huh?

Easter, a List

Dyed eggs with Best Bud Trent. Yes, it was a mess. (I may have bitten off more than I can chew with overseeing this project.)




Went to Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Woke up to Easter baskets and and egg hunt. She did not really buy the whole bunny-leaving-stuff concept. She kept referring to the goodies in her basket as "The toys you bought me, Mama."

Got dolled up in a pretty little white dress and her fancy sweater and pink tights and gold shoes for a fancy brunch with the grandparents. Wanted her nails painted just like mine - smurf blue for the fingernails, hot pink on the toes.




Ate nothing that wasn't sweet at brunch: fruit, ambrosia salad, french toast, juice, four plates of desserts. (we sat right next to the dessert table and I just plain gave up after a while)






The dress took a hit: stained with blue cupcake frosting, blackberry juice, and dirt from the tumble she took outside while trying to burn off some energy. She fell fairly hard and stood up bawling: "I'm all covered in diiiiiiiirt!!"

Refused to nap. (How could she when her mother let her eat sugar all day?)

Passed out on the drive home Sunday night.



Perfect.

If I Don't Write it Down, Did it Really Happen?

I miss writing. I miss having a notebook stashed in my bag just in case the mood strikes and I have to write something down. I have carried a notebook in my backpack every day since at least college - where I was semi-famous for disappearing for large chunks of the days, running off to a cafe to read and imbibe way too much caffeine and scribble in journals like any self-respecting, moody, college age girl would - and I still usually do carry a notebook around, but right now it just stares back at me. Taunts me. Wonders when I will come back to it. And I look back at it and feel like writing is a chore lately, like I need to force myself to document my days, which is the exact opposite of how I want to feel when I am writing down my life. There is so much that factors into why I feel like this: no time, no drive, not as much time with Sody (who provides the best material), feeling like all my random thoughts get out through other channels like facebook or twitter or texts or good old fashioned actual conversation, etc etc etc. But my main problem is that I just never want to write because I feel like I should, I want to write because I want to.

So I sit and wait for inspiration. But waiting for the desire means that I am missing out on documenting all the stuff happening right now: the big and the small and the dumb and fun and the everyday goodness we are surrounded by. The way Sody is now, her disposition and her intense gregariousness and all the silly things she repeats so often that we think there is no way we could ever forget them. And of course we will...I know it from looking at the journals I kept when she was a baby. But I just don't want to forget any of the little details that make her HER right now: how she is obsessed with "Annie" and how she sings "It's a Knock Hard Life" instead of "It's a Hard Knock Life." Her little way of blowing a kiss that ends with a thumbs up. How she came up with her own way of saying how much she loves us: "I love you four times!" Her tantrums about teeth brushing almost every single night. How she found Cate, a best friend at school. The way she waves and says goodbye to her friends at school at the end of the day - something about it just seems so grown up to me. Watching her as a walking, talking, potty trained, school-attending little lady doing the things one does in polite society - and watching her do them unprompted - takes my breath away. Just her saying thank you when she is served a meal in a restaurant can make me so incredibly proud and happy and I know that if I never ever do any other thing with my life, I did this: my kid. My amazing and heart-stoppingly perfect kid.

How to Turn Three for the Second Time

Sody's first Third Birthday was on her actual birthday, January 2. It involved a family trip to Chuck E. Cheese, fun with Grandpa and Grandma and a few presents. In other words, a nice little age appropriate low key birthday celebration. I am slightly mortified that I haven't even mentioned the day til just now - my baby is THREE! it's a big deal! how can I have a blog about her and not talk about her birthday?! - but I am going to pretend that my sloth in blog-keeping is only because I was waiting to talk about her second Third Birthday as well.

Birthday #2 was this past weekend. Slightly late but hey, at least it's still January. And let's face it: she is three and has a limited awareness of the calendar, so she doesn't care when her birthday party is. Actually, closer to the truth is that she wouldn't even realize she needed a birthday party. But since Mommy loves a theme and everybody likes cake, a birthday party it was. A few of Sody's buddies, the accompanying parents who are our buddies, pre-nap start time: your basic preschooler rager.

