Miss Baby America

Sophia is in that baby stage where she acts a whole lot like a dog. Crawling is the most obvious aspect of this dog stage. Add to that how she carries things in her mouth, such as toys, lids, or anything she finds on the floor that she can fit in her mouth. Eating everything she finds on the floor is also rather dog-like. Especially considering that she will things off of the floor that she wont' eat if I put in on her highchair tray. She even does the breathing thing that kind of reminds me of panting. She lets out these little puffs of air, sometimes several at a time and rhythmically. It's awfully cute. At times she even blows her little bangs up with the puffs. Sophia is also really into crawling over things. It's like she searches to create her own obstacle courses. She will be crawling along and something will be on the floor, like a stuffed bear, and instead of avoiding it, she'll go out of her way to crawl over it. She especially enjoys crawling over my legs or over Yale's body when he's lying on the floor. I'm surprised at how many times she will do this. One day when I was sitting on the floor, I think she crawled over my legs about 50 times. As I'm sure you can imagine, Yale is quite smitten with Sophia. His new nickname for her is Miss Baby America since he thinks she has to be the cutest baby ever. I'm excited to report that Sophia did the sign for milk several times today. She has done this sign, which involves squeezing your hand like your milking a cow, a few times over the past few weeks, but this is the first time I was sure she really knew what she was doing. I think she may have done the sign for sleep, too. It's been a big day for signing! Olivia just woke up and is sitting on my lap as I type. She is pointing out letters on the keyboard and saying things like, "'O' for Olivia, 'S' for Sophia." The other day she surprised me by saying, "Juice starts with 'G'." Although, juice obviously doesn't start 'G', I was impressed with how she got the right sound.

"Oh, no! Mommy's Going to Fall Over, Again!"

A couple of days ago, inspired by the sunny, spring weather, I thought it would be fun to push the girls in the double stroller while I rollerbladed. We drove to a nearby open-space park with a well-kept path. We got off to a tough start because Olivia protested riding in the stroller with her sister. This is a stroller that doubles as a bike trailer, and isn't really designed for comfort. Therefore, when both the girls sit in it, Sophia leans on her sister while pulling her hair and poking her in the face. Understandably, Olivia doesn't care for this. After some coercing, I got both girls buckled into the stroller, and we were off. We had gone about half a mile, when Olivia asked to go down a rather steep hill. My first instinct was to say no. Unfortunately, I didn't stick with that. I thought, I have a brake on my skate... I'm a fairly seasoned skater... I've gone down that hill a gazillion times on my own... Let's give it try. Just as we started down the hill, some people near by were pointing at a coyote that was running in the direction that we were going. So, I'm distracted, wondering if we should be traveling in the direction of a wild coyote, when I feel my skate get caught on something and I can't turn to follow the curve of the path. I didn't realize it at the time, but my skate was caught on the break cable that I usually clip up and out of the way so that it doesn't drag on the ground. For some unknown reason, I forgot to clip it out of the way this time. Because of the hill, we were going just fast enough that I didn't really have time to try to get my skate loose, so instead I tried to veer off the path and onto the grass. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to maintain my balance through all of this and fell and hit the pavement pretty hard while pulling the stroller over with me. I didn't really take the time to think about it I was okay, although I was definitely feeling pain, because I wanted to make sure that the girls were okay. They stayed buckled in, but had fallen on top of each other. They were both crying, but I think it was because they were more scared than hurt. A man was kind enough to run over and make sure we were all okay. After taking off my skates that were covered in mud, I held Sophia to calm her down. Because of the mud, my skates were out of commission and I had to walk about a half mile back to the car in my socks. Olivia decided she wanted to walk most of the way. At one point, as I was walking I bent over to pick something up and Olivia said, "Oh no! Mommy's going to fall over again!" I thought that was pretty funny. After a couple of visits to the chiropractor I'm thinking that in a couple of weeks I'll be ready to try rollerblading with the girls again. I've rollerbladed with each of them separately without any problems, but this was the firstl time I tried it with both of them in the double stroller. I'm hoping that this experience didn't traumatize them so much that they won't want to try again. Next time I plan to make sure the break cable is out of the way and we will stay on level ground.