Sophie Quirks

The two big themes in Sophie's life right now are hugs and the temple.

Sophie says hug and will surprise her friends, cat, or toy with an embrace. She is also learning to squeeze back with a bit of prompting.

Ever since our friend, Kari, reviewed the song, "I Love to See the Temple" with pictures at a family home evening (http://www.lds.org/hf/display/0,16783,4224-1,00.html), Sophie will point out churches, national monuments in her Washington D.C. board book, and, yes, actual pictures of temples with excitement, labeling all as temples. She will request "temple song" and do a pretty good job of singing along. We have put a temple picture in her room because we want to encourage her love for the temple since it is such a special and important place to us(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x_-TQivCx8).

Sophie asks to hold Rhys which we are fine with because it lasts all of 10 seconds until she tells us, "all done."

Our daughter is so loud (a warning to soon-to-visit relatives). She has a screaming pitch and volume that are off the scales. We have become so sick of saying "No screaming" that we wanted to state it in the positive. We have started a little tune, "Wanna hear a nice voice." We've been using it for a while and tried just prompting her with "Wanna hear a..." to which she fills in "No screaming." Neither phrase really works well but we try.

Sophie will stretch out her hand, grunt as if straining to reach, and then declare the street lamp or water tower or whatever is "too far." She also will carry a boulder, anvil, feather, or sheet of paper with the same non-discriminatory grunting, repeatedly saying "fey, fey" and lately more clearly, "heavy, heavy."