Sophie is Officially Three

Some interesting things about Sophie:

1. She LOVES princesses. She calls me Princess Mommy and herself Princess Sophie. Also, to her, pink means good, pretty, all is right in the world. As in "Mommy, my teeth are pink" (after she's brushed them). She does have a tough tomboy side however. She loves to make mudpies and roll around and get dirty.

2. She wants to play at the park every day with her friends. Rain or shine. She can't wait to have playdates. Although she is still mastering the art of sharing.

3. This kid loves her some t.v., movies, that gray snow that's on the t.v. every once in a while. It's all good to her.

4. She loves Max, but does not want him touching her stuff. Or his stuff for that matter. As long as he's sitting quietly staring at her, she's happy. Otherwise she's calling him a bad baby.

5. She really, really likes sandwiches. She eats other food, but she is pretty happy with a sandwich and some water. She keeps asking me for a zebra sandwich. I'm pretty sure she means a sandwich in the shape of a zebra, but just in case I'm wrong I'm not questioning her too closely.

6. She's got the potty training down pat. I'm super impressed with her, and happy that I didn't really have to do anything but stock a prize box for bribing purposes.

7. She loves to read to herself or have someone read to her. During time out I find her sitting on the floor in her room reading.

8. She is the most stubborn person I have ever met. She gets that from Dave. She can also hold a grudge (she also gets that from Dave), she is still talking about the time I spanked her and it's been almost three weeks.

9. She tells me she loves me and she also tells me I love her. She tells me, "Mama, you miss me", even when I haven't gone anywhere.

10. She is fascinating and changes everyday. I can't wait for tomorrow (although I'm seriously apprehensive about 10 years from now).

11. She adores Dave. I mean full out ADORE, she thinks he hung the moon and can't get enough of her Daddy.

12. She has such a wonderful imagination, it is so wonderful to see her pretending to be a princess, monster, puppy dog.

Sophie on her second birthday. I can't believe how much she has changed.

Trying on her new clothes on her third birthday.

What Thanksgiving 2010 Taught Me...

1. Brining a turkey isn't difficult. It is however time and labor intensive. And you will need math skills. If you don't have math skills, you will need to borrow someone else's. However if you do need to borrow someone else's math skills there will probably be some mocking involved from the borrowee. ( I totally made that word up).

2. When you make your list for the grocery store, please take into account you are shopping with small children right before Thanksgiving. Bring snacks for the kids, and alcohol for you. Really, you'll thank me later.

3. Just because you spent a fair amount of money on coordinating outfits for your family to wear for the traditional Thanksgiving photo does not mean your three year old will consent to wear said outfit. In fact she will probably throw a major tantrum and insist on wearing her ratty old sweatpants and won't allow you to brush her hair either. This will be your punishment for refusing to change shoes for church as a child. Take it like a man.

4. If you are nursing your infant, you WILL NOT get to eat your dinner hot and while everyone else is eating their dinner. You should be used to this by now, if you aren't, well I don't know what to tell you.

5. If you are very lucky, your family will sit at the table and watch you while you eat (since you couldn't eat while they were eating due to number 4). Making you mildly uncomfortable, but also eternally grateful.

6. If you are making a traditional dish from your spouse's family and you substitute an integral ingredient... your spouse will notice... and remark on this substitution. You will not be able to explain your reasoning.

7. It's okay to ask for help if you have no idea what you are doing. It's like asking for directions, no one wants to end up in a different state because you won't pull over to ask for help.

8. I learned this last year but it bears repeating. Turkey's have TWO cavities that have stuff in them that should not be brined or roasted. Please for the love of all that's holy check to make sure you are not roasting a plastic bag of turkey stuff. I'm not really sure what's in that plastic bag and I've always been too afraid to open it and find out.

9. If you are cooking and are already wearing your pretty clothes... wear an apron. It's seems obvious, but I thought I should mention it anyways.

10. Be thankful Thanksgiving is only once a year.

The turkey hanging out in the brine. We filled juice jugs with water and froze them to keep the temperature low enough not to give us all food poisoning.

Here I am removing the turkey from the brine. We rinsed it really well after this and smeared it with olive oil.

Dave making the rub.

Sophie picking fresh basil for the rub.

Me calling Dave's Mom and Dad for turkey brining advice.

The kids watching while Dave and I prepped the turkey to roast it.

Sophie wanted a closer look at the turkey. I'm not sure why I had peanut butter on the counter. Can you imagine peanut butter turkey? Yum?

Mid-roast

Almost ready to eat

Our spread

Our traditional Thanksgiving pose.

