A few "Sophia-isms"

I have been collecting some of Sophia's funny comments for the last couple of months. She cracks me up! And suprises me. Every day.

Here is a conversation I had with her:
Sophia: "What does beautiful mean?"
Me: "Beautiful, like a beautiful mountain. Like a beautiful princess."
Sophia: "Yes."
Me: "Is Sophia beautiful?"
Sophia: "Yes."
Me: "Is mommy beautiful?"
Sophia: "Yes."
Me: "Is daddy beautiful?"
Sophia (laughing): "NO! Daddy can't be beautiful! He's a daddy!"
Me: "What can daddy be?"
Sophia: "A beautiful sweater."

Sophia: "You know why I'm allergic to dogs? Because I'm sick of dog hair!"

We say "Palomino"
Sophia says "Halloween-o" (she has since figured this one out!)

We say "potato" or "tomato"
Sophia says "Topato" (still! That's my favorite one!)

Sophia: "Mommy do you want to play this game with me? It's very hard. It will be challenging for you."

Sophia: "French fries aren't gross! They don't got meat in them!"

Sophia: "Can I go to work a lot like you, mommy?" (heartache!)

Sophia: "Mommy? I love you a bunch."

Sophia: "What does 'thing' mean?" (wow, that was a tough one!)

Sophia: "Mommy, an amazing supper would be pizza and pie!" (Agreed, but I also threw a salad in there) :)

Just to Add to the Craziness...

This is something that I haven't wanted to blog about because I'm afraid of "jinxing" things, but it's taken over such a large part of our lives that I think it's time it got a post! Some big news: I am about to have a baby AND we have decided to try to move! Simultaneously! Because we are crazy! :)

We have had our eye on a particular "country house" for a little while now, and finally went to the bank for loan preauthorization  and signed up with a realtor and actually made an offer. Labor Day weekend was a thrilling, anxiety-ridden weekend full of counteroffers and a gazillion texts and phone calls, which finally resulted in... the country house accepting our final offer!!! Now our little house is up for sale. We have had 9 people look at it in the last 6 days. It's tough (scheduling showings around Sophia's school schedule, 2 works schedules, and nap schedules is quite the challenge!) and I'm a *bit* hormonal and emotional about the whole thing. I absolutely, completely adore our little house and I am going to be a bawling mess if/when we do leave! We have only lived there for 4.5 years, but it's where we have grown as a family and where we brought baby Sophia home to, and it's the only home that she has ever known. It's our first family home and it's darling and I love it, but we outgrew the house with this pregnancy (only 2 bedrooms on the main floor) and outgrew the yard when we bought a horse :) So... cross your fingers for us! For your viewing pleasure, here are the realtor's pics of our sweet little house:

There is no dining room, but we turned the main floor living room into a multi-purpose dining/living room, since there's a den downstairs! Who needs 2 living rooms??? I guess that's really common around here, but seems a bit indulgent to me!

The sweet little kitchen. We spent lots of time and money updating the appliances and revamping the kitchen to make it "just right." Sigh.

Our master bedroom. In the bottom right corner you can see a speck of the baby's changing table... the bassinet and changing table are in our room for now! Nowhere else to put those things!

The main floor bathroom that we just finished updating with a gazillion dollar sink and vanity and matching mirror and new paint and hardware and a custom shelf. Sigh.  

Sophia's room, which I realize looks like chaos, BUT consider that I spent 40 hours painting her wall mural and that room is more "customized" and full of love than the rest of our house x100. Sigh.

Downstairs bathroom. For some reason the photographer didn't get any pics of our downstairs (guest) bedroom??? Our realtor said that's an oversight. Sorry... no 3rd bedroom pics!

The landing downstairs. Laundry room off to the right by the stair case.

The den

There's a little nook off of the south end of the den that we use as a work-out space.

The big, beautiful backyard! (You can't see my withered and dead garden very well in this photo, thank goodness! It's in the back of the yard where you see lots of shade... apparently produce needs sunshine to grow? Who knew?) :)

Our patio. Around the corner of the patio is the big outdoor/indoor dog kennel, which is another thing we'll really miss! The country house doesn't have a fenced dog yard, so that will be a bit of a challenge if everything comes together and we move in this fall/winter...

