Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers we love and cherish! Thank you, Pop-pop Mietling, Gramps Babikow, Pa-pa Schultz, and Grandpa Mietling, for all your love and support!

Sophia has been growing so quickly lately. It is remarkable! She has gotten so tall and is looking more and more like a little girl. She now loves to close doors. Every door in the house will be closed if it is in her power to do so. Today we went to Best Buy to explore and run around a large, air-conditioned space; Sophia was enamored with the blue and yellow balloons. She easily procured one with her beautiful smile, bouncing curls, and chubby, outstretched arms! We now have a yellow balloon floating in the dining room, ready for more play tomorrow.

Our little girl is also really exercising her speech. She repeats a lot of what we say and is moving into full sentences (though with the little words missing). She loves Veggie Tales and Mary Poppins and is getting very good at singing the songs, in particular Cheeseburger (from the Silly Songs collection) and Chim Chiminy (from Mary Poppins). She also imitates Dick Van Dyke's dancing which is hilarious. So much joy and laughter to be had as a father and a mother. Thank you, God, for this wonderful blessing!

We recently took a short vacation to Chattanooga for an overnight. We had such a wonderful time, though interspersed with much rain. Sophia had a blast as she got soaked in a downpour and then later when she played in the memorial to the Trail of Tears on the riverfront in Chattanooga. It was a really fun family vacation with beautiful views and really good coffee.

Happy Mother's Day (Belated -- Again)!

Sophia is becoming a confident, opinionated little girl. She is such a happy toddler. She laughs a lot. She loves to go "out". She regularly grabs our hands saying, "Hold hands". Ah, yes, this sounds adorable and so tender, but there are certainly ulterior motives! She does this both to have us walk alongside her around the house, but primarily to take us to the door and ask to go for a walk or "out". She enjoys going to Target to run around on gloomy days or when it is brutally hot. She has made many friends in the apartment complex, so definitely enjoys a walk around the block with all the attention she gets, not to mention the many small dogs to greet.

Sophie loves her "special book", which is her Jesus Storybook Bible. It is really a great book -- highly recommended for all ages. She carries it around and reads it as one of her hourly (if not more frequently) activities. She will jabber on while looking through it and pepper her jibberish with a few key words, like Jesus, purpose, bible, and "HA-HA, HA-HA" (this is Goliath's laugh). She also uses the words she knows while talking on her phone (which is most often her hand as a pretend cell phone) -- dah goo ba dij diaper change shweh haha monkey george...

Oh, and she now particularly enjoys Curious George The Movie. "Monkey George" is so entertaining, not to mention the awesome soundtrack by Jack Johnson.

Matt and I are so loving our little wonder. She has taught us so much and has captured our hearts. Our hearts melt as we watch her grow up. We are really looking forward to some summer fun with Sophia.

Happy Mother's Day to our dear moms and grandmoms and great-grandmoms!! Thank you for all your love, prayers, and support. We hope to see you very soon and give you all great big hugs. We know you will enjoy these videos.

A Growing Vocabulary

Sophia is doing so well and growing up in such a sneaky way. The other day I was picking up Matt from the airport and using the GPS. She kept repeating the letters I was entering in.. D.. D! E.. E! C.. C! So cute and freakishly clear -- a perfect echo to the automated lady. Over the last week we have realized how much she is listening to us as she repeats various words we use. She also sings the Veggie Tales theme song... Bra kli ...ry .... aaaaaaaaalllle.... (Translation: Broccoli, Celery.... Taaaaaaales.) This week Sophia and I also had our first little conversation at dinner. I asked her if she played during the day. She said yes very enthusiastically. Then I asked her, "What did you play with?", and she said, "Tunnel." This was an awesome moment. Then I asked her if Cobalt also played with the tunnel. When she said no I knew the clarity was gone. (Though she does often say no out of sheer love of the word, even when she means yes.)

Sophia is now 34.5 inches tall -- 97th percentile for height and weight. She's a big girl. Most mornings she'll come hang around me while I'm getting ready for work, wanting to play with all the things on my bedside table, including the iTouch. She is very good at working it and has even discovered functions I had no idea I could do. Mostly she likes to play a little toddler game that her Ne-Ne found. She loves all the animal noises it makes; it must be time for a visit to the zoo. She will also always go for this particular set of high heels. You'll see them below. They are her favorites. She will spend a long time trying to get in them since they easily fall over while she is trying to insert her feet. It's good for her to build up some patience. :)

Where go?

Sophia is getting more and more playful! She really enjoys playing hide and seek -- although her chosen hiding places are usually in the middle of the room, often with a blanket or piece of clean laundry over her head.

She also loves to go for walks to get the mail and has been enjoying Wii Fit -- she likes to go "running". She has started to get really into her crayons, and her new favorite stuffed animal is her bear -- Winnie the Pooh.

This weekend we went to walk around in a nearby mall (since it is so cold outside!); Sophie probably waved to everyone she saw. She is so social. She'll go right up to any little child and try to greet them; since she has no sense of personal space, the meeting usually doesn't go so well for the other child since Sophia's forwardness is a bit startling.

Oh What a Winter!

It is incredible how quickly Sophia is changing. She is definitely developing into her own little person as she perfects her "yes" and "no". She likes to climb into our low chair all by herself to eat snacks and watch Baby Signing Time -- which is still her favorite activity, right up there with the general "babies" (meaning watching videos of babies or herself on youtube) and going for a walk to get the mail. Oh also, thanks to Uncle Andy and Auntie Kelly, the popper is also a new favorite -- Sophia will spend a significant amount of time running around the house pushing or pulling it. Her language skills are coming along very well. She loves to repeat whatever we say -- or to at least try. Now at bedtime she says "nigh nigh" and "wuh woo" while nodding with arched and expressive eyebrows. It is pretty sweet to hear your daughter try to say "I love you" to you as you tuck her in.

All around, Sophia had a great Christmas. One of her favorite gifts is a tunnel she can crawl into -- it is simply guaranteed laughter. We also had the chance to visit her Papa and Ne-Ne in Lexington where Sophia had her first experience in snowpants! And she enjoyed every minute of time spent doling out fruit and "rectangles" (little chocolates that she only knew to be small golden rectangles) to her uncles and grandparents.

We just got back from a visit to Pensacola to see the Babikows, too. Sophia is already quite the little traveler. She did amazingly with both the plane and car rides in the past month. We spent some time walking/running around the big yard at Great Granddad (yet to be named by Sophia) and Gammy's house. Sophia also demonstrated her varied taste for food, saying "more" in a really cute questioning tone every time she saw an opportunity to snack. She is always happy to try whatever you are eating; in fact, in the last two days she has eaten nearly two whole grapefruits and several mandarin oranges. She is a fruit fiend. We just hope we can finally move her to soy milk and get her completely off Alimentum. I really hope she eventually grows out of her cow's milk allergy. But all in good time.

Here are some pictures and videos for your enjoyment!