Sophia’s 21 Month Update
Sophia Mae,
Happy 21 months Fia (short for Sophia)! At 19 months you weighed 21 pounds and 10 ounces and were just shy of 31 inches long. I say this every time, but I absolutely love watching you grow and learn and develop new skills. You’re really starting to blossom into your own person.
The biggest update is that we finally moved in to our new house and we couldn’t be more thrilled. We love having more space for you and Jericho to run around, our own laundry machines, and a dishwasher; small luxuries that we are not taking for granted. Grandma and Grandpa Groves came in mid-July to help us move and do projects on our house. It felt like we were living in a construction zone. Between painting, installing can lights, getting a new roof and gutters, mold removal, asbestos removal, and installing floors/baseboards, we weren’t fully able to settle in until mid-September. During this process, you slept in almost every room in the house, depending on what area we were working on. ;)
While they were here, we made sure to have a little fun by going out for a nice meal at McCormick and Schmick’s. Colton's birthday was filled with work and moving related things, but he did make sure to get a few of his birthday freebies. We also celebrated by having dinner at Carlita's with drinks and tequila shots.
We are so thankful for all of our family and small group friends. They helped us tremendously by helping us paint, providing muscle to move our stuff, and babysitting Sophia. We couldn't have asked for a better group of friends. Thank you Jesus!
We love how the living room turned out. It feels so much more open and bright, and I personally LOVE white brick!
This is the kitchen / dining room area. Although the dining space isn’t huge, we are so grateful to have a designated space to eat our meals. It was very cramped in our previous apartment.
Sophia’s room is one of my favorite rooms with all the color. We are planning on making a reading nook on the left of the desk. I can’t wait to see her spend time snuggling up with a good book in her own space.
This is the master bedroom. We love everything about this room, especially the sloped ceiling.
This is our guest room/office/eBay room. It used to be a garage/carport, which is why the ceiling is acoustic tiles instead of drywall. Eventually we will fix this up more, but for now it gets the job done.
We are so proud of all the work were able to accomplish. There are still many projects we have planned, but for now, we are enjoying the fruits of our labor.
Next up on our list is to install ceiling fans in our room and Sophias, finish replacing / installing GFCI outlets, hanging photos, continuing to replace other outlets and prepping the yard for spring time (we are getting rid of those darn lava rocks. There are sooo many!).
Your vocabulary is continuing to grow and you mimic almost everything we say. You even sing in the car with the radio. When you want to sing a certain song you'll say a few words of that particular song. For example, you say "happy" for "when you're happy and you know it" or "up and down" for "the wheels on the bus". Whenever you see an American flag, you start to sing “twinkle, twinkle.” That is by far your favorite song. You know some of your abcs, and can sing “qrstuvw.”
You’re obsessed with armpits and putting on deodorant. You’re starting to use your imagination when you play. You’ll feed your stuffed animals, clean them, and put them night-night. You really love your Dolly, Dino, and Earl the sloth; taking them with you wherever we go.
You are super fascinated with using the potty. Almost every chance you get, you say the word “potty” and point to your diaper. I think after our vacation in October, we may start to potty train you. Just for fun, we took your diaper off and let you sit on the potty. You ended up peeing for the first time in it on 9/6/2021. On October 3rd, you told me you wanted to go potty, so I took your diaper off, and sure enough, you went! You’re getting closer and closer!
You are so close to being able to dress yourself. It usually isn’t the correct way to wear an item of clothing, but you don’t care. You’re so proud of yourself! I actually bought you your own undies because you kept trying to put mine on. :P
With your new skills also comes new ways to test your boundaries, and oh boy, you try to test them every chance you get. We’ve started finding a natural consequence that relates to the negative behavior. So, when you eat your colored pencils or throw your food, we give you a warning, and if the negative behavior continues, we stop that activity and move on. Why do you love the things that are off limits (Jericho’s food and water and internet cords)? We are trying to be consistent with you so that you can learn what our boundaries are. Some days are really hard, but we’re making progress.
Grammy Penny came to visit for 2 weeks in August before we hopped on an airplane to visit your Great Grandma Joyce. We put her to work on our many house projects, but mostly she played with you. She would take you to the park for a few hours every morning while daddy and I got work done. You loved playing in the water at one of the local parks. As per our birthday tradition, we celebrated her birthday with all the free coffees.
Seeing our friends continues to be one of the best parts of our life. You had a play date with mommy’s friends Morgan and Aundrea and their kiddos; another play date with Nyla; saw Willa and Leo at our Bible study gatherings, and went to the park with our church friend (and neighbor) Poppie. One of our friends that we met in Utah was driving through with his new wife and stopped by to stay the night. We took them to PDX sliders and Salt and Straw Ice Cream. Thankfully, they were very understanding of our construction zone living arrangements. ;)
It may have taken us a month, but we are slowly starting to meet our neighbors. We are so excited that there are people around our age and some with kids (or friendly cats)!
