Project idea: let's make a complaints box!

Sophia's has never been shy about voicing her opinions but lately she's been particularly vocal -- and if she doesn't get her way, particularly grouchy. She's been a textbook kid -- always doing things almost exactly to the day as when the baby books told me to expect them. E.g., sitting up at almost exactly 6 months old, taking her first steps one day after her first birthday, etc. The Terrible Two's, we're told, are when toddlers start to understand that they can exhibit some control and attempt to do so by using the word "No." Here we had our first major delay, and I thought maybe we'd be off the hook.

Not so.

She's still a delightful child who is (almost always) a joy to be around but we have our occasional challenges. For one, she's complaining. A lot. "I don't want to go to school!" Why don't you want to go, Sophia? "I just don't want to" is the most common response, but I've also heard "The boys fight" or "They don't let us watch DVDs."

Most children awake at about 6am so many parents might consider 8am mid-day. Am I the only person actually pulling her child out of bed in order to rush the 9 blocks to school and be there before they lock the doors at 9am? She wakes up crabby and asks one of two questions: Is it a school day? and/or Is it a taekwando day?

Almost without fail on taekwando days we hear, "I don't want to go to taekwando!" We got her a "Mulan" DVD hoping that perhaps watching a girl fight would make martial arts more attractive. It's not working and now I have to keep fielding questions about why the Huns were so mean.

To make matters worse, she uses her ferocious voice to make many of her complaints. There's a scene in "Despicable Me" where the youngest little girl says in her ferocious voice, "It's so fluffy!" and I laughed until I cried. (Here it is: http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/06/22/despicable-me-new-trailer-moon-gru-kids/) Ever since then Sophia's been using her ferocious voice, mostly for comic effect, but also to voice her displeasure.

Another phase we're in: she loves to talk about people who "aren't so nice." These are people like Captain Hook in "Peter Pan," Tank in "Surf's Up" and the Huns (who attack the Chinese) in "Mulan." She doesn't watch much but constantly wants to talk about movies. She loves asking why one of the characters did something, or reacted one way even when (or especially when) she knows the answers.

If only she could write, we'd make a project of decorating a complaints box and we could go from there.

Here are a couple of recent zingers from Miss Sophia:

In Las Vegas while visiting her great grandmother and grandma, we're in a restaurant and she's coloring a wart hog in her "Jungle Book" coloring book. We just got a dog so we've been talking about pets, and I asked her if she wanted a pet wart hog. She looks up with an indignant expression and says loudly, "I will not have this conversation!"

Also in Las Vegas, she has a minor pee-pee accident. She knows that if we catch her having had an accident and she didn't report it or if she lies about it she gets a little smack on the rear, so she announces it each time and then adds, "But I be honest."

A couple of months ago, she's about to open the front door when Sebastian catches her and asks what she's doing. She responded, "Papa, you're just going to have to trust me." She opens the door, steps outside onto the front stoop and comes back in saying, "I had to check something."

Humorous Tidbits

Sophia continues her hilarious ways. I should do a much better job writing this stuff down as it happens, but here's a smattering of recent funny stuff...

This morning she asked me to put on Alicia Keys so she could dance. She wanted to hear the "New York" song (called "Empire State of Mind") but I only have it on the iPod which wasnt with me, so I put on "No One." She was happy with that and dancing, then her moves went to just hopping repeatedly on one leg then the other. I asked her what the dance step was called and she said "Hip Hop."

Sophia loves to quote from her favorite movies, in particular "Madagascar." Her favorite movie quotes are "Excuse me, you're biting my butt!" (from Marty, the zebra to Alex, the lion). And my personal favorite, by Alex the lion: "I'm gonna use that one on stage from my salad bar of emotional tidbits."

At the grocery store a couple of weeks ago, Sophie's sitting on the front of the cart and holding the bananas. She plucks one from the bunch and puts her to her ear like a cell phone. She says (loudly), "Hello? Yeah, I got you on speaker."

