Yan Yan = Yum Yum

Sophie enjoyed a tasty Japanese snack today. She loved Yan Yan.

L'artiste

Jump, Jump Sophie

After about 15-20 minutes of dancing, the kids head into the regular gym for the rest of their session. They climb, they jump, they run and learn a few tumbling and balancing skills. Sophie has been coming to The Little Gym since she was 10 months old and just loves it. In this class, the teacher brought out the air track with is like a bounce house floor with no walls. It's a favorite for all the kids.

Scrambling to get on the air track

Jumping!

Her favorite piece of equipment at the gym right now is the uneven bar

Reach

And swing!

Making up her own skill on the bars

Ta Da!

This is what we call the "baby brother parking" at the little gym. These three little guys were all born within
the last two months. I'm amazed that they all sleep through class like this!

Tippy Toes

Join us for dance class at the little gym...

Posing at home. She insisted that Lulu be in the picture too.

Scooping up the sun

And holding it up high

Pointing toes

Bunny hopping across the floor

And speed galloping back

Pumpkin Tested and Tasted

We're trying to fake fall around here. I've made soup, ordered jeans for Sophie in size 2T and started pulling out the pumpkin recipes. I love everything about fall and can't wait for all the fun ahead in the next few months. Here are a couple of the pumpkin recipes we've made recently.

Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread
(adapted from All Recipes)

This is my go to basic pumpkin bread recipe. I normally don't change a thing about it, but this time I didn't have enough white sugar so I had to substitute some brown sugar and I like the way it turned out. Be warned, this recipe is huge. It makes three loaves!

Ingredients:
1 15oz can of pumpkin puree
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup water
2 cups white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3 1/2 cups all-pupose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground ginger

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease/flour your three loaf pans.

In a large bowl mix together all the wet ingredients (pumpkin, eggs, oil, water) and your sugars until well blended.

In another bowl, whisk together the remaining dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt and spices.)

Stir your dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into your prepared pans.

Bake for about 50 minutes in the preheated oven. Loaves are done when toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Here's an amazing recipe we just tried for the first time:

Pumpkin Poppers

(found on Just the Little Things)

1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp allspice

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup pumpkin puree

1/2 cup milk

for the coating:

1 stick unsalted butter, melted

2/3 cup sugar

2 tbsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray mini muffin tins with non-stick cooking spray.

Combine flour, baking soda, salt and spices in a bowl and whisk to combine.

In another bowl, mix oil, brown sugar, egg, vanilla, pumpkin and milk. Pour in flour mixture and mix until just combined. Fill mini muffin tins until almost full and bake 10-12 minutes.

Melt butter in a small bowl. Mix sugar and cinnamon together in a separate bowl. After the poppers cool for a few minutes, dip them in butter and roll them in the cinnamon sugar mix. 

I was tired the night I was making these and completely forgot to add the milk in my recipe! I realized it once they were already baking and it was too late to do anything about it. Surprisingly, they still turned out amazing! They did seem to get dry quickly over the next couple of days though so I wouldn't recommend leaving it out on purpose!

I've got plenty of other recipes I'm dying to try, all courtesy of Pinterest of course! Check these out:

Pumpkin Blondies

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

Zippy Do Dah (Sophie at 23 Months)

Again, I'm a little behind this month but I was determined not to let 23 months pass me by without a recap. Since I have not been very good about keeping up with an actual baby book for Sophie, this blog has sort of taken its place. I love to look back at old posts to see exactly when milestones happened and what my sweet girl looked like even just a few short months ago.

Sophie started a dance class at the Little Gym this month and it has been just precious to watch her in there. The class is called "Jazzy Beasts" because her age group is considered "beasts." Kind of appropriate considering their behavior some days. When we started going to the little gym over a year ago, she was a "bird." This class consists of about 15-20 minutes of ballet, in real ballet slippers of course, and then the next half hour is spent in the regular gym room. Its a perfect mix since the teacher can only hold their attention for that amount of time and then they get to run around like the crazy fools they are and burn off energy climbing, running and swinging in the gym. In the ballet portion, her favorite part is the tippy toe walk across the floor and staring at herself in the giant wall of mirrors!

In the last month, Sophie's imagination and creative play has really blossomed. She continues to be obsessed with her little Disney characters and I can't tell you how many times that little bag of figurines has saved me at restaurants, airports, doctors offices or anywhere else where she would normally get bored quickly. She's playing on her own so well, having full conversations with her figurines and teaching her babies things every day. She's loving playing with her toys so much these days that its actually becoming hard to leave the house. She tells me "No Sophie go" and then runs off and hides. Just last week, she told me that she was feeding her rocking horse. She was using food from her play fridge but told me the horse wanted carrots. I figured I was going to have to go into the kitchen to get some real carrots but instead she walked over to the couch and told me "I find carrots" and pretended to "pick" carrots and feed them to the horse. It gave me a little glimpse into big girl play.

Some of my favorite Sophie phrases right now:

Zippy Do Dah - this is how she requests we zip things up for her. I think at some point when trying to zip her into her pajamas I must have said Zippity Do Dah and it stuck with her. Now she asks me to zippy do dah her bag of girlies and confused Chase the other day when she asked him to zippy do dah a tent at REI

Ay Gonan/Ay Doonan - going and doing sound like gonan and doonan in Sophie language. All day long she likes to ask me "Ay gonan Momma?" which is "Where are we going Momma?" or "Ay doonan Momma" which is "What are you doing Momma?" I'm not sure why the words where and why get replaced with "ay" in those sentences but it cracks me up. "What dat?" is another popular phrase around here.

I Hug Her - Next month, when Sophie turns two, we will be taking her to Disneyland for her birthday. I'm so excited for it and so is she. We've been talking it up for a while now and she likes to tell me every day who she is going to hug when we get there. "Cinderella there Momma?" she will say, and then when I tell her yes, she says she wants to hug her. We go through the whole list of princesses and who will get hugs every day.

One of my other very favorite things right now is watching Sophie develop little friendships. As we go on play dates, its so sweet to see her light up when she sees her friends and to come home talking about them. Hours or even days later she will tell me that she had fun with whichever friend we were just with and it just melts my heart.

Just a few more weeks and we will have a two year old!

Dancing Queen

We flew up to Idaho this past weekend to attend a beautiful wedding in Sun Valley. Sophie partied like a rock star and spent a good two hours on the dance floor that night, impressing everyone around her. You really couldn't blame her for getting her groove on. The DJ did play all her favorite songs (Starships, Call Me Maybe, Forget You) and she even learned to love some old classics like Don't Stop Believing from Journey and Shook Me All Night from the Steve Miller Band. It was a wonderful weekend spending time with relatives on Chase's side of the family and exploring the town of Ketchum.

   

A Song By Sophie

There's something about sleepy time and mornings, but I haven't figured out the rest of this Sophie original.



A Song By Sophie from Sarah Kemps on Vimeo.

Our First Movie

This is long overdue but I finally decided to play around with our iMovie. It's a great little program that's been on my computer for the last three years but I never touched it. I uploaded a bunch of videos and came up with a little movie of our trip to Lake Tahoe this summer.

 
Lake Tahoe July 2012 from Sarah Kemps on Vimeo.

Pretty Kitty

We pulled out an old, old, old costume to try on Sophie yesterday. Old as in, I wore it and then I think both Madi and Libby wore it sometime. I'm so excited that Sophie actually liked wearing it and walked around meowing and having conversations with the real cats. I'm really hoping she will be into Halloween this year!