The beginning of July you started, what we thought was, your 18 month sleep regression. You were waking up a few times in the night, but would easily calm back down if we checked on you. We thought we were getting by easy for this regression. That is until right before we left for our Rhinelander trip you started waking up more frequently. We weren’t sure if it was part of your regression or because we fed you lunch at a different time, but it made our trip much more difficult. Grammy and I got into a routine where I would check on you for the first few hours while she slept and then if you still weren’t sleeping, grammy would sleep on the couch with you so I could get some sleep. I hated to do that since it might set your sleep back further when we got home, but we were in survival mode.
When we got home, you still weren’t sleeping well so daddy and I took shifts, him doing bedtime till around 2 AM and then I would cover till 7 AM. We tried checking on you every 5, 10, 15, etc., but that didn’t seem to help any. Finally, I made the tough decision to let you cry till you fell asleep. That first time I fell asleep first so I’m not sure when you actually settled, but you were asleep when I woke up an hour later.
At the peak of your regression, you decided to stand up and sleep THE ENTIRE NIGHT! You were so tired that next morning, as you weren’t getting quality sleep. That lasted for a few nights and eventually you progressed to sleeping sitting, and then onto your belly. Around 9/9, we noticed your regression starting to go away. You’d cry for about 15 minutes and then be asleep the rest of the night. By mid-September we were fully back to your normal sleeping (aside from your naps being hit-or-miss).
I’m mostly writing about the regression for myself to look back on. When you’re in the middle of one of these, it is hard to remember that it will indeed end, and mostly go back to the way it was before. I know i’ll need this reminder when the 24 month regression hits.
August 23, Grammy, you, and I flew to Rhinelander. We stayed at an Airbnb, which worked out great, so Great Grandma Joyce didn’t have to hear you crying at all hours of the night. ;) Aside from you not sleeping well, we had a lovely trip. The three things you were obsessed with on this trip were Grandma Joyce’s stuffed animal Bee, a reusable bag that had the American Flag on it (twinkle, twinkle), and trying to get your bum to fit in the tiny Beanie Baby Chair.
You loved eating blueberries out of a vitamin container with Great Grandma Joyce and going to the Northwoods Children’s Museum. Mommy loved getting coffee at Tilly’s and napping when you took your nap. I was so worried about flying home with you all by myself (2 planes and a 3 hour layover), but you did amazing. You even slept 2 of the 3 hours on the second plane!
One Saturday in September, we took a visit to the Creation Center and Mount St. Helens. We loved learning about God’s creation and seeing his intricate design.
Grandpa Jim came to visit and help us with some electrical work, like replacing outlets and putting in GFCI ones, and mapping our electrical panels. There is still more to do, but daddy now knows how to do these things. We were trying our best to get as many projects finished as possible before we hosted our housewarming party. To celebrate all our hard work, we took a trip to Mt. View Orchards and picked apples, peaches, and pears. We then ate dinner at pFriem, in Hood River, and drove home.
There has been a lot of back and forth with what we are going to do daycare wise. Our friend who was watching you, has another job lined up, and unfortunately, all the daycares close to our home are full. We’ve decided to take you to my work’s daycare two days a week and I will work at the office one of those days. I’m kind of excited to be back in the office to experience our brand new building and to wear actual work clothes. ;) Mommy’s friend Beth is going to carpool with us and we can’t wait to have more Beth time. I’m really excited to have dedicated work time and for you to get to play with some other kids on a consistent basis. I think it will be good for all of us. September 28th was your first day of daycare and you did so well!
In the middle of September, two of the best things we started doing was having a daily schedule and introducing independent play. Our daily schedule looks like this:
7:00 AM Wake up
7:30 AM Breakfast
9:00 AM Mom and dad start work
9:45 Dedicated play time with you
10:00 AM Snack
10:15 AM Independent Play
11:30 AM Lunch
12:30 PM Nap
2:30 PM Snack
3:00 PM Park / Errands / Outdoor Play
4:00 PM Quiet time
4:45 PM Dedicated play time with you
5:15 PM Bible songs DVD / TV / Play with dad while I cook dinner
6:00 PM Dinner
8:00 PM Bedtime
We started introducing you to independent play and quiet time, both for our own sanity, and to teach you how to play by yourself (a bonus is that it will help when we have another baby). Since you are very attached to me, we've started with 5-10 minutes at a time and are currently in the same room together. My hope is that we can stretch the time to an hour (or more) and have you alone in your room, while I get work done. For now we are taking baby steps. We bought you a new toy to help you ease into this type of play. So far, it is going pretty well.
To end this update, we’ve started on our Fall Bucket List, but have many more items that we cannot wait to get started: Drinking apple cider, reading Fall books from the library, and playing in the leaves are some of them.
We sure love you, Sophia Mae!
-Mommy and Daddy