Now here are some pics of the country house! Of course the silver lining in this whole move thing is that we would be getting a much better house/space for our little family! It's really a sweet house. Not quite the remodeled farmhouse I was envisioning (this is a ranch built in 1978), but there are definitely perks to buying a "newish" property! (Like, skipping the sketchy wiring and lead paint and asbestos! Woo-hoo!). This house has the most acreage (10) at the shortest distance from the city (20 minutes) that we've seen yet. Good find!

Garage is detached, but it's an oversized 4 stall!

East facing screened porch, which Travis envisions sitting on while watching...

...the sun rise over 6,000 + acres of original, unspoiled prairie! This is a huge preserve right in front of the front yard. One of my favorite things about this place :) The house is also a short jog/drive away from a beautiful, wooded state park AND is next door to a really sweet town called Hawley AND is a short drive away from another state park that has horse trails. Another thing that I love is that this house is actually part of a development, so there are quite a few homes just west of this house. I wasn't too excited about the prospect of living in total country isolation, and Travis wanted to get out of the crowded city, so I think this is a very good compromise!

The family room is so open and light, with a cute little woodstove in the corner.

Formal dining room (we would probably repurpose this into a "multipurpose" room since there's good dining space right off the kitchen). The goal down the road would be to add a room or two to the house. It's currently a 3-bedroom, but I really like having a guest room for my family and it's nice to have a "junk" (office, exercise, etc.) room. Do I sound spoiled or what??? :)

This East-facing room would be Sophia's. There is another east-facing bedroom right next to this one for "Tadpole." The two kid rooms are right across the hall from the master bedroom. I want all my little ones to be less than 10 steps away from me at night!

West-facing master bedroom. (With it's own bathroom!).

The kitchen. Needs updating. Wah-wah.

Dining space off the kitchen. The sliding glass doors lead to the west-facing deck.

This is the deck, overlooking the little horse barn and fenced pasture.

So that's our exciting, crazy news... cross your fingers for us!

A(nother) Busy Week!

 Last week we enjoyed our last big "summer kitsch" event: Concordia College's Community Corn Feed. Concordia is just 4 blocks from our house and is a lovely private college, but I have to say... their mascot (a corn cob... they're called the "Cobbers") is kinda dorky! Sophia wasn't so sure about the mascot, but she really loved the bouncers and kids activities!

 The corn was AMAZING!

 Sophia continues to adore barrel trains!

 My 34 week preggers picture! I'm getting REALLY big now, and my old friend (edema) is back. Things are getting awkward... uncomfortable... I'm just hanging in, waiting for the end!

 Sophia had her first day of school on Tuesday!!! I didn't cry this year :) She was SO excited to be back. I love the Montessori model; when she got into her classroom she said hello to the teacher and then pulled out her work mat and got busy with a craft project. She loves her preschool!

 Sophia also had her first day of gymnastics this week! She took it very seriously :)

I can't even describe this gymnastics place; it's crazy! They have so many stations and it's just huge. The kids had a lot of fun trying out the rock climbing wall at the end of the session! We are headed to Lake Bemidji today for the long weekend... looks like nice weather and a lovely end to summer!

Celebrating Baby!

 This weekend we had a photographer come out to help us save some memories of this pregnancy and our final month as a family of three! Here are a few of my favorite pics!

Catching Up...

This last month has been insane. Before I realized how the time had flown I had a month of pictures on the camera! There are so many things I want to write, too, but some of it will have to wait. For now, here is a photo dump! Happy summer!

 In July Sophia and I went to our community's monthly summer "Art in the Park" event. Sophia of course had to do a pony ride (on the pony closest to a palomino... for some reason she's obsessed with Palominos!). At least the pony rides were free at this event!

 Lots of play time in the park...

 Dancing to the local band...

 Hitting up the wagon ride...

 Thanking the draft horses for the ride!

 I am endlessly amused by Sophia's games, especially during bath time... Here the octopus is a Chef (see the chef hat?! It's a bottle cap) and the other bath toys are lined up to try out Chef Octopus' restaurant.