Theme: The Sound of Music (Sody's favorite movie)
Food: Quasi-Austrian (apple strudel, red cabbage salad, "schnitzel" with noodles - it was really chicken nuggets)
Cake: golden yellow from a mix (THE HORRORS. what have I become?? a mix?!) with homemade chocolate frosting and decorated with edelweiss
Decorations: warm woolen mittens, snowflakes and cream colored ponies, of course.
Dress: Sody and I wore our white dresses with blue satin sashes. No one else embraced the theme - not even a single Hitler mustache in the bunch. Hmph.

So we frolicked and sang and ate and partied and wished Isota a happy birthday again. She deserved it.

Putting 2011 To Bed

I have to admit, 2011 wasn't our greatest year ever. I don't want to dwell on the negatives of the past 365 days (Resolution #27: Accentuate the positive! Eliminate the negative!) but I will say I am not too sad to see this year go. But we are all healthy and happy, so here is to that and to looking forward. Here is how we closed out our 2011:


We put up our Christmas decorations. Sody decorated the trees all by herself.


We BARTed to the city with Grandma and Grandpa for Mommy's birthday: Burger Bar in Union Square and getting caught in hordes of Christmas shoppers and stuffing our faces. Fun!


Sody did get a little tired on that trip, though.


There was a Christmas party at Mommy's office. Our Santa was one of my coworkers (shhh! don't tell Sody!) and when Sody realized it was almost her turn to sit on his lap, she solemnly turned to me and said, "I am not going to cry, Mommy." She wasn't *totally* comfortable, but she did not cry, as promised.


Then I took her for a ride around the halls at work on one of our red carts, which was awesome until she put her hand between the wheel and the frame and smooshed her finger. Totally my fault for letting her ride on here. Not cool, Mom.


She got a new doll for Christmas, which was obviously a hit. Another favorite present was a dollhouse, and I know that one was a favorite because that is the toy she would describe to strangers after Christmas. "Hi, my name is Sody...I got a DOLLHOUSE!" She also likes to ask random people we meet if they like her outfit, which cracks me up...but I digress.


One of our best days ever was New Year's Eve. We took Sody out to her first movie ever, The Muppets. Not only was the movie great, but her reaction to it was beyond anything I could have imagined. It was just so fun to watch her watch the movie. She was totally into it. She got the magic of the whole experience, I think...like, she would just turn to me in the middle of the movie and all incredulously exclaim, "MOMMY! We are in a MOVIE THEATER!" like it was the best thing that had ever happened to her. I can't explain it, but it was just one of those simple perfect nights that are hard to come by. The nights you can't really plan, they just serendipitously come together and the pieces fall into place and you look around and just think, Yes. This is a perfect night, a perfect memory, a perfect life.

Also, she was allowed to have popcorn that night, which was a very big deal and probably the real reason she was so happy.

At any rate, a great way to end the year on a high note. Thanks Muppets, thanks family, thanks friends, thanks everybody. Let's all have an amazing 2012, ok?

School Report

December, you always escape me. I thought I was doing pretty well this year until I had the horrifying realization that Christmas is THIS WEEKEND. Oh, lordy. Unprepared, always unprepared. My holiday To-Do List is nowhere near completion. I have visions of cookie baking and gingerbread house making and doing Christmas-y crafts with Sody...but in reality, none of that is going to be happening in the next few days because of work. Plus, when you are broke you need to make your Christmas presents - actually, I still like to make presents when I am not broke - and that means finding the time to make Christmas presents, which is definitely hard to come by this year. It been a big, messy, busy month so far: my birthday and preschool parties and work parties and all of us getting sick at the same time and a short last minute trip to NJ for Joe because his grandma died. I think we are all a little exhausted already.

