Crawling, Standing, Dancing

Sophia is approaching her 9th month of life, and she’s getting closer and closer to walking. Let’s see…the last update was from Temecula almost two months ago. At that time, she was crawling backwards, but not she’s a little rocket going forwards. She’s been doing that for probably about a month now. Her favorite place to go is the bathroom, because of the portable CD player on the floor. She knows how to open both the CD player and the tape deck and remove the CDs and tapes.

She also knows how to chew on them with her two little bottom teeth and then throw them across the room. So we try to keep her away from there.

She’s been standing up for as long as she’s been crawling forward. All she needs is something to grab onto, and up she goes. She also goes back down a lot, and has whacked her head on a few objects. It’s a momentary crisis, but as soon as you pick her up, she settles.

She’s been testing her lungs over the past week – and by testing her lungs, I mean screaming from 1am to 4am, unless, of course, we sit right next to her. But then she just plays instead, which is not what we’d like her to be doing from 1am to 4am. So we’ve taken to letting her work it out for 10 minutes before going in and comforting her, and after 3 or 4 of those, she seems to be settling back into sleep.

She, of course, loves to dance when she gets standing, and there are times when it actually looks like she’s purposefully following the rhythm of the music. I’m not sure a baby can do that, but that’s what it looks like.

Lots of new pictures up, mostly from our California trip. I’ll post more soon.

Hello from Temecula, CA!

It’s been a fun trip so far. Sophia was angel on the plane. The first flight, into Dallas, presented an immediate challenge: as the pilot described it, one computer was not talking to the other, so we couldn’t take off till we figured out the problem. He powered down the plane entirely and rebooted. During the power down, everything went relatively dark, and it got really warm in the plane. Sophie just stood on my lap and looked over my shoulder behind us without getting upset at all. I couldn’t figure out what prompted this easy-going behavior until just after the plane powered up again. I looked behind me and realized a young girl had been giving Sophia a little show with her stuffed rabbit. Very cute.

Plane problem solved, we took off, and she slept through half of the flight into Dallas. She was getting a little edgy during the flight into San Diego, but we managed to keep her calm by playing her Baby Einstein video on my laptop. A few drunk people told us she was the most well-behaved baby they’d ever seen on a plane.

It didn’t take too long to get her accustomed to the new time zone. An extra nap and keeping her up a little late did the trick. She’s not sleeping as well as she does at home, and I’m up with her at 5:30 every morning, but it’s certainly not as bad as it could be!

Last night, Grandpa Ron and Grandma Kelly took us out to a Japanese restaurant. I discovered that I like eating Japanese food. Sophia discovered that she likes eating the table, the highchair, and the menus in Japanese restaurants.

Today, we’re going to the San Diego Zoo. Should be a lot of fun, and we’ll post pictures.

Leavin’ On a Jet Plane

I really need to update this thing more often. There’s a bunch of new pictures up and many more to come. A few quick stories:

Makin’ Calls

Sophia loves the cell phone. She loves it so much that she’s placed a couple of phone calls already. A few weeks ago, I got home and Tricia said, “Watch this.” She opened up her cell phone in front of Sophia, and Sophia’s face lit up as much as the phone. She reached out and took the phone. A few seconds later, my phone started wringing. I flipped it open: “Incoming Call: Tricia.”

She also called her Aunt Sarah just a couple days ago without Tricia even realizing it. Clever kid.

The Baby who says, “Ni!”

And “Te, De, Da, Ga, Goo, Di, Dit, Dats,” and “NNNNNN.” Yes, folks, she’s going crazy with the syllables now. One day she put together such a string of D’s, G’s, N’s, and S’s we were certain she had just said “Dunkin’ Donuts.”

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

She’s not quite crawling yet, and she’s really mad about it. She can get up on her hands and knees, but she’s not quite sure what to do from there. Until she finally masters that skill, she’s getting around just fine by rolling across the room.

California, Here We Come!

