Gone baby gone

There's no denying it anymore...Sonia is no longer a baby. Yes, I know, this has been true for a long time. But, somehow in the last few weeks it's like she has suddenly turned into a little kid with all of the, uh, charming characteristics that go along with that. A few examples:

• She has decided she cares about what she wears...a lot. We bought her what I thought was a cute brown vest for the fall, and you would think the thing was made of Kryptonite. She wails whenever we have the audacity to try and put it on her. And literally when you walk into her room in the morning oftentimes her first words of the day are "pink shoes" (a request for her pink Crocs).
• She is starting to do a lot more destructive things around the house. Like breaking things. And drawing on our leather chair with ballpoint pen. And, no, the cushions do not flip over. Anyone in the market for a slightly used Pottery Barn leather chair?
• She has become seriously attached to her stuffed dog, to the point where he now has to come everywhere with us. It's like Linus and his blanket from the Peanuts, except I never realized that Linus's blanket must have started to smell after he slept on it and dragged it around constantly. Needless to say, despite the little tag on "Doggie" that said he was not to go in the washing machine, he has been through the cycle a few times.
• She's starting to tell those little lies that kids always say, like telling you at 3am that she has a "poopy diaper" so you'll pick her up, unzip the sleep sack, and check it (of course she is lying), at which point she then reveals her true request ("pillows" -- code for take me to your bed so I can jump on the pillows and kick you in the face while you try to sleep). At one point last week we gave up letting her cry it out (hard to do when you have to get up in the morning and go to work), so we let her sleep in our bed. Of course she was way too excited to actually go back to sleep...after 40 minutes of being poked, I actually vacated the room and went and slept on the floor of her room (man, do we need a guest room). Sadly, I got more sleep that night than most last week.

Lest you think we are living with a small terror (we prefer "Tasmanian Devil"), she is starting to do more and more cute things too. She is starting to actually pick up being polite ("please", "no thanks", and "excuse me"), which is nice. She is becoming more and more playful, with her favorites being peek-a-boo behind the curtains and chasing Sameer and yelling "gotcha!" when she catches him. She is learning real things too, and it's fun to teach her new vocabulary words and see her pick them up right away. The latest addition to her vocabulary is "Whole Foods" (as in "take me to..."), which is both sad and funny. Sameer continues to "teach" her to count, and she is dutifully memorizing the words, although since she uses "two" for anything more than one, I think actual comprehension may be lacking (not to mention she thinks "eight, nine, ten" is all one word, kind of like I thought "LMNOP" was when I was little).

I'm too lazy to actually post pictures, but will try and get some up soon of our recent adventures...we took a quick trip to Half Moon Bay (involving both seeing dogs and riding a train, so quite a hit with Sonia), saw Dada and Bebe's new house in Tracy, and visited more parks than I can remember. Sameer and I also came very close to making an offer on a house here in Palo Alto, but chickened out at the last minute. So, if you're worried the housing market is going to collapse, rest assured for another day, as that will at least hold off until we take the plunge into home ownership.

Can I get a "woof woof"?

A short but sweet post about our weekend trip...

We had a great, long Labor Day weekend visiting my parents and Kevin up in Oregon. We flew up in time to celebrate my Mother's birthday with a nice dinner out (and Sonia managed to make Grandma and Grandpa proud by being on her best behavior). We also managed a day trip to Corvallis to see our extended family, including Sonia's Great Grandma -- lots of family portraits ensued, including a rare photo of the three of us where we are all managing to look at the camera at the same time.



While we did lots of other fun activities (visiting the vineyard, planting flowers, going to the bookstore, etc.), Sonia's favorite activity *by far* was standing close (but not too close) to my parents' dog and yelling "woof woof!' over and over. Seriously, like very 30 seconds, she would get an excited look on her face and shout "woof woof!" While very cute, it did get a bit old, even for Grandma and Grandpa who are easily charmed. :-)

The one sad moment of the trip was when our curiosity got the better of us and we decided to pick up one of the flyers posted on the "For Sale" sign on a home in one of Portland's better neighborhoods. Let's just say that 0.3 acres and 5,900 square feet (with a view of downtown!) costs about the same as a mid-century fixer-upper ranch house in a so-so neighborhood in Palo Alto. For a minute, I thought perhaps Sameer would make a spur of the moment decision to move, but then it rained on Sunday and he remembered what it is that keeps him from living in the Northwest.

Below are our photos from August, including our pictures from our trip. We can't wait to see the Johnson clan again at Thanksgiving!