But I realized that in all the hubbub I have not yet done a report on what Sody thinks of preschool. She has a few weeks under her belt now and I would say so far it is going swimmingly. The first couple days were no trouble at all - dropped her off, she was ready for adventure, left us in the dust. After that, I think she started to realize this wasn't going to be a once-in-a-while adventure, so there was a little more trepidation (worse when I dropped her off than when Joe did, as neither she nor I wanted me to leave) but all in all she has been a total champ. The best is all the stuff she comes home with: the menorah finger painting and Kwaanza noodle necklace and glittery Christmas card she made. And the songs! She is singing us new songs she is learning, and I am eating them all up. My favorite thing is picking her up at the end of the day - I am never a worse driver than when I am going from my work to her school, all impatient and excited and zooming there too fast - and watching her play and interact before she realizes I am there. I get a teeny glimpse into her world without us. I want to know so much: does she like the kids there? do they like her? does she miss us? is she happy? did she eat her lunch? what did the teachers talk about today? did anyone try to take her baby doll? does she stand up for herself? does she share? etc etc etc.

Above all though, she seems to like it there. Thank God. Here are a couple of shots we took on the first day of school (she called her braids "Dorothy braids" as in Wizard of Oz) :

Time, Time, Time, See What's Become of Me

There is just no time for anything anymore. I realize this is the dumbest complaint in the world because everybody and their grandma has this problem. Have you ever met anyone who has had enough hours in their day? No. I know this. But, Jesus... everything is just about rushing these days. Rush to get out of the house with everyone's teeth brushed, rush to get to work on time, rush to pick Sody up from school, rush to get dinner on the table and Sody in the bath and then, finally, wrestle Sody into bed. Bonus points if it's actually anywhere near her bedtime of 8 o'clock. And then all I can manage to do is zone out to some idiotic tv show, pass out, and start all over the next morning at 6 am. It's exhausting. And it's life. That's just the way it is, the way we live, the way of the world.

I'm not really into it, I gotta say. I do like being busy and I do like having a job, but the relentless schedule of constant motion seems hard to keep up with. Where is the time for my kid? My husband? For keeping my house in order, or working out, or cooking healthy meals, or - god forbid - a hobby for myself? Where do people find time for their lives?? I truly do not understand. Every moment is starting to feel accounted for, which scares me. I don't want to keep moving and moving and moving and then miss everything important. I need to take a breath. I need to have an afternoon with absolutely nothing on the agenda. I need to have many uninterrupted hours with my kid to do absolutely nothing with her but hang out together. Slow down, smell the flowers, blah blah blah.

How do we keep up on this hamster wheel? Or, WHY do we? Short of escaping to some bizarro locale in the middle of nowhere to live in a cheap little shack, I am struggling to figure out an answer to all of this. My saving grace is that I have an easy job that is close to home - one that I don't have to think about once I leave the building. How do working moms with actual stressful jobs and commutes even begin to do this? It's so puzzling. I feel like I am missing out on some key piece of wisdom about making it all work. Maybe there was something other moms studied in school and I was absent that day. Something about making all the little pieces of your life fit together nicely so that all the trains keep running smoothly. Because, really, I feel like my trains are seconds from derailing most days around here.

More Shocking Than if She Had Flipped Me Off

The other night Sody said the most shocking word I have heard her say yet: "hate." She had been having a little tantrum out of nowhere about her pajamas...who knows why: because I forgot to let her do the zipper or because the pajamas have hippos and she decided not to like hippos that day or because of anything, really. It could have been anything. But she freaked out for no reason in that special two-year-old way and then was sitting on her bed in a crying screaming mess about it and suddenly started screeching, "I HATE these pajamas! I hate them, I hate them!!" and I stopped in my tracks.

Hate.