Sophia will get her first experience on a plane tomorrow. We’re heading out to visit Grandpa Ron and Grandma Kelly in Temecula, CA tomorrow morning. 3 hours, 40 minutes to Dallas, an hour and fifteen minute layover, and then a few more hours to San Diego. Flight leaves at 6:30am.

We’re terrified.

We’ve got a new toy for each hour on the flight (and yes, one of them is a toy cell phone), an umbrella stroller for rolling around the airport, my laptop with all her Baby Einstein DVDs, blankets for wrapping her, bottles for feeding her, teething biscuits, rice puffs, and my iPod so we can take turns drowning out the noise should she start crying. If we can, we’ll update you from CA and upload pictures; if we can’t while we’re there, we certainly will when we get back.

First Christmas and New Years’

With the Level 7 Meltdown we told you about in our last post, we were quite afraid of the nights of Christmas Eve and New Years’ Eve.

On Christmas Eve, Sophia did rather well at Great Grandpa and Grandma Fay’s, which was about 4pm-6:30pm. After a nice time there, we headed over to my parents’, and the first half of the evening went fine; then the meltdown began. We did manage to stay for almost two hours before having to leave, and it was nice to be able to return to what was a Christmas tradition for me for all my years growing up.

Christmas morning was a blast, opening presents with Sophia. Tricia and I opened ours on Christmas Eve after church, so that we could dedicate Christmas morning to Sophia (and we have a hard time waiting, to be quite honest…). She got a doll (Jasmine, anatomically correct!) and an Fisher Price aquarium thingy for her crib (which was instrumental in getting her to sleep tonight!). She really, really loved…the wrapping paper.

She got lots of great presents from grandmas, grandpas, uncles, and aunts as well, and some just in time…at 5 months, she seems to have already outgrown the 3-6 month category, so all those 6-9 month clothing presents have already come in handy. Thanks to all from Sophia.

New Years’ Eve was the most pleasant surprise imaginable. She was a peach all night long. She managed to stay up almost until the ball dropped, and she was happy the whole time! She finally fell asleep shortly after 11, and she slept the entire car ride home, through the transition from car seat to crib, and straight through till 8:30am New Years’ Day.

We’ve been paying for it ever since with a week straight of awful sleep. But at least it was one good night.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Christmas is Coming

It’s been way too long since we’ve updated, so there are 20 new pictures, and here’s a quick update on Sophia.

We learned, not many weeks ago, the power of a crying baby. Excited about the yearly Christmas Party at Brad and Elizabeth’s, we packed Sophia in the car, loaded up the huge bowl of mashed potatoes that we had prepared, and headed over. We arrived to lots of smiling faces and arms ready to hold Sophia. We happily handed her off to Uncle Eric and began chatting with people we hadn’t seen in a while.

Then we had a Level 7 Meltdown. We quickly moved her to a quieter atmosphere (Carter’s nursery), fed her, rocked her, and tried to get her to sleep. No deal. Our stay at the party was less than 20 minutes. There was no pacifying her. She wanted [em]her[/em] bed, and she would accept no substitutes.

We consoled ourselves with a quick stop on the way home for Nick Tahou’s Garbage Plates. Mmmmm….Garbage Plates.

We’re excited about her first Christmas. Not that she’ll remember it, but we will. She has two new cute little Christmas outfits, one for the Christmas Eve Party at Great Grandpa and Grandma Faye’s, and pajamas for the same night, later in the evening, at Grandpa and Grandma Prinzi’s. We sincerely hope she’s willing to sleep there and doesn’t have yet another meltdown.

Just for the record: she’s rolling now, and she’s having a much better time of playing on her own. She loves the Grateful Dead, especially when Daddy and Mommy dance while she sits in her chair (she squeals and giggles incessantly).

She does this other fun thing now when she thinks she’s not getting all the attention she deserves. She fakes coughing. I wish I could put a soundfile on this site so you could hear it. It’s simultaneously the cutest and most obnoxious thing you’ve ever heard.