Dave carving the turkey. Yum!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sophie's Third Birthday Party

We held Sophie's third birthday party a couple days ago. I'm getting tired just thinking about it. The house is finally clean again... just in time for Thanksgiving. We had so much fun at the party. So many of Sophie's friends were able to come and enjoy the day with us. We didn't have any party games, but we set up play tents in the backyard and had lots of paper and crayons for the kids to play with. We had a garden party theme this year, so lots of butterflies, caterpillars, and flowers throughout the house.
Sophie requested pink cake, but she had to make do with pink cupcakes and Chocolate Crunch Cake. Crunch Cake is the traditional Edgerton family birthday cake and it's so yummy. I was tempted to color the icing on the cake pink, but I got busy and it just didn't happen.


Here's Sophie in her birthday finery. I bought the pink pettiskirt for her when she was about seven months old and since it has a super adjustable waist it still fits.

You can see Max's new teeth in this photo. He was a great little guy during the party and loved all the attention he got from the ladies.

Sophie's birthday tutu didn't make it through the entire party, I was super glad I put leggings on her when she took her skirt off in the kitchen in the middle of the party.



She couldn't quite blow out her candles by herself so Dave and I helped.





Sophie received so many wonderful gifts. She is now enjoying serving tea on her new tea set to all her new dolls. She also got several new books. It's always nice to change out her bedtime story for something new.



Here are the favor bags I slaved over... kidding it really didn't take that long to cut out the green bags so they looked like grass. I got the idea from Martha Stewart courtesy of my friend Sherry.

In the favor bags was a flower hair clip for the little girls and a tic tac toe bag with felt X's and O'x along with a little wind up caterpillar.
Sophie had so much fun at her birthday party. We're also having a mini celebration on her actual birthday with more cake and more presents from her grandparents and us. I guess I better go through her toys and get rid of some of the things she doesn't play with anymore or all her toys are going to take over the house.

I'll leave you with an image of Dave after two and half hours of a three year old's birthday party...

From Sitting to Standing

Max hit the eight month mark a couple days ago and promptly pulled himself to stand in his crib. He had pulled himself up one time prior on a toy designed to encourage standing, but I was quite impressed when I found him standing up in his crib instead of napping. He can also scoot along on his tummy anywhere he wishes to go and he moves fast! I am vacillating between pride that he's growing and doing all this fun stuff and horror that he can get into anything he wants to. It illustrates that our house is NOT baby proof. You might have noticed a little bruise on his head in the second photo, that would be his first injury, he got that when he headbutted my dresser. He's a tough little guy though and barely cried.

He also has two teeth now. Other than some teething issues he is still a pretty happy little boy. Max loves that he can now eat real food and munches away on Gerber Puffs and Mum Mum rice crackers throughout the day.

Halloween Festivities

We were invited to a Halloween Party last night! We all had a great time. I must say that our hostess did a great job with the decorations and creepy food. There was a brain made of shrimp and I don't even know what else, I can't believe I didn't take a photo, but it was so cool. Dave, Sophie, Max and I weren't sure what we should dress up as. Well, Sophie was determined to be Princess Sleeping Beauty (that's what she calls Aurora), but since that is her costume for Halloween and I didn't want her messing up her Halloween costume before the holiday I decided that I needed to find costumes for all of us. Plus I really wanted a cohesive plan for our costumes so we would blend/match.
Then there was finding a costume for Dave and I. I don't know if I am becoming more prudish as I get older or if the Halloween costumes are becoming trashier, but I could not find anything appropriate for a family of four. Or that I was willing to wear to a costume party with my kids. Maybe I am becoming a prude.
Anyways, I decided Dave and I would be Zookeepers, Sophie re-wore her monkey costume from last year and Max is a LION! How cute is he? I wanted to squeeze him into little pieces. I made Dave and my costumes from work shirts from Sears and some felt applique.
As you can tell Max isn't much of a party animal (ha ha) because he fell asleep shortly after we arrived at the party. I will say that most costumes sold in stores are too warm for our current climate. Poor Max almost got heat stroke from wearing that costume for an hour and Sophie took hers off in favor of the leggings and t-shirt she was wearing underneath.

On a side note; I noticed this year that I don't have very many Halloween decorations and I'll admit I'm not a huge fan of the scary decorations that are so prevalent at stores nowadays. Part of that stems from the fact that Sophie is a bit of a scaredy cat and already has nightmares fairly often (active imagination). Plus I'm a bit of a scaredy cat. When I saw these decorations on a blog I frequent (MADE) that she found at Country Living, I just had to get my own. After a morning of cutting construction paper, I had a flock of bats that had invaded our kitchen. Sophie wasn't super excited at first but she doesn't seem to mind them so much anymore. Dave said it reminds him of Austin (TX) so I think I'm pretty happy with our decorations for this year.

Max's Baptism

I promised photos of Max's baptism... We flew to Chicago and had his baptism at his godparents parish. Max was great, he didn't cry when the water was poured over him. The reason there are no photos of Sophie is that she fell asleep in her stroller before the baptism and slept through everything. She woke up in time for lunch and cake later.