Such a strange word to come out of the mouth of such a small person. It was awful because she knew it and said it and used it correctly. Such a negative emotion I don't want her to know and feel and say, not yet. She is still too little and pure for such a thing. And it got even worse after we put on new pajamas (yep, I gave into the irrational desires of a toddler - what of it? You wanna come over and wrestle my crying, snotty kid into bed when she is wailing for ridiculous reasons?). I told her to go give Daddy a kiss goodnight and she told me, "NO. I hate him."

Oh man, I could have cried right there. Where is my baby getting this? How is she learning and spewing about hating things? And worse, hating people? Worst of the worst - hating *Daddy*?? It wasn't just perplexing, it really, really bummed me out. Something about it seemed like a little loss of innocence in a weird way. And I wondered about it, and was sad about it, and was confused by it...until the very next night at bedtime again. We cuddled up and cracked open our first book of the night: How the Grinch Stole Christmas. This was a brand new book that Daddy had been reading to her a lot in the preceding days, so much so that she has already memorized a lot of the lines. Maybe you are familiar with the book: it starts out with, "The Grinch *hated* Christmas..."

OHHHHHHHH.

Duh.

Obligatory Halloween Post

Halloween already feels like a good long while ago, but I am not skipping a post about it because I was really excited at how the costumes turned out this year. I finally hit the jackpot with family costumes with a theme: Burger Time! Sody was a cheeseburger, Joe was mustard and I was ketchup (of course).

I had been mulling over the Halloween costume question for a bit, and trying to determine if Sody wanted to pick out her own thing this year. Actually, at the store she saw the same chicken costume she had the last two years and wanted that one, but I had to put my foot down on that. And then I saw the burger costume, fell in love, and then fell in love again when I saw it was missing the pants - no biggie, she already had brown pants - so I could get it for 50% off. SCORE. Next, I had to convince Sody she actually wanted to be a hamburger...an interesting task since this is a girl who barely touches meat and has never tasted a hamburger in her life. (Her choice, not mine! Lest you all think I am forcing her to be vegetarian). She was a good sport about it. Burger it was. As for me and Joe and our condiments, that was done with felt and a glue gun and some plain t-shirts from Goodwill. Easy peasy.

We crammed a lot into our Halloween weekend, maybe too much: carnival at Sody's new preschool (yes, you heard that right, and more on this later - my baby is going to be starting preschool in a couple weeks!! I am freaking out!!!) and a parade in Piedmont and carving pumpkins (Sody was waaaaaaay into this this year) and cookie baking for work and of course, trick or treating. Her clear favorite in the treat race is lollipops, and we let her eat about sixteen of 'em on the night of Halloween. Now we just have to break her of the habit of asking for candy morning, noon, and night. Guess Mom and Dad need to help get rid of the goods so it's out of sight, out of mind. A sacrifice we are forcing ourselves to make.

Now That's What I Call Friendship

It was ridiculous and inexplicable 85 degrees last weekend around here, so Sody and her good buddy Trent went for an ice cream date. I think they are both doing great at sharing, don't you?

New Skillz

One of the trippiest things about being being back at a job all day (I was going to say being back at "work," but that isn't correct, as being a stay-at-home mom or dad is absolutely work. Right, Joe?) is that Sody knows and says all these random things now that surprise me. Things that I didn't know she knew. Things that obviously came from someone other than me. I am so used to knowing her abilities, knowing all of her words, or at least knowing where she is getting new words. Now she catches me off guard by walking past a trash can and saying, "People left their cigarettes there." WHA-HUH? You know the word "cigarettes"?? Or the day when we taped up a picture of hers on the wall and stepped back to admire how it stayed up, she gave me a high five and exclaimed, "We're a TEAM!" Which was so cute and so unexpected.

What really floored me was watching her color this a.m. Up until now she hasn't done much beyond circular scribbles and up-and-down zig zags, but this morning she told me she made a happy face and it WAS. A head! Two eyes! A smiley mouth! It was a full, clear, obvious happy face. I couldn't believe it. My daughter knows how to draw a happy face. How does this happen without me knowing? How does she acquire all these skills behind my back? I am a teensy bit sad about it because I hate missing those moments of her learning new things. I used to get so much more of those. But mostly I am just so, so excited for her. Daddy gets to teach her all these new things that she wouldn't necessarily get from me. All these new things to surprise me with.

