Finding My Center

My relationship with my sisters is growing closer by the day. A already laugh and smile when I watch them from my parent's lap or my play mat. But today, Denali helped my calm down in the car. Daddy had just put me in the car seat and the car was still sitting in the garage. If we sit for more than a minute or two, I tend to get kinda anxious and start crying. Today, I started crying as usual while daddy quickly tried to grab his shoes and bag. But, before he could get back to the car and get it started, I fell quiet. Daddy was confused until he reached the driver's seat. There, he saw that 'Nali had laid her beautiful head on the top of the back seat and was staring at me. I was capitvated and calmed immediatley. Early into the drive, Nali and Skye's antics from the rear compartment had me giggling and laughing. What would I do without them?

Another Milestone

Yes, I realize I've put up three posts in 24 hours. But this latest one caught my parents by surprise and they insisted on posting the news immediately:




At 5:40pm on Sunday, September 23, I sat unaided for 2 full minutes! I ROCK!

Chilli Dog Fair

It's about chilli. And its about dogs. It's the annual Johnson County Chilli Dog Fair was today, and the whole family went together. Mommy was feeling sick thanks to a virus I brought home from daycare, so we didn't stay long. But Skye and 'Nali got to come with us, which is always wonderful.

The festival is held at the Johnson County Fairgrounds, a place I will likely get to know very well in my future 4-H days. One exhibit hall is dedicated to a chilli cook-off with live music. Most of the folks making the chilli are campus organizations, such as daddy's medical students and mommy's residents. I couldn't taste the chilli, but it sure smelled good!

The livestock barn is set aside for the doggies (who can't go to the chilli hall!). They usually have agility demonstrations and doggie social events. This time, the local flyball club was racing their puppies. Flyball is a really cool sport where dogs race down a course with short hurdles to a platform with a tennis ball wedged into the goal. After speeding over the short jumps, the dogs grab the ball with their mouth, turn in the air, and race back to their human. How fun! Skye was perfectly happy meeting the people in the stands, but Denali stood transfixed, staring at the flyball competition. She trembled with excitment as the dogs raced back and forth. Finally, unable to contain her emotions, she barked. Not a threatening, angry type of bark, but a high-ptched bark that pleaded for attention and betrayed a touch of yearning. She clearly wanted to join in the fun. Daddy promised that we would try to teach her the game someday soon. We'll have to talk to Mimi about using the farm as a training ground.

I hope she gets to play- it looks like fun!

Operation Deep Freeze

With all due respect to State College’s famous creamery, the Cold Stone Creamery makes great ice cream. The encouragement of the customer’s creativity is designing their own flavor is what sets them apart from their competitors. To permit this liberal use of mix-ins, however, the ice cream is usually kept fairly soft and melts easily. So it came as no surprise to Daddy last week when he scooped out a dish of take-home Cold-Stone ice cream and found it to be pretty runny. After all, he has left it on the counter to thaw for 20 minutes. Why? Because our freezer is so powerful, it usually turns the ice cream into a rock-hard solid chunk of icy goodness.

But not this time. Daddy didn’t seem to mind the runny ice cream, but when mommy went to scoop out a bowl of Ben and Jerry’s Fudge Brownie, she found a milk-shake consistency soup. Something was wrong. Mommy dragged daddy out of his chocolate-peanut butter induced stupor and they examined the freezer. It was cold, but not freezing. The frozen pasta was covered with frost, the cooler packs were soft, and worst of all, the breast milk mommy had placed in the freezer 2 days before was still liquid!

My milk-sicles were in imminent danger of thawing! Three months of storing mommy’s precious milk was about to go to waste! Who cares about the ice cream, the coffee, or the duckling (yes, we actually have a duck in our freezer! Maybe by Thanksgiving we’ll actually eat it). The milk must be saved!

It was soon discovered that Lowe’s opens at the ripe young time of 6:30am, only a few hours from the time of the discovery of malfunctioning freezer. Daddy was off at the crack of dawn, speeding away into the morning mists to wrangle up a new freezer. He returned home with a 5.0 cu ft deep freezer and, after struggling through the process of getting it in the door, plugged it in. Two hours later, Gran carefully transferred the precious cargo to the new freezer. I am happy to report that all the milk units were saved as well as the ice cream, and even the duck!

Operation Deep Freeze was a complete success! YAY!

I Love My Sisters!

A funny thing happened a couple weeks ago. I actually noticed my sisters! They have been aware of me since I arrived home from the hospital- sniffing me, watching me, and sleeping under my bed. But I was only vaguely aware of their presence; a lick to the top of the head or a tickle at my toes.