Enjoy the new pictures. We’ll post a Christmas update and pictures next week.

First Thanksgiving and First Solid Food

Sophia just experienced her first Thanksgiving. Well, actually, she slept through a lot of her first Thanksgiving. And then she cried through a second attempt at celebrating.

On Thanksgiving Day, we went to Great Grandma Prinzi’s, as is the Prinzi tradition. It was the first time all three cousins (Sophia, Carter, and Joel) were together in one place with the grandparents. It was a good time for there to be a lot of new life, because it was also the first Thanksgiving at Grandma’s without Grandpa, who passed away just two days before Sophia was born. We definitely missed him.

By the time dinner came around, little Sophie was tired, so I rocked her to sleep, and Tricia and I ate in shifts. A good time was had by all, and we got lots of pictures, including the first ones of just the three babies. See the sidebar.

Friday, we traveled on down to Nana’s house to have another Thanksgiving dinner, and the wheels came off. Maybe it was the absence of a rocker, but when Sophia hit her tired point, she entirely broke down into a long fit of uncontrollable crying. I took her for a drive that put her to sleep, but that sleep only lasted about 20 minutes after we got back. We had to leave earlier than planned, but perhaps the silver lining was that Tricia and I were getting killed at euchre, and we didn’t have time to finish the game.

This weekend, we put up the Christmas decorations, and you’ll see from the new pictures that Sophia was actively involved in the process.

Tonight, we tried some solid food for the first time. She did really well! She took down 4 or 5 spoonfuls of rice cereal before deciding she was done, and the mess was minimal. You’ll see pictures on the sidebar of this as well.

She’s decided not to sleep very well, but we’re convinced this is because her brilliant brain is developing at such a rapid pace, we’re lucky she’s sleeping at all. She has new tricks to practice, algorithms to solve, and the world to take over. All of this takes careful planning (planning at 2:30AM, 3:30AM, 4:30AM…you get the picture).

Our little prodigy.

Grandpa Ron Meets Sophia

Grandpa Ron has been busy creating an incredible car dealership out in CA, and his trip back here in the summer missed Sophia’s birth, since the little tyke was adamant about staying in the womb as long as possible. This last Sunday afternoon, Grandpa Ron finally met his new granddaughter.

He arrived just prior to the start of the Bills game wearing a hat of a Buffalo head (see picture). He rubbed the Buffalo nose for good luck, and the Bills won.

Anyway, it was love at first sight. Grandpa held onto her and fed her and obviously believes her to be the most beautiful little girl in the whole world (which she is).

Later, we got the first shot of Grandpa Ron, Grandma Kelly, and Sophie all together. A good time was had by all. We look forward to more visits from our California family and to taking Sophia out to the sunny West coast.

Sophia’s New Cousin: Joel Matthew Prinzi

Sarah Prinzi, wife of my youngest brother Eric, gave birth this morning to Sophia’s new cousin, Joel Matthew Prinzi. 7 lbs., 19 in. He’s a cutie. Congratulations, Eric and Sarah!

Happy Halloween!

Gerber Baby

I spent the majority of Monday carting Sophia around the hospital. Lots and lots of smiles and comments. “She’s perfect!” “Her skin is so beautiful!” “She’s pretty.” “Hey, buddy!” (what?)

I got one, “She doesn’t look like you, Travis” (with mutters of agreement from other co-workers in the room, and four, “Wow, she looks just like you.” Go figure.

But the comment I got most often was, “She’s a Gerber baby!” Which I guess means she’s so perfect and beautiful that she could be a little baby model.

That’s my girl.

Some new pictures up, several of Bodhi’s last day here at the house. Ever. The last post said Brad and Elizabeth were taking him. Didn’t work out. I’ll be taking Bodhi to his new home in Penfield tomorrow morning. I’ll write about it this weekend, perhaps.