For some reason, she's been telling people she has a brother and a sister. Their names change but always start with a "K" sound. Today she said she has a brother named Kerry and a sister named Katy. (Sometimes both brother and sister are named Katy.) No matter their names, she always says they live in Central Africa. (Incidentally, godfather Jerome recently bought her a Beta fish, and she immediately named her Kediya.)

She went through a phase a few weeks ago that if I was punishing her, she immediately told me she'd tell her teachers about it. After I laughed repeatedly and kept telling her to go ahead, she finally realized that this plan of attack wasn't working.

Yesterday a friend of mine gave me a crate of assorted stuff for Sophia. In the crate was a Cinderella figure that unbeknownst to me was really a stamp in bright fuchsia. As I'm cooking dinner, Sophia comes into the kitchen and says, "I need to show you something." She leads me to my (newish) cream colored couch and shows me right smack in the middle of the sofa cushion one perfect fuchsia Cinderella head stamped on it, and one on my hardwood floor to match. I asked her if she meant to do it. She nods her head up and down. I cleaned it off (took me 20 minutes), punished her and sent her off for a time out, but secretly I was kind of impressed that she 'fessed up without me having to go and find it myself.

Sophie's been potty trained since last August, but all of the sudden starting a several months ago began having accidents. Sometimes she'd go three or four days without incident, and then on one day have three accidents. It was hard to pack appropriately never knowing what was in store for the day; it was also causing a rash around her private area that wouldn't go away. I tried everything I could -- talking it out to find out why it was happening, telling her "Princesses don't pee in their pants" (which worked for few days), time outs, etc. Truly nothing was working.

Finally two weeks ago on a day where she had multiple accidents, Sebastian told her we're taking away your dress-up clothes one day for every accident. She had three accidents that day, so no trunk for three days. In theory she seemed okay with that. She pouted for a moment, but it wasn't real yet. When we got home, you would have thought we were doing some drastic -- like taking her to an orphanage forever. As I carried the trunk so full of frilly, pink and purple princess gowns and plastic shoes with heels that it can't even close from her room, Sophia first tried to hold onto me, then the trunk all the while screaming "NOOOOOOOOOO!" then she screamed and cried some more and then in one last attempt for mercy, flung herself to the ground. From princess to drama queen in two seconds flat.

Out with the old

Sophia's growing and developing like crazy, but of course as she gets older the truly dramatic day-to-day changes of her baby years (e.g., sitting up, crawling, walking, talking) dwindles. She's growing but you don't notice it quite as much anymore.

Her most recent big development: the baby high chair and little girl sized potties have gone by the wayside, so up into the attic they went just a few days ago, along with all of the clothing she's outgrown in the past six months. Her dresses haven't been completely outgrown -- now most of them have been moved from the dress drawer to the shirt drawer. She still fits into them but they go to her waist. We call this recycling. Sophia still tries to wear them as dresses though. "But, Mom, I'll wear tights!" Every outfit has to be picked out or explicitly approved first. She most often asks, "Do princesses wear _______ (insert pants, or rain boots, or... here)?"

Sebastian now delights in pointing out that Sophia is over half my height already. . . Yes, at 3 years old. He says she's 60% of my height but that's balderdash. She's no more than 55%.

She finally has determined not too long ago or so that she does indeed like school. It took five months of complaining EVERY morning to get there, but I'm very relieved. I'd literally have to drag her out of bed some mornings as she cried "I don't wanna go!"

Sebastian and I finally went to meet with the school director to find out what we could do to fix the problem, with the idea that if it couldn't be fixed we might have to move to a new preschool. Not even a week later, Sophia stopped fighting me about going. According to the school child psychologist, our little angel was perceptive enough to know why we were meeting her teachers at her school and stopped her crusade to bust out. (We're on to you, sister!)

Now she focuses on trying to get out of taekwando. ;-) Just kidding. No, she only does that about half of the time. Actually, she doesn't complain about going to taekwando most of the time because I bribe her. Yes, I do. It's one of the many rules that I said I wouldn't do before I had a kid and have since abandoned. With each visit to taekwando, we go down the street for a little mommy & me time at La Boulange, a French bistro with the most delicious chocolate chocolate cookies. Twice the chocolate, twice the cooperation.

