poem to sophia

when you are 14 years old
and we are fighting
because we disagree on the appropriate amount of eyeliner
you are wearing
(i prefer none, because you are 14 f*cking years old)

i hope you remember the night
(though you won't, but i will always)
you woke up at 3 in the morning
with a fever of 102

and I, ashamed (!),
did not have any medicine
(correction, had all kinds of medicine
just not the right kind)
had to scoop you up and drive to a pharmacy
where strange looks were given
but actually meant for a teen mom

i felt so bad
i let you eat pita chips in my bed
and let you sleep in any position you wanted
even if it meant i was breathing in stinky baby feet
you should know
i loved you the most when
3 hours later i am still not sleeping
in a pile of pita chip crumbs.

things I may or may not need for Sophia

Let's just file these under ridiculous things I want to have for Sophia:

Gyro Bowl is a serious must have. Sophia likes to make it rain cheerios on a daily basis.



1/2 Filipino is better than none t-shirt is another must have. I really want to get it before FilFest 2011. Also, it's a not-so-subtle way to inform people that though Sophia is white, she is also my daughter so she is 1/2 Filipino and that I am not her Filipina nanny so please stop looking at me funny and don't you dare ask me if she's adopted.

When I was younger and had to draw or color for school, I was a little confused about what to color myself, family, and white friends. Surely, nobody I knew was actually yellow or pink. And I wasn't really that shade of brown. Well, with people-color crayons, Sophia will be spared from that anxiety.

what is she saying?

Sophia loves to look at pictures of herself and other babies. She gets such a kick out of photo booth! She loves playing in the mirror and seeing herself on the computer screen. Here she is interacting with herself. I wonder if she thinks that's her or another baby. I'll have to try that one experiment they did on monkeys to see if they had a concept of self. Some researcher put a red dot on the monkey's face (while they were unconscious) and when they woke up they put them in front of a mirror. Guess what the monkeys did? They scratched at the red dot on their face! So, they knew they were looking at themselves in the mirror. Anyway, here she is being adorable and working on her language development.