S-S-S-Saturday Night

OK, I have just spent a gazillion hours trying to upload a video of Sody singing "My Favorite Things" (trust me, it's ADORBS) and it isn't working so now it's late and I am annoyed and my husband is bugging me with his "jokes" tonight and I am getting a cold and blah blah blah Saturday night woo woo woo. Y'know? I can't really think straight at the moment so what you are now going to get is our day today in pictures.

First up:



I took Sody to a cupcake shop in Berkeley for their kiddo storytime. We had time to kill beforehand so we headed up to the Goodwill up the street and Sody found a pair of hot pink jelly sandals that she fell in love with and insisted on wearing immediately. Can you get some gross foot disease from someone else's jelly shoes that haven't been properly cleaned yet? I am really hoping not. So far, all of Sody's toes are still attached. Anyway, we went to the storytime hour and ate mini cupcakes (a "Molly Ringwald" cake - pink, pink, and more pink) and drew pictures and listened to the stories. Then Sody spontaneously started singing songs from "The Sound of Music" to the lady who read stories (I am telling you, the girl is obsessed with that movie) and then we left.



She fell asleep on the way home. This is a rarity these days.



Then we headed out to a birthday party for our good friends' one year old daughter. There was a pinata and since most of the other kids had already left, Sody got to take a lot of cracks at this thing. There was a LOT of candy. Sody's sugar high kept on truckin'.



Here you can see her eyes glazing over a little bit and the tireds hitting. The combo of sugar crash and a half hour nap leads to this look.



You know what perks her back up? Cake and ice cream! Fingers crossed that Mother of the Year award will not be judged upon the insane sugary menu I served up to my child today. Or the fact that there is a can of Bud next to her in this shot. Sigh.

Shyness Must Skip a Generation

I was shy kid. This may be hard to believe now - I overcame it and then some - but it's true. I am not sure of how young I was when shyness set in, but I do remember that feeling of being small and keeping quiet and afraid to speak up for who knows what reasons. So far, I don't think this gene has been passed on to Miss Isota. Like, AT ALL. The girl busts out in song in line at the post office, she waves hi to just about everyone we pass on the street (even better is, after she does it, she turns to us and says "I said hi!" which always elicits another smile from said passerby), and she meets new people everywhere.

Last weekend we had a play date fall through due to a misunderstanding. The place we were supposed to meet was closed so as Sody and I sat outside to figure out our next move, a mom and her two kids walked up. When they saw the place was closed they turned around and headed on the path down to the beach. Sody started to get fascinated by the two kids who were obviously close to her age and started along walking with them. She looked up at their mom and said, "I'm going to join you." Before I could jump in and protest, the mom said, "Oh, great! We would love to have you come with us!" And before you know it, we had ourselves a two hour playdate at the beach with perfect strangers. The mom was super cool, the kids played together nicely, and now we have new local friends to call on for beach dates. Friends I never would have met if it weren't for my gregarious little daughter inviting herself along. Who knew a 2 1/2 year old would expand my social life?

What I Have Learned About Having a Job Again

1) If you are nice to people, they might bring you food.

2) As soon as you bite into said food, someone will call the front desk and I will need to speak.

3) Sody will not wither and collapse when I leave in the morning.

4) It is pretty terrible to hear, "I don't want you to go to work, Mommy" while she lays in bed with me and cups my cheeks in her hands.

5) I definitely need to join a gym again because sitting at a desk all day does not compare to running after a toddler all day.

6) It is fun to have a good excuse to buy "work clothes" and "work shoes."

7) High school never really disappears. We may be grown ups in offices but there are still cliques and cool girls and gossip in the halls.