But suddenly one day, I stared at Denali and smiled. It was a very special moment. All at once, I had finally grasped the comnplex and abstract concept of existance other than human- beings other than Mommy, Daddy, Gran, or Grammie. Since then, my sisters and I have a blast together, especially when I play on my mat in the living room. I will roll around, getting their attention, then laugh when creep up to me to give me a sniff. They are so funny! I reached for 'Nali yesterday and grabbed her ear. It was so soft! She didn't seem to mind at all. But when I reached for Skye today, she backed off. I guess she's still a little skittish about my touching her. That's OK- she'll get used to it!

Here's a video of me on my mat!

My first virus and rolling over

As reported today by Nanny Granny:

"At 8:14 am today, Sophie, unassisted rolled over toher stomach and pushed herself to the edge of her playmat while reaching to touch her sisters. Now she willbegin to show signs of canine genes and she will needa bone for teething. SHe is now flipping from back tofront and back again, rapidly!! Love, Gran"

I have been working very hard lately on this rolling over trick. I was so close for a couple of weeks now, but couldn't quite get all the way over. My progress was impeded Wednesday this week when I suddenly came down with a low grade fever, poor sleep, and generalized aches. Fortunately, I still had my voracious appetite and I wasn't vomiting. But I was in so much pain, moaning constantly for 7 hours, daddy brought me into his friends at the ER. Much like other young children daddy sees all the time, I got better as soon as I entered the ER. I smiled at the triage nurse, instantly melting her heart. They checked a urine sample (ouch!), which was normal. I am progessively better since.

Daddy left for Nebraska on Thurday AM, so he missed my full unassisted turn. But I'll keep practicing so that I could do it a bunch of times when he gets home!

Picking Apples

Today we went to Wilson's Orchard to pick fresh apples from the trees. The orchard, just a few miles north of our house, is a rite of Autumn in Iowa City. Every Fall weekend the farm is packed with our friends and neighbors picking apples for dinner, salads, snack, and pie.

This was my first time to the orchard, so daddy picked out a special fall outfit for me: long sleeved t-shirt with orange bats on it and jeans with cute flowers. Best of all, daddy had me wear shoes- bright red ones with flowers that matched the jeans! Since we were going to be out in the sun for a while I needed to be covered head to toe. When we got to the orchard, daddy put me in the baby bjorn while mommy grabbed a fruit basket to collect the goodies.

We searched the trees for mommy's favorite apple, the honeycrisp. But we were too late- they had been all picked already. We did manage to find a few "Song of September", "Jonagold" and "Regent", so we hardly went home empty-handed. While we were out picking, we saw Uncle Steve as well as several of mommy's residents. They helped us find some more yummy apples we had missed.

Picking apples is hard work, so I finally fell deep asleep and hung, suspended in the baby bjorn like an upright hammock. I don't remember leaving the orchard and going back to the barn, but we must have! After mommy paid the farmer for the basket of apples, mommy and daddy enjoyed fresh apple turnovers. They smelled yummy- mommy and daddy seemed to love them. Hmm . . . only a couple more months until I can eat solid foods- including applesauce!

First Day of School!

I went to day care for the first time yesterday. Mommy was more anxious about it than I was. I showed up, played with the caregivers, then had a big juicy poop to christen the place!

Handi-Care is in Coralville, about 10 - 15 min away. Daddy drove me there and dropped me off. I stayed for 4 hours yesterday and 6 hours today. By Friday I'll try to stay the whole day. Boppy and Gran will be happy to hear that I had eating issues at all despite all the new caregivers. I guess my appetite is bigger than my anxiety! My class is called the "Disneys" and we have 5 other girls and only one boy. Daddy is totally convinced there has been a genetic alteration in Iowa and many more girls are being born. That may be, but Uncle Kurt will be the first to remind us that its just a statisical anomaly. Whatever that means.

My First Game Day!

Football season finally started and daddy was so excited he put together an all-day menu of snacks and classic football foods: brats, chips, pizza, chilli, beer, cookies, and more. But I was very content with just milk! I wore my special Iowa t-shirt in honor of the Hawkeye's "home game" in Chicago. Daddy set up two TV's and we watched Iowa - Northern Illinois, UCLA - Stanford, Notre Dame- Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech- East Carolina, and of course, USC- Idaho. Well, actually daddy watched all those games. I played with mommy on my play mat and took a long nap cuddled up with mommy (how heavenly!)

In the morning, before the games started, daddy and I gave Grammie and Granpa a ride to the Cedar Rapids dog show so they could watch cousin Kiera compete. She won best of breed! WOW! Yay Keira!