Part 1 of our Florida Vacation

Thanks to our friends Billy and Muffin we were able to switch our flight and come down a weekend before to spend some time with them and our niece Sophia, who is a lot more alert and smiley than when we first saw... the first two days of her life... We've spent a couple days with Sophie now and are enjoying every minute of it.

We decided one night to give Justin and Crystal a break and were able to experience parent hood first hand... and we quickly decided we were not ready... we'd rather spoil our niece(Sophie) and nephew(Ethan). We stayed up till about 1am feeding her and rocking her till she fell asleep, then about 3 hours later in the middle of the night, Sheila heard Sophie crying through the monitor and told me to go check on her.... so I said yes... but never got up...(I'm too used to the snooze alarm).. 10 minutes later, sheila said "David, get up! go change Sophia's diaper". So in the middle of the night, without my glasses on or contacts in I changed my first diaper... couldn't really tell what i was doing... but it seemed to work out, and I didn't even put the diaper on backwards. Sheila prepared a bottle and fed her and rocked her to sleep again... then we both crashed the rest of the night and Crystal was kind enough to do the early morning shift(my guess, because neither one of us was waking to Sophie's crying.) This is when we usually like holding sophie, she's just in her own tiny bubble...

The next day we went to the mall to do some shopping and brought little sophie along, she really seems to enjoy car rides, especially if she has a clean diaper and full tummy... I got to sit in the back seat with her and snap some pretty funny pictures of her... she is a cutie!

This is Sophie after our shopping spree, already modeling her new hat!

My favorite relative is...

On Sophie's 2 month birthday, (which we all know is when babies come to their senses, they become more alert and start seeing and even thinking clearer, sometimes even given the rare ability to write and make very smart statements) Little adorable Sophie has made a major announcement! I'm sure by looking at the picture you can see she has declared that her Uncle David is her favorite relative. This comes as no surprise to anyone, except to maybe her Aunt Sheila who was shocked and a little perturbed by the bold, yet true declaration. Since this news, Aunt Sheila has been fighting to take over the "favorite relative" title by going on a shopping spree for little Sophie Lola... cute tops, and pants won't buy out little Sophie's pure heart! (besides I've made a few purchases just incase she plans on changing her mind.)

Now I know she is still young and succeptible to temptations and bribes from other relatives(Sheila, Andy, Ash...and of course grandpa and grandma.) but let it be known that I, David, was declared first on Sophie's favorite relative list and therefor will always be at the top of the list.

The Daily Sophie Music Video

> Sometimes its hard to get motivated to do work, especially on a friday afternoon with only an hour until clockout... but its very easy on Mac's to find ways to entertain yourself, so I decided to create our niece Sophie's first music video... We heard this song on new years eve this year while in Tampa, never heard of the band and we(spiegels & grames') all thought it was such a weird song but it was stuck in our heads the entire vacation...thus has become Sophie's theme song....so with the daily Sophie pictures we've been receiving from her mommy and daddy I put together a music video to sophie, sophie-lola...sophie-lolooloooolalo? ..... to Sophia.

Sophia Lola!

One of the reasons why we came to Florida for Christmas, besides braving the harsh winter was to hopefully see our new niece Sophie! Justin and Crystal Speigel were expecting their first baby anytime in early Jan 2009. We tried all Christmas long to try and get her to come out, we gave Crystal foot massages, after foot massages, massaged the belly, pushed on the belly... but Sophie just wouldn't leave her mommy...granted she wasn't due for another week and half... we worked the first week of '09 "remotely" from FL so we could hopefully see her... and she made us wait...all the way until the day before we were to leave to come out!... BUT WE WERE HAPPY SHE CAME!

On Jan 9, 2009 around 5pmish Sophie finally arrived. We got to see the proud daddy come downstairs and greet us with a HUGE smile on his face... he even brought the video camera down with some images of her so we could see her while we waited. She is adorable.(as you can see in the pics) I dont remember her weight or height, but then again.. we're just her aunt and uncle, our job is to spoil the kid and then leave for a while, come back...spoil them some more and then leave. It's Fun. Due to inclemate weather back in NY we were able to reschedule our flight and spend a couple days at the house with Sophie and the extremely happy and very sleepy mommy and daddy!