The B Word

Don't worry, it's not the B word you're thinking. Sophie is loving the B sounds these days and the words are coming fast and furious. First it was ball and bird and something that occasionally sounded like baby. This week though, she added blueberry, balloon and my favorite...bubble! It's hard to get her to perform them all on command, but here's a try.

A Monkey in Action

On the jungle gym.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Well, not us, but plenty of people were leaving on jet planes out of LAX this weekend. We stayed at the Westin by the airport and had a huge picture window where Sophie loved watching the planes fly by. Surprisingly our hotel room was really quiet even with all those jets flying by.

Los Angeles Zoo

This past weekend we took a little family trip to the Los Angeles Zoo. It was a beautiful, sunny and warm Sunday, especially for January! The Los Angeles Zoo was huge and took us most of the day, including a brief nap in the stroller to get through but we loved every minute of it. Sophie has always loved animals and this was the perfect excuse for her to show off her growing repertoire of animal sounds.

Sophie ooh-oohed at the gorillas

Made friends with a coati

Was fascinated with the bird show

Studied the giraffes

Tried to climb in to get a better look at the meerkats

Tried to walk as much of the zoo as we'd let her

She even did a little nose picking, while I was

trying to pose for a cute mother/daughter photo

And the award for the strangest animal goes to the Gerenuk. It had the skinniest legs, longest neck and tiniest head combination and just didn't look quite right.

Just Call Her Imelda

Imelda Marcos was known for her extensive shoe collection and Sophie is trying to match that collection. Actually, Sophie can't be blamed at all. While she loves shoes just as much as Imelda and could spend hours taking them in and out of her drawers, she isn't the one buying them. I'm not entirely to blame either. I have bought several but she has been gifted many as well. I'm waiting for her teeny tiny fit to still fit in to many of them (hello, little pink ballet flats!) Some of my favorites on her are the Tiny Toms, the Vans and her little silver Pediped Mary Janes. I just had to share a few pictures of her collection.

And this is what it looks like when you try to take a picture of Sophie's shoes while she is awake...

The Saturday Post

Hoarders

A&E's Hoarders offers a look inside the lives of people whose inability to part with their belongings is out of control...Sophie is getting close to needing an episode of her very own. Whether it's babies in the toy aisle of Target, bouncy balls at The Little Gym, or her beloved binkies, her hoarding is getting pretty intense. It's always only one item at a time though. You'll never catch her holding a ball, a baby and a binky at the same time. That would just be crazy.

We try to limit her pacifier obsession to naps, bedtime and in the car. She will generally give them up when she is asked to, tossing them across the car seat when it is time to get out or slipping a binky through the slats of her crib to put it back where it "sleeps." Sometimes when she wakes up in the morning or from a nap though, she's not quite ready to give them up. We will go in her room to find one stuffed in her mouth and as many others as she can find tightly grasped in her hands!