 Yikes this is SO old... sorry! My 30 weeks preggo pic! I'll be 33 weeks along this Thursday... time for another pic! We are setting up a photography session for this weekend, so hopefully I'll have some fancy belly pics soon. Oh, and here's a little update, since I had a prenatal appt on Friday the 17th:

1. I gained 3 (!) pounds in 2 weeks, and have now gained a grand total of 17lbs. I blame the cheesy garlic bread at Cubbers. Yes, I was in VT last week. More on that later! My CNM was ok with the gain, but asked a lot of questions about swelling (so far not much) etc., so I think he was mildly concerned!

2. Baby's heart rate was 148 :)

3. Baby is still head down, but facing the wrong direction (towards the front), which can cause painful "back labor" if baby doesn't turn. I had very painful back labor with Sophia... he said I can probably thank my mother for an atatomy that causes my babies to face the wrong way. Um, no thanks, mom! ;) He did give me some positions and exercises to try for the next several weeks to encourage turning.

4. My CNM says the baby is "settling into my pelvis," which explains why my stomach looks different and has felt so low and heavy lately. I'm now wearing a maternity support belt, and it helps tremendously!

Except for during my trip back east, we have still been managing to visit Margie three times a week! Sophia's getting LOTS of experience since I stopped feeling like hauling myself into the saddle (it's been over a month already since my last ride and I'm fine with it!).

On August 5th we met up with some friends in a park for tennis and playtime. We got there a bit early and so Travis and Sophia had a blast playing "4 year old tennis." (It's a cross between golf, baseball, and tennis, if that makes any sense!).

Sophia and I hit the park while Travis and his friend played some rounds, and Sophia came across one of her school friends, Nick! They were SO excited to see each other!

Okay, so on August 5th I lost my Grandma Gale (dad's mom). I am going to write a proper post about this soon... for now let's just say that it was insane. I was shocked by how incredibly sad I felt about this loss. I vacillated on whether or not I should go to NY for the funeral, but once I heard that my grandpa had landed in the hospital and that every single grandchild was flying into NY from around the country, my mind was made up. I had to go. Sophia stayed with Travis' parents for 4 days and I flew to VT on Wednesday morning, and drove to NY with my mom and brothers the next day. I don't have any pictures from the trip (hopefully I will eventually get some from family members), but I have these two of dad and his big brother, my uncle Dennis. One striking thing about the funeral? All of the joy. The whole family was together for the first time in over a decade (or maybe almost 2 decades?!), and it was just so incredibly wonderful and heartbreaking at the same time. Not sure how dad will feel about the public display of these two pics, but I had to post them... it just tells it all!

Last week we enjoyed our last "Art in the Park" event of the summer. They had a tiny "petting zoo" for the kids this time... Sophia was obsessed with the miniature horse! We need to get her a pony!

We really enjoyed this last event. It was well-attended and had a distinctly mid-western feel, from the bovine barrel train (above) to the (awesome) country band. It was super fun!

Sophia was awesome at the bean bag toss... they had a real one (with the board with the hole that you toss the bags into) and she made 2 out of 3 twice! She must get her toss skills from her Grammy!

I caved an bought her an adorable flower wreath :)

Our last wagon ride!

Good bye Art in the Park! We enjoyed it so much this year!

This weekend we had the chance to watch our Goddaughter and niece, Ava, again! She spent the night on Saturday. We had a great time at the mall with the two girls (back to school shopping!) and Ava was so good... she was a doll for bath time... and she went to bed like an angel. I had it coming when she was up 2:30 to 4:00am! Haha. Still, trading a little sleep was worth it in exchange for some extra cuddle time with one of my favorite little monkeys :)

Yesterday we took Sophia to her first baseball games! We cheered for our local minor league team, the Fargo Red Hawks. Her grammy sent her a cat this weekend (the calico one in the back left) and now Sophia is going through a cat phase. She insisted on bringing all of her kitties to the game! Meet Chip (calico), Cookie (cream), Midnight (gray), and Zip (black).

The game was ok... I seem to remember baseball being more exciting??!! It was HOT out and we made it through 7 innings and then called it quits! We did watch our team score a run before leaving... the score was 1-0 at the 7th inning.

We finished up our weekend with Travis and Sophia's specialty; pizza!!! We enjoyed watching Disney's the Little Mermaid with Sophia for the first time. I almost cried. That's how much I love that movie. Oh yeah, and how hormonal I am! Haha. Disney magic! :)