8) Some people get way too excited and stressed out about things that don't need to be stressed out about. (No, Joe, I am not talking about myself here!) In my working life now I am finding that I am not as concerned about things that really don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Because now I know what really *does* matter in the grand scheme of things.

10) I picked a great husband. This is reinforced by seeing what an amazing stay-at-home dad he is.

11) It is no fun leaving this face in the morning:



But there is nothing better than coming home to it at the end of the day.

Bitter and Sweet

There have been tears around here lately. Not from the two year old, from me. I got a job. A full time job. And it's just so damn bittersweet. Sweet because...well, it's a job. We need jobs! Those things you get so you can buy stuff! Yes! Someone picked me out of a whole mess of candidates and offered me a job! Yay! But it's so bitter because this means my stay-at-home mom career is now effectively over. And yes, I realize I am so lucky that I got to do it this long. And yes, I realize that she now gets to be home with Joe for the time being, which is great. And yes, I know that it's a slap in the face to all the moms who don't get to stay home this long with their kids to complain about this...and yet I can't help it. I am just really sad. Sad that I don't get to know her entire day, everything she eats and says and sees and poops and wants and needs and cuddles and hugs. I am going to miss the biggest chunk of her days Monday through Friday, and it stabs me in the heart a little bit every time I think of it.

If I were a better person, a bigger person, I could be so happy that Joe gets to have a turn to be with her now. I could realize that grown-up job time might be a good thing for me, for all of us. I could see the bright side of, Hey, maybe this won't suck after all. But I don't think I am that person quite yet. It might be interesting for a day or two...until I realize this is our new reality and I have to be there every single day. Away from her every single day. I just don't think I am built for this.

Craigslist is My Frenemy

It's been a strange summer here at Finlaw HQ. (I have to leave off the "Baby" part of "Baby Finlaw HQ" as there is really not much left about Sody that is babyish anymore...) Earlier in the summer Joe got laid off, and I of course have mostly been home with the Kid. My weekly babysitting job is ending next week, so basically things around here are...shaky. A little scary. And filled with a lot of craigslist job searching on both our parts. I feel like we are on the brink of major change around here, which is exciting and unnerving all at once. Either I get a job and Joe stays home with Sody, or Joe gets a job and I continue to stay home but maybe find part time work, or we both (hopefully, because we do need the money) get full time jobs and Sody goes to daycare or preschool, assuming we can get her in somewhere when we need to. Any of these options are going to bring new schedules and new people and new experiences to all our lives. I like that, and I look forward to that, but sometimes it's hard to see your way out of the transition times when you are right in the middle of them. I am in a tizzy now. A bit of a confusing "oh, woe is me, what is going to become of us?" tizzy.

In a perfect world, and kind of what I was mentally prepared for, was going back to work part-time to ease our way into Sody going to school. Make the transition to school easier for all of us, not to mention easier on the pocketbook. I don't think I actually took into account trying to find a job that was in perfect accordance with part time preschool schedules (impossible!)...but in my head that is how it went down. But now there is no real choice in the matter, there is no time to mess with part time anything, we gotta get down to work. And truth be told, Sody going off to school/daycare is really only going to be hard on me. Based on the few places we have visited and the way she left me in the dust the second we walked in the door, she is going to be just fine. I've said it here before, but...she is itching to go to school, to play with more kids, to learn learn learn. I know she will love it. The girl is a social butterfly of the highest order. I think I just can't believe I have a kid old enough to be going to school.

But all is not sad and mopey around here. We are still having (cheap) fun, creating adventures for ourselves and trying to make the most of our time together. And we of course continue to bake. Sody had her first strawberry shortcake ever this month:




...and also got to try her first taste of Mom's homemade marshmallows this weekend.



Both were huge hits. Our little sugar fiend.

I'm Siiiiiinging in the Rain. Or Not.