Taekwando is going well though. She's learning and doing better all the time. She can kick three times without putting her foot down as of this week. Two weeks ago, I was getting my nails done while she was in class with Papa watching. Sebastian and Sophia walked into the full salon (it's a Saturday at noon after all) and when I asked how she did in class, she said "I wasn't focusing." The women loved her!

She's got lots of zingers like this one, but of course I don't write them down. Recently she dropped an entire bowl of cereal and milk all over the dining room floor. I looked at the broken bowl and mess on the floor, looked at her, and asked "What happened?!" I mean, she's done it dozens of times without incident. She looked at me with sad eyes and said, "I'll tell you when you're happy."

She loves books, and is constantly pointing to the various characters and saying, "That's me." It can be anything -- a princess, a kitty, or in the Boy Who Cried Wolf she points to the three hungry wolves and says, "That's you, that's papa, and that's me." With Alice In Wonderland, she loves to point out the hookah-smoking caterpillar and say, "That's Alex. He's sooo crazy!"

Another new development: Sophia prefers to sleep on the floor. She just about refuses to sleep on her bed but won't tell me why. We're still working on her getting to sleep by herself so whatever I can do to push it along I will -- short of letting her sleep outside or something. I mean, there has to be some rules.

It's a work in progress so after going online I found an idea and started a sticker campaign. If she goes to sleep without crying, fighting, or walking into our room repeatedly with any variety of comments: "I'm hungry," "I'm thirsty," "Can you rock me for a little bit?" "I'm scared," "I don't like the bunny in my room," "I'm not tired," or my favorite: "Look! I'm going to sleep all by myself!" She's tried 'em all. If she goes to sleep on her own (mostly) she earns one sticker. Collect 10 stickers and you get a present. She earned 10 stickers once already and earned a pink watch with butterflies. Now she's working on a pink tiara to replace the one I stepped on. Just one sticker to go. . .

Tae Kwando Toddler

Sophia and I attended a Tae Kwando studio last week in Noe Valley to watch the Tiny Tigers class to see if she's really interested in starting her black belt training ('cause man alive, it's pricey!). While watching, she stripped out of the giant pink tutu and tried to join the class mid-way. A good sign.

The studio is giving her a week of free classes, and yesterday was her first class. They lent her a gi (the nifty uniform), which we paired with a pink t-shirt underneath ('cause we've always gotta have at least one element of pink on) and pigtails and off we went!

I didn't realize it at the first class because Sophia wasn't actually standing next to the other children, but the first thing I notice is that she's a good 4" - 5" shorter than everyone else there. They'd all been doing this for a while, too, because she was the only one to be seemingly unable to stay in the line -- or stay in one place, for that matter -- kick using the top of her foot, or stop talking. Seriously. She's no shy little mousie.

After doing their thing, the class sits in a circle. Apparently they like to focus on one word for the month, and this month's word is "courtesy." The teacher began by asking what courtesy means. The children would immediately raise their hand and wait to be called, and once called upon, would only then give their short, concise answers.

It started out with one boy saying that courtesy means helping out; another boy said that it means being nice; a girl contributes that it means learning to share, etc. By now, Sophia's getting the hang of this concept so she jumps in without being called and told them all about her sharing experience with Lida -- how Lida came over to the house for a play-date and brought her Barbie doll with a pink dress and was playing with it but wouldn't share it, which wasn't very nice, so Mommy had to ask Lida to put the Barbie away in her backpack if she wasn't going to share... It went on even longer but you get the idea here.

The teacher waited for Sophia to take a breath, then jumped in and asked another question. "Your mommies and daddies have a lot to do, right? Do you guys think that you could help out around the house? Maybe you could help with dinner by setting the table." Hands shoot up. One boy said "I help by putting the plates on the table." Another added that he could help by putting the forks and knives on the table. Sophia (not waiting to be called) yellls out, "I put the wine on the table!"

Yup, it's only Day One, and we're already establishing a reputation.

Here's Sophia learning how to kick

Little Pink Princess

At the end of the last blog a month ago I informed you that Sophia's latest request was for a tu-tu. This was, as it turns out, effectively giving notice that she was about to leave her tomboy phase and jump into her girly phase.

