ooh-ooh

Just as our nightly bed time routine was settling into a holding pattern, Sadie decided to go and mix it up.
One night, after reading, or trying to read about a half dozen books or so, I started to rock Sadie to sleep like I usually do.
Normally, I sit and rock her for about 3 songs on the ipod and then put her in her crib. If she cries, she cries, if not, I consider my self lucky. After about 20 seconds of the first song she leans forward, points toward her crib and says "yeah, yeah, yeah."
I ask her if she wants to lay down and she says "yeah, yeah, yeah" again.
My little girl is all growns up! She doesn't even need mommy to rock her to sleep anymore.
It was kind of sad in a way. Even though I have a few extra minutes now at night where I don't have to rock her I kind of feel sad that she doesn't want to sit with me.
It's gotten to the point now where she just sits in the rocker with me long enough for me to get a kiss and then points to her crib and says "yeah, yeah, yeah" or "nigh, nigh."
Once she's in the crib, she gathers all her dolls and shoves them under her like a hen sitting on her eggs and reaches for her blankets.
I tuck her in and leave.
Later, before we go to bed, Peter will check on her. She's usually facing the opposite direction bum in the air, deep in sleep mode.

During nap time though, Sadie insists on sleeping in our bed. The only way she will fall asleep is if I lay there with her, listening to classical music and close my eyes. Sometimes we lay down together and I stroke her hair. Other times, I close my eyes, pretend to be sleeping while Sadie rolls around on the bed trying to fall asleep. Almost always I fall asleep for a while too. Almost always when I wake up Sadie is sleeping on me somehow. I love this and hope that it never changes.
Although, now that I have made it public knowledge, with my luck it will change.
I'm actually contemplating erasing this whole paragraph, but I guess I'll take my chances.

It's really exciting now that Sadie is starting to talk. She says things sometimes that completely catch us off guard, make us laugh and sometimes make us cry.
We were sitting in Zachary's the other day waiting for our pizza. Sadie was looking around at all the other tables yelling "pizza! pizza! pizza!" She just kept getting louder and louder until finally our pizza arrived and she was able to stuff her face with some deep dish spinach and mushroom pie.

Here's a little list of things she says:
oy you - I love you
peez - please
teeses - trees
teet teet - birds
sigh - sky
bot - belt
seet - sheet
tost- toast
oht - out
dada work - she says this a lot
hot
ding dong - belly button
eye bow - eye brow
neck, nose, eyes, ears, arm, knee, feet
moof - mouth
ahbow- elbow
shoe
tuck -truck
bus
pogo - pogo stick, sometimes comes out as "pogogogogo"
dude

It's always surprising how many words she has and how many things she knows the word for.
She mimics us all the time both verbally and physically.
When I put on my makeup, Sadie has her own makeup brushes that she uses to put on her makeup. When Peter does push ups at home, Sadie does them too. He always says to her "wanna get ripped?" Sadie points to his push up bar and says "wopped."
In the morning when we drive Peter to work we always say "shhhh" in the hallway so that Sadie doesn't scream her head off while running down the hall to garage.
Now when we go to drive Peter to work, she runs down the hall and stops every few feet and says "shhh, shhh" Then she squeals in delight and starts running again......

Something funny that we did one day was make fun of her for the way she would start backing up to sit down like a mile away from where she is about to sit.
We would say "beep, beep, beep." Like a truck backing up. What do you, a few days later, Sadie started copying us. Now every time she wants to sit in our laps, she says "beep, beep, beep" and backs up on us.

It makes me so happy when I see how much Sadie loves my old Cabbage Patch dolls. She drags them around, takes them for walks in her little stroller, feeds them and sleeps with them. "Seyee" is what she calls "Scotty" my original cabbie. I can still remember the day I got him. My mom, grandma and I went to Mervyn's to find him. There were 3 dolls left on the shelf. I had to have a boy doll, I remember this specifically and Mervyn's was the only one that had them.
The other day my mom came home from Salvation Army with a new Cabbage Patch kid for Sadie. Brand New with tags. $2.50 the price tag said. My mom even got a senior discount so the doll cost something like $1.25! Who would have thought!

On the hottest day of the summer so far, my mom and I took Sadie to the Alameda County Fair. It was $2 Tuesday and worth every penny. Except for the brutal heat, the fair was pretty cool. We went to the petting zoo, animal sale and barnyard play area where the kids could pretend they worked on a farm. Sadie wasn't real into the petting zoo. She didn't want to touch anything and when the misters came on to cool everything down, all she wanted to do was stand under them and get wet. My poor mom was almost soaked.
Sadie experienced her first ICEE and fell in love with a little courtyard full of flowers and low curbs for her to sit on. Girl loves to find things to sit on.
She struck up a conversation with an older lady sitting nearby and she was just happy as a clam.

About a week before we were to leave on a plane to Portland to see Mookie, Pop-Pop, Jif, Evan, Riley and Mallory, we started telling Sadie she was going to fly on a plane to see everyone.
One day, she pulled out a book that Mookie had made for her with everyone's pictures in it. She just started going through it and saying everyone's name. It was really cute to watch.
When we arrived in Portland on the way home from the airport she already had Mookie and Pop-pop's name's down "mook" and "pop-pop." She managed to get Mallory's "mayee" but didn't really show any signs of going for Jif, Evan or Riley. Next time, I guess.
We had a great time in Portland. It was really hot so we drove out to the beach and played in the sand. I was kind of worried about how Sadie would react to the beach since we hadn't been yet. She loved it, of course and now I can't wait until we hit up Bradley Beach, NJ next month!
On the way back from the beach we stopped off the Tillamook Cheese Factory. I love cheese, in case you didn't already know. :)
In fact, Tillamook is one of my faves. mmmmmm cheese!!! It was so cool to see all that cheese and eat some too!
What I really enjoyed was seeing that the cheese in Kosher and vegetarian!

I also got to visit Sweet Pea Baking Company for some vegan treats. I have to say, maybe I was just really excited about it because I have some of their recipes and really enjoy them, but it was just sort of "mehhh" for me. Nothing really jumped out and hit me like "wow this is good!" But, I'm glad I got to go because I've been obsessing over it for a long time.
After Sweet Pea we drove to The Enchanted Forest. If you have kids and are in the Portland area, YOU MUST GO HERE!!!! It was SO much fun. It put Fairyland here in Oaktown to shame a hundred and fifty times over. In fact I'm even embarrassed that Fairyland exists now. Sadie really enjoyed herself too. She ran around through tunnels, slid down some slides, rode on a train and ate some delicious amusement park french fries.


Now that we're back from Portland, life is all about drinking smoothies, eating udon noodles and saying "no" way too much. Sadie says it all the time and well, we try not to but seriously, how else do you get your point across?

enjoy!
xoxo

july 2009