Princess Sophia

Today I decided to take full advantage of the overcast weather and take some new pictures of Sophia. In a princess gown and "crown," she stood atop her castle slide and posed. It has been six months or more since I last got her to wear a headband, but telling her it was a crown was what finally permitted me to strap that thing around her head.

She had enough trouble walking in the dress to realize that sliding in it would be somewhat impossible. So, when she was done with the posing, she wanted to change into normal play clothes.

A few more pictures are in our Picasa photo album, if you are interested.

Lunch at the Park

Today I packed a little lunch for Sophia, threw her in the bike cart, and took her to the big park for lunch. Surprisingly, she wanted to eat before she played.

Here she is enjoying her peanut butter sandwich:


(She has been a peanut butter addict since I introduced it to her last month.)

And, of course, she got to play for a while before going home to nap.


We definitely had a nice time, despite it being so close to nap time. With the weather being in the 80's, it is likely we will do it again soon.

Mommy and Sophia Comparisons

Recently I had my mom dig out some of my old baby pictures so I could compare them to Sophia's pictures. Thanks to the magic of scanning, I'm sharing them all with you now. I also took the time to look through a whole mess of Sophia pictures to try and capture an expression on her face that looks similar to my pictures - it was hard because she always smiled so huge. I apparently did not always like the people at Sears.

Mommy at 9 months:

Sophia at 9 months:

Mommy at 14 months:

Sophia at 14 months:

Mommy at 2 1/2:

Sophia at 2 1/2:

Yep, I had curls... but the straight bangs show where my hair was heading. The 70's were awesome! It's too bad that the one good picture I had scanned of Franco as a baby was saved in the wrong format. You'd see that she definitely looked like him. :)

Dear Target,

I just wanted to write you a note and let you know that I hate the changes you've made. The isles are too narrow and I can't find anything because there is so much of everything. Next time you want to remodel, I suggest that you ask me first.

Sincerely,
Your less-loyal customer

P.S. My sister-in-law is unhappy with the changes, too.

That AZ Law

Rarely do I depart from telling stories about Sophia, but I've been "moved" enough to want to give my thoughts on a non-mommy subject. If you don't want my opinion then you'd best stop reading... ;)

SB 1070 has a lot of people very hot and bothered. People are referencing articles all over Facebook and throwing around words like "bigotry" and "fascism" if you are in support. I think it is good for people to discuss their ideas, and I wish people could get more interested in the laws of this country, but I think a lot of people are making a lot of assumptions about the feelings and motivations of others.

Most of the argument against SB1070 is based on people thinking that if Arizona police officers are allowed to ask people for their documentation to be in this country, then they are going to go around asking every person of Hispanic origin to show their papers. This assumes that officers (and lawmakers and citizens) are solely trying to get "them" out of "our" country. Maybe some very vocal people feel that way, but isn't that really just assuming the worst of everyone? That is prejudice, too, my friend.

There is a very similar federal law that requires aliens (legal immigrants) to carry their documentation with them at all times. If they do not provide their papers when asked by a federal authority, they can be charged with a misdemeanor, given a fine up to $1000, and taken to jail for up to thirty days. If the agents of the Department of Homeland Security are not assumed to be bigots for asking people for their documentation, why do people assume that the Arizona police are?

Could it be that there is a terrible problem with crime in Arizona that is related to people that have already broken lots of laws? If a person is here illegally, they have already decided to break laws. They have to get forged documentation to work (illegal), lie to their employers (illegal), and possibly drive around in a car that is not registered correctly and probably doesn't have insurance (illegal, illegal). Is it really a stretch that they might join gangs? They already disrespect our laws. Might they consider doing other illegal things? Is that ever OK?

The way I see it, Arizona decided that they wanted to be able to prosecute an illegal immigrant for all of the laws they break when they are caught doing a crime, rather than just the one crime they were initially caught doing. And what if they see a person that they know has been previously deported? Shouldn't they be able to walk right up to that person and ask for their documentation? How is that profiling?

I really don't see the difference between a police officer asking for a person's documentation and a federal agent asking. Do people really have that much more faith in the faith in the federal government than in a state government? Do you think they've had SO MUCH more training? I doubt it. If everyone is going to protest Arizona's law, then they also should be protesting the Department of Homeland Security for upholding the federal laws that say the same thing.

And power to you if you disagree with my logic. Please feel free to comment and enlighten me (without offensive language) because I'd love to understand if there is another angle that I missed (which I do not doubt).

If you'd like to read an interesting article about this law, check out this site.

The DIY Timeout

I rarely had to do timeouts when Sophia's bed was still in crib form, but I was still worried where she would go during timeouts after the change because I didn't know if she would stay put. Well, one day I had her sit on her bed until she was ready to "be nice" when she was being especially disagreeable. It turned out to be fine because she already is trained to stay in her bedroom at sleeping times until Franco or I go to retrieve her, so she waits the same way during a timeout. Sometimes she'll yell, "I ready to be nice now!" but she'll still wait on her bed to be released.

Now she has started putting herself on timeout.

When she is feeling disagreeable, like when she doesn't want to wait for something, she'll sometimes say "I go sit on my bed!" and go running down the hallway. After a minute or two she'll call down the hall, "I ready to be nice now!" or "I ready to listen!" and I'll yell back that she can get up. This started happening just this week, so I doubt it will last, but we thought it was so funny.

Mother's Day in Monterey

Last Thursday we headed down to Monterey to celebrate Mother's Day. Our first afternoon there we went to Dennis the Menace park. Sophia had a great time, but we didn't take a lot of pictures. The next morning we had a wonderful breakfast and then went to the aquarium. Here's Sophia communing with the sea turtles:

The turtles were surprisingly interested in the people that were looking at them. Maybe they thought we had food... or that we'd let them out. Later, after lunch and a nap, we headed to the beach for a while. It wasn't a long walk from our hotel, but it was SO windy. I had mistakenly packed for the weather we had last year (warm and wonderful) and didn't bring a lot of warm clothing. However I did bring jeans and a sweater for the evenings. This is how I realized that Sophia needs new jeans - hers are all high-waters. Oh well, I don't think anyone noticed except me.

I think it is kind of funny to be wearing jeans and long sleeves at the beach, but at least we weren't freezing. It was funnier to see some teenage girls wearing swimsuits and running into the cold waves. Sophia didn't care what she was wearing. She enjoyed looking for rocks, shoveling sand into her bucket, and knocking down Daddy's sand castles.

Overall I had a very nice Mother's Day trip. If it was warmer, I would have liked to stay for the whole week. Since it was sweatshirt and jeans weather, a couple days suited me just fine.