We are now truly and deeply enmeshed in anything with pink, glitter, princess and/or ballerina themes, and high heels (yes, high heels. . . for toddlers! WHAT?!). Like Picasso, she has departed (hopefully not forever) her blue period and entered the rose period. I'll admit that I was initially quasi-disappointed but it was always mixed with amusement. How can you not laugh at a 3-year old stomping around the house in (ahem) clear high heels. (Again, WHAT?! As Chris Rock points out, shouldn't our chief concern, as parents, be in guiding them away from occupations involving poles?)

In our invitation to the Sophia's birthday party a week and a half ago, I tried to think less about what I'd like Sophia to get (something educational) and think more about what she would like (with of course, a big disclaimer from me).

The birthday ensemble was a huge confection-style tutu that brought to mind 1950s square dancing fashion (think Hee Haw). As awful/humorous as it was, I have to mention that it came from fashionista-friendly Century 21 in NYC. I should get a little credit for that.

Taking that information, all of our guests played along and arrived with various shades of pink, dress-up, girly girl presents in hand.


Matt & Michael gave Sophia four pairs of high heel shoes for her birthday (see left), and Anthony gave her a pair of high heels and fairy wings (apropo). She also received three tutus, a trunk full of princess dresses (thanks of me, I'll confess), and three tea sets.

So we have no shortage of cuteness at our house.

Lake Tahoe Weekend

"I need to relax." When most women hear their husbands say this, they might expect that he'll turn on the TV to watch the game, or if he means he needs to leave town to do it, maybe head to a warm weather locale and sit by a pool with a mai tai. I have no such man. When my man wants to head out of town to "relax," it really means that we're going somewhere we don't live so that he can engage in some activity that done improperly just might well kill you.

So, last weekend we packed up the trusty SUV with our luggage and our Baby Benadryl medicated toddler to prevent her from vomiting in the car (hallelujah for Baby Benadryl!), and headed to Lake Tahoe.

In the old days, Sebastian had speed records. He'd aim to get to Tahoe, for example, on a motorcycle in traffic in, say, 3 hours. It takes a wee bit longer now.

Part of the pros and cons to the toilet training business: No more changing diapers! Lots of bathroom stops! While en route, after having already recently made a pee-pee stop, Sophia again told us of her need to go. I (unwisely) shot a look of annoyance before we got off the freeway. After stopping at two gas stations to find they had no facilities, Sophia then informed us that she didn't really have to go. I (again unwisely) flashed the annoyed look and we got back on the freeway only to discover later she went old-school -- i.e., in her Hello Kitty underpants. After doing this three more times over the weekend, we finally had a big sit down and explained to Sophia that accidents are to be avoided at all costs -- yes, even if it means not setting any new land speed records.

Lesson for Mommy: no matter what or where we are in the future my job is to very graciously and happily be a potty locater.

We finally got to Lake Tahoe before dark and settled in. Back at home, Sophia has gone to the Mission Cliffs Climbing Gym with Papa and has been asking to take her there again. So here we are -- on our way to Emerald Bay for her first big outdoor climbing adventure (albeit, without the ropes or equipment. We can wait until she's a little older, like 3 for that). The autumn leaves were gorgeous, it was warm in the sun, and she was a trooper. The picture above is the hill we climbed.

When we found out we were having a girl, I envisioned a little tomboy, like what we have -- before we were here, I could always see her spinning at top speed on the merry-go-round at the park, rock climbing or surfing or doing muay thai with her Papa.

But today she said she wanted a dress like a ballerina, so I guess I'm heading to the store for a tu-tu, too. . .

Sophie's Favorite Things

One of Sophie's favorite things (besides ice cream and chicken burritos) is a good book. Her favorite, for the moment, is Woodpecker Forest by Tejima. She came across it at her old co-op, and we don't own it, so I just keep checking it out from the library. It's free, I can barely store all of her books as it is, and I figure she'll get bored of it soon enough and move on to another.

