Yup, that's our Sophie alright...

Feeding Nicky the guinea pig at Liz's in February

Sophie's daycare was closed for three days last week and our friend, Liz, and her daughters, Hannah and Divya, wonderfully agreed to help us babysit Sophie for a couple of hours while Jude went to school for an important meeting. Hannah had a riding lesson and so Liz brought Sophie along with them. Here's the email we got from Liz that night:

"While Hannah was in the barn caring for her horse, Sophie wanted to roam about. Instead of keeping Sophie on tight reins, I let her go on her own, wondering when far would be too far. I'm afraid I never got to see that. She kept going and going and going. Finally, I had to protect her from falling in a pond, so I kind of tried to redirect her away from the hidden pond and that's when she started in earnest - "I want to see the ginny pig!" She had a couple of moments where she laid on the ground face down, but thankfully I saw that at your place last time we visited and knew that she'd be fine. I would pick her up and tell her that she could cry on Auntie Liz's shoulder - and she would manage the funniest "crying" face but would forget to make the crying sound.

After Hannah was done with her lessons, Divya got a turn riding the horse. When Divya came close to us, Sophie informed the instructor "It's Sophie's turn to ride the horsey." So we put her on the horse, and she demanded for the helmet. I'm glad Sophie cares a lot about protection of her head. She was brave enough to even feed the horse, though she didn't seem too fond of them at first.

On the way to and from lessons, Sophie would join us in many sing-a-long songs. She didn't sing "You Are My Sunshine", but she did lead us in "Head and Shoulders".

At home, she did have the orange and would have eaten two or more if I let her. While she was eating oranges, Divya was sitting on a chair in the playroom eating a peach. In a bit, Sophie managed to tiptoe and reach an apple that was sitting on the kitchen counter. Before I knew it, Sophie was sitting in the same chair Divya was sitting in and had her little teeth marks in her apple. She wanted to eat a fruit just like Divya was eating a fruit.

I didn't realize Sophie was expecting a report of the day, til she got in the car and started reading to Jude her notes from Gretchen's House and said, "I had a great time at Auntie Liz's house"."

And that, ladies, and gentlemen, is totally our daughter in a nutshell :)