Max almost asleep after the baptism

Max being baptized

Listening to the Deacon talk about the importance of baptism

Emily (Max's godmother), me, Max, John (Max's godfather)

We're MOVING!

Apparently my whining is quite powerful, because the day after I announced to the world what a whiny baby I am, Dave received his orders. We will be moving back to Bangor, Washington this spring.

Sophie when we moved into our current house. February 2009

Dave and I are both excited to start this next stage of our lives. Although possibly for different reasons. I will admit that I am really excited to be back on the mainland because the shopping is better =). It's also really nice that we are already familiar with the area and have several friends there. I'm a little worried since this is the first move where Sophie can actually understand what's happening. Plus I am going to MISS the heck out of my parents. I've been trying to convince my dad that he needs to transfer to the shipyard in Bremerton, but so far he isn't falling in line with my plans. I'm not looking forward to the actual move, but it does give me a good excuse to get rid of things we don't need or use anymore. Assuming I Dave and I can agree on what those things actually are. I'll be sure to keep everyone posted the closer we get to our big move.

Rock and Rolling Max

I can't believe Max is 7 months old. It seems like time has just flown by. Max was a little late to the rolling game. All his little friends were rolling long before he managed to move his giant baby body off his back or tummy =). Although now that he's mastered rolling he can propel himself around a room and even into another one if he wants to. I watched him yesterday roll across the office to Sophie's play stroller, turn it over and proceed to chew on the wheels. I don't think it will be long before he starts crawling. Which will present some problems since Sophie isn't inclined to share her toys (or his for that matter). I spend a lot of my time telling Sophie to give Max back his ball or car or whatever he happened to be playing with.

Sophie thinking and Max sitting

Things are good here. We've been pretty busy settling back into a routine after our trip to Chicago. Max isn't sleeping through the night yet, which isn't fabulous, I know I need to stop feeding him in the middle of the night, but I'm usually so tired I can't quite wrap my brain around just soothing him and putting him back to sleep.

My gripe of the week: We STILL haven't gotten our orders, or rather Dave is on a work trip and isn't in the office to check and see if they've come in yet. I guess I'm just getting impatient to see what the next phase of our life is going to entail. Plus if we're moving, I have quite a bit to do before then, and if we're not moving then I can laze around eating bon bons all day.

Here's a recent photos of Sophie after she dressed up as a fairy. She also says that she looks like a princess and is going to get married. We were looking at my and Dave's wedding album earlier and she's decided she is going to marry Dave. When I told her she couldn't because I had already married Daddy, she told me that I could marry my friends.



Here's Sophie "thinking". No really I asked her what kind of Popsicle she wanted and she proceeded to scratch her head and say "Hmmm". The bandaid is from an owie that she will not stop scratching. She HATES bandaids.

Max is sitting up. He's been sitting up by himself for a couple weeks now and manages to support himself for quite awhile. He had his six month check up and weighed in at a whopping 21 pounds and change. He's a pretty happy baby as long as he's fed and well rested.
I just love his surprised look.

Chicago 2010 - Sophie at the park

The kids and I loaded up last week and headed off to Chicago... by ourselves. Dave was in Guam for work and for some insane reason I decided it would be the perfect time to get Max baptized. Let me give a little background on my decision, Dave really wanted to be there for Max's baptism, but since Dave will be done at SUBPAC within the next four months or so he really can't afford to take any time off. Added to that he has been traveling a lot lately and always has so much work to catch up on when he is home. Plus (I know you're thinking will this story never end), Emily, the Max and Sophie's godmother and my aunt is due with her first baby at the beginning of October. So it turned out the best time for our trip to Chicago was when Dave was gone. I'll post photos of the baptism later, but during our trip we went to this great park with a ton of toys and climbing walls and, well, it was pretty fabulous. Sophie was in heaven, so here's a couple photos of her enjoying her playtime.

This is one of those rocking horse things. At least when I was a kid they looked like animals, now they're just random shapes welded together. Sophie thought it rocked, ha ha. (Sorry bad pun)

Bronzed Shoes for Sophie

We sent Sophie's first pair of walking shoes off to the American Bronzing Company almost two months ago. I'll admit that Dave really drove the shoe bronzing. I wasn't opposed to it per se; I didn't have any other plans for Sophie's shoes, but I also wasn't as excited as he seemed to be. Until our trip to California, when I saw that Gram-Gram (Dave's grandmother) had each of her kid's shoes bronzed. I'll admit that I thought it was the sweetest thing ever and was much more excited to get Sophie's shoes back. When I checked the mail this afternoon, sure enough Sophie's shoes had returned. I was a little surprised at how light they were. For some reason I was expecting something more like a lead weight. I really like how they look. I'll have to wait until Dave gets home to decide on where they will live. Sophie's room, the china hutch? All in all I am very pleased.