It's by a Japanese author that has been translated. Being Japanese, it's a very quiet, understated story about a woodpecker and his growth into an adult woodpecker, ultimately moving out on his own. The book is illustrated in equally simple manner with subtle colors, and it almost looks like it was carved into wood then hand-painted.

What makes it funny is Sophia's very American take on it. She's somehow taken a simple story about a bird and made it into an action movie.

Here's how it invariably goes when I read her the book. The italics are Sophie's chiming in.

In the middle of a faraway forest it is almost spring. The warm wind carries the sound of pecking through the trees. PECK! PECK! PECK! PECK!

Up in a tall tree, a mother and father woodpecker take turns making a hole for their nest. This is where they will raise their family. THERE'S PAPA! AND THERE'S MOMMY!

They find ants and other insects in old stumps. EEW! YUCKY! I don't like eating ants, do you Mommy? LOOK! THERE'S THE STUMP! That's Papa on the tree stump!

The forest echoes with the sounds of their pecking and the voices of the young birds. PECK! PECK! PECK! PECK!

Soon the chirping of cicadas begins. [Note: I didn't know how to pronounce cicadas at first and did it incorrectly.] Sophie: It's "si-KAH-duhs, Mommy." Me: "No, baby, I looked it up and it's "si-KAY-duhs." [Now we go back-and-forth every time several times about the correct pronunciation. I can already see that the teens are gonna be bad.]

The baby woodpeckers grown bigger every day. [Sophia pointing to the picture of the three baby woodpeckers:] LOOK! THERE'S ME! And that's Lida and that's Sophie Lee.

The time comes for the young woodpeckers to try their wings. With his parents calling, the bravest of the three flies out of the nest. [Sophia really getting excited now:) LOOK! HE'S FLYING! HE'S FLYING! THAT'S ME!

The young bird clings to a big tree and waits for his father to feed him. All day he clings to the tree. HE'S ON THE TREE! HE'S GONNA WAIT THERE FOR HIS PAPA!

When the moon rises and the owls begin to hoot, the bravest young woodpecker is afraid. [Imitating an owl:] WHO! WHO! WHO! HE'S SO SCARY! [Meaning, actually, that the woodpecker is so scared.] I'm not afraid. Giovanni is scared of the dark. Remember, Mommy? Giovanni was sooo scared of the dark in Mexico. I'm not afraid of the dark. . . [This is about where I usually ignore her and continue to read.]

A hollow tree full of woodpecker holes seems to stare at him. It's dark now, Mommy. He's so scary.

A strange sound fills the forest. [Silence at last. Sophia's listening for the strange sound.]

It's as if all of the woodpecker trees in the forest are laughing. [Big fake laughter]HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The young woodpecker calls out for his parents. MOMMYYYYYYYY!

Then he hears the sound of wild pecking close by. PECK! PECK! PECK! PECK! Look - la luna! [Sophia pointing to the picture of the moon]

He things he sees his father, huge against the sky. All the trees are silent. PAPAAAAAA!!!!

At daybreak, his father appears out of the mist. His papa came back!

The young bird's wings grow stronger. He learns from his parents how to hunt for food, and not to be frightened of hollow trees. I'm not afraid of trees. Remember Giovanni, in Mexico? He was afraid of the dark.

When snow falls on the mountains, it is time for the young woodpecker to live on his own. LOOK! Snow! Snow is so cold. I was in the snow once when I was a baby. It's so cold. Ice cream is cold. [This is about where I start reading over her.]

In the middle of the cold winter night, he awakens and sees the forest glittering under the full moon.
LOOK! LA LUNA!

A dead tree covered with snow seems to stare at him, but he isn't afraid. He remembers the first night away from the nest. And remembers the way his father filled the whole night sky. Those are stars, Mommy.

Over the woodpecker's forest the stars are shining.

From far away comes the hoot of an owl. YAAAAAYYYY! THE WOODPECKER'S NOT AFRAID!!!


Honestly, I don't know how she can take such a quietly serene book and turn it into a action-packed thriller, but she manages.

Maybe she has a future in Hollywood, you know, if the astronaut or pirate thing don't work out.