Gone Away

We're currently in Virginia, visiting Henry's parents, and since I have a free minute before we head off to the beach, I thought I'd post something real quick. First of all, we had a good trip out here. Sophia fell asleep half an hour into the drive, slept for 3 hours, then woke up, played for half an hour, and then we stopped to get gas and feed her. Then we kept driving the remaining 3.5 hours and Sophia slept for all of that. You have to love easy traveling. When we arrived at Henry's parents house at 1.20am, she again went to sleep pretty easily, but not until she'd taken enough time staring at the ceiling fan in the room. So cute.

Yesterday was such a fun day, despite Henry and me being really exhausted. We enjoyed chatting and playing with Henry's parents and Sophia was fascinated by her new surroundings and by her Grandma. At some point, when I was upstairs and Ruth had Sophia I just heard Sophia to start laughing sooo hard -she was hysterical. It was really funny, and Ruth just kept her laughing so hard. It made me so happy! Later on though, I wondered if Sophia was just in a really funny mood, because when we drove somewhere, and I was sitting in the back with her, I had my arm stretched out over the end of her car seat, where her feet were. She kind of started putting her feet against my arm and pushing my arm a little bit. And after doing that for a little she just started laughing, thinking that was so funny. Then when I fed into it, making funny sounds and faces, she just burst again with laughter. I LOVE IT! It's so cute to have her just laugh so hard.

The other thing we have enjoyed in the last few days with Sophia, is her playing exceptionally well on her own. On Thursday while I was busy packing etc. all day, Sophia kept playing by herself for long stretches of time (like 1 hour or so). At some point I went to check on her to make sure she's alive (since she was so quiet), just to find her laying on the floor 'reading' her books. I took a picture and will post it later. Yesterday, when we went to a ward High Priest Social, she sat on the grass for 1 hour just playing with her toys and being perfectly content.

Lastly, she finally realized that she can crawl and go places that way. She's been able to crawl a little since last week, but somehow she's just keep put even though she could have taken off. On Thursday something must have finally clicked, and now she's moving around. Yesterday, we tried to get her to crawl out of our room and down the hall way to where Henry and I were standing encouraging her. Like the good girl she is, she started crawling until...she got to the big mirror resting against the wall in the hall way. We kept trying to sway her to come to us, but once she saw her little face in the mirror, she crawled over there staring at herself. So funny.

Anyway, today we'll go to the beach. I'm excited since it's been a while for me, and it will be Sophia's first time in the ocean. She really loves the water, so much that I signed her up for baby-swimming lessons, which we had for the first time on Tuesday. She loved it, except she turned blue 20 minutes into it. I felt so bad, thinking she just isn't as chubby as the other babies and maybe that's why she gets cold faster...but maybe it's also her vampire-white skin making things look worse. Well, I gotta go.

Pictures coming later.