I tend to sing a lot. Not crazy loud or professionally or anything, of course, just around the house and as I go through my day. And definitely in the car. Always, always in the car. I have always done this and probably always will, much to my husband's chagrin. (To be fair, he just doesn't like it when i "'Glee' it up.") It's to the point where it's sort of subconscious sometimes...just singing along but not realizing I am until someone points it out. I distinctly remember a moment with the first family I ever babysat for in my early teens. Making dinner for the two boys, singing as I shuffled around the kitchen, whistling while I worked, blah blah blah ...and the older boy - maybe 6 at the time - was good naturedly asking me to stop singing. "Oh, ok, sorry, no problem." And literally thirty seconds later starting up again without realizing what I was doing. He asked again, I stopped again, and this repeated maybe three times. The boys were cracking up because they thought I was playing a joke, but sadly, no - I am just that dense. It's a character flaw.

So, cut to today, the singing continues. And yesterday in the car Sody and I were rocking out to her Sesame Street cd (ok, using the term "rocking out" extremely loosely here). After the three millionth listen of this particular record, I know the words pretty well. Actually, she does too, which surprises me sometimes. But sure enough, a couple lines in, what do I hear from the backseat?
"Please stop singing, Mommy."

Drat. Another kid who is just hoping I will shut up. Hate to tell you, Darling Daughter, but this is only the beginning...

Quotey Isoty

So the talking thing has taken off. I guess around 2 or 2 1/2 language is supposed to explode, and it sure has for Isota. Suddenly we have this little person around our house who speaks in sentences. Sure, she still switches Fs and Ss ("smart" becomes "fart" for example) and she has her own names for some things (Curious George = "Monkey George") but for the most part, she is a Full-On Human Talker. She gets stuff. She responds to stuff. And it's super cute when takes a second before she talks because you can see her trying to find the right words. I can't understand every single thing every time, but it's exhilarating when I finally figure it out. It's awesome when she can tell I am struggling to understand and she gives me other similar words to help me out.

And did I mention she is hilarious too? I can't believe some of the things that come out of her mouth. Some of my recent favorite moments:

*At a park, she was watching the girl next to us who was dressed in a black/white shirt. She tends to identify strangers by their shirt color, so she asks me, "What that white girl doing, Mommy?" (also, this girl was African-American. oops.)

*She started humming a tune and I started nodding my head in time. She says, "You a good dancer, Mommy!"

*Dinner at IKEA the other night (have I mentioned this is my favorite cheapo food place? Kid's meal for $2.50! Plus, she gets to play in the children's section while I dream of having a bigger house and all the cute things I would put in her room. Then we go pick up cheap ground coffee and jam. Yum.) and when I offered her a meatball, she said *exactly* this: "No thank you, Mommy, I have my own dinner." The politeness of this response just killed me.

*To understand this quote, you should know that Sody loves the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. She is taken with the one part where Willy Wonka first comes out of the factory and pretends that he cannot walk, but then suddenly does a somersault. We explained that that is Willy's trick. So...the other morning I woke up to "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" so I went to go see her and she wasn't in her bed. I turned around and saw her sitting on the couch with two little stuffed animals next to her, all tucked in under the blanket. I started laughing and telling her that she tricked me because I thought she would be in bed. And she said, "Willy Wonka play trick on ground. Sody play trick on couch!" So so proud of herself.

*Spilled her cup of water last night, grabbed a towel from the kitchen, started cleaning up and said over and over, "Don't worry Mommy, it's only water."

*Tonight, watching a man spinning dough at a pizza place, she told me "Sody want to be 'may-er' when I grow up." Aside from how cool it is that this was the first time she said something about what to be when she grows up, it took me a while to figure out this one ('may-er' was "maker" which she eventually explained further by saying "cooker" who "mays pizzas"). But she was basically saying she wants to be a PIZZA MAKER when she grows up! We are thrilled. Joe is set for life.

Sody vs. the Ice Cream Cone

For a while after the trip, the first thing Sody would say about it was, "I got ice cream on the boardwalk!" Here is the proof:

NJ Pictorial