These are a few of my favorite things...

One of the reasons we are such bad blog posters (other than being completely over-scheduled) is that I am always waiting for some "event" to happen to write about. Meanwhile, countless little things happen every day and go unmentioned. So, to try and capture some of that, here are a few of the "little events" in our world these days...

• Sonia is obsessed with playing "family" (no doubt due to discussion of her baby-brother-to-be), and so she is constantly assigning roles to everyone. She is *always* the mommy, I am usually the big sister, and Sameer is always the baby. Since she only has three people to work with, she has decided that the role of daddy is expendable, which is a source of annoyance to Sameer. Further, Sameer is not allowed to talk during these play sessions, as "babies don't talk", so his speaking role is reduced to just crying.
• Relatedly, Sonia is very, very excited that she is going to be a big sister, and within 10 seconds of seeing me she will ask if she can "say hi to the baby." Then she will come over, lean in to my stomach, and say "hi". Very cute, although I have to admit that the 20th time she does that each day, it is harder to feign enthusiasm for the interaction.
• We are in an extreme girly phase these days. One representative recent quote: "I like pink, purple, princesses, ballerinas, mermaids, butterflies...oh, and kitty cats." While she has never seen any of the Disney movies, she is quickly learning the names of all of the princesses based on a couple of books she has received (I am hoping that later in life she will use these same deduction techniques for something more useful). I have already been corrected at least once for mistakenly identifying Cinderella as Sleeping Beauty. Silly mommy.
• As part of her girly phase, Sonia is now basically refusing to wear pants. It is all dresses, all the time (including nightgowns at night). A recent effort to get her to wear pants (which were pink, with hearts, and paired with a princess t-shirt no less) was met with tears before she finally relented. Yikes. For now, we have decided to just go with the whole girly thing and hope that the next phase isn't quite so painful.
• Part of the reason for dresses is that her latest trick is to "spin like a ballerina", a feat that involves turning around quickly, and is repeated at least a dozen times per day in our house. Apparently the effect of this move is greatly diminished when done in pants, thus dresses / skirts are a must. Rumor has it that Santa may be bringing a ballerina outfit for Christmas. (Santa must be kind of stupid, because no doubt Sonia will then insist on wearing only that specific outfit every day...oh well.)
• One upside to the girliness is that Sonia has a new found love of dancing in general, and one of her favorite pre-bedtime rituals is to dance with daddy, where he spins her around and she giggles incessantly. She will also serenade mommy and daddy with songs when she is trying to avoid going to sleep. Oh, she is very crafty, pulling out all of the cuteness stops when she is trying to delay bedtime.
• Her food preferences remain limited, with chicken nuggets still the reigning champion. She is so picky that I was actually happy when we were in a store recently and she accepted a free sample of a cookie and tried it. Pretty sad that this is progress in our house. [Okay, this last one definitely does not qualify for the "favorite things" theme of this post, but including it anyway.]
• The days of the afternoon nap are numbered -- Sonia only takes it probably ~60% of days now. And when she does take it it's like she thought she was asleep for the night, so we have to go in and wake her after a couple of hours. She then exhibits her father's typical mood when forced to wake up (although admittedly Sameer normally manages to avoid sobbing). We tried to go "cold turkey" with no nap a couple of weeks back, but got feedback from preschool that she was a zombie by lunchtime. We can't seem to get her to go to sleep any earlier. Only upside is that on the weekend we let her sleep in, and on both Saturday and Sunday she stayed in her room, sleeping / quietly playing until we finally went in at 10am! Almost worth it just to have the rest on the weekend, but that will all be short-lived with another player getting added to the mix next year.
• Last, but definitely not least, Sonia is saying "I love you" without prompting more often. It is very touching when she looks at you and tells you that she loves you and hugs you without any provocation. The only catch is that for some reason she thinks the phrase is "I still love you", so the effect is slightly reduced (i.e., you do something, she looks at you and says, "Mommy, I still love you," which kind of suggests that despite your shortcomings she sees fit to still care). Oh well, we'll take the affection any way we can get it. :-)

I'm sure there are a million other little things I am forgetting, but at least that's a few so I will remember them later.

Open wide

This is a bit of old news, since it happened two weeks ago, but I didn't want it to go unrecorded that Sonia successfully managed her first trip to the dentist earlier this month. We were prompted to finally schedule something after the pediatrician shamed us by asking if we had taken her yet during Sonia's 3-year checkup, so the appointment was scheduled for after Thanksgiving. Due to our countless readings of "Show Me Your Smile" (where Dora the Explorer goes to the dentist), Sonia was convinced that this was another important milestone in being a "big girl" ("babies don't go to the dentist") and was actually pretty excited.

Sameer took her (of course...insert comment about him being a better parent here) and Sonia was remarkably calm through the whole thing. She opened wide when instructed, and allowed them to inspect and polish all of her teeth. Kind of surprising because this is the same kid who won't drink a glass of cold milk unless you wrap a napkin around it because the condensation bothers her. The dental assistant even asked if it was really her first time, and said she was one of the best behaved 3-year-olds they had. Yes, we are slapping ourselves on the back for that one. That was the good news. The bad news was that we do a lousy job of brushing her back teeth (not exactly shocking) and that she will likely need braces when she is older (ugh, ugh, ugh). Apparently even though she has a nice big gap between her two front teeth, that does not mean the adult teeth will grow in next to each other. In fact, because there is tissue between the teeth, while the gap will narrow with adult teeth, it will not go away without braces. At this point the dentist asked follow up questions like did we let her suck her thumb, or does she still have a binky, all of which we denied (neither being the case) so he said it was likely just genetics. And by genetics, he must mean Sameer, since straight teeth was one of the few genetic traits I was hoping Sonia would inherit from me.

Do they make 529c's for orthodontia?

Here is a photo of the model patient in the dentist's chair (the sunglasses are what they give little kids so the bright lights don't bother them).