Sylvie Mae Kennedy

Well, we haven’t posted much recently (or even more than recently), but we created an album of photos of Sylvie playing in the aftermath of Snowpacalypse 2010. Click the picture below to go to the album. Enjoy!

Sylvie’s Snowpacalypse 2010

Finally! More Sylvie videos. Believe it or not, all of these were taken in one day…this may give you a sense of how much time we spend going up and down four flights of stairs each day. This was Sylvie’s first day of taking her new umbrella to Eli’s house. The day before, she looked at me very seriously after we put on her raincoat to go out in the morning, and said “um-blah-la-la.” Though it may be clear in writing, it was not at all clear at that moment. This was the first time I had heard this word from her, so I asked her to repeat it several times, trying to understand. I didn’t get it…until we got outside, and we saw the rain coming down, and she said “um-blah-la-la” again. So, of course I had to go out and buy her an umbrella that day. That was the best $9.99 I’ve spent in a long time. We’ve gotten hours of entertainment out of our lovely “um-blah-la-la.”

Miss Sylvie is 19 months old today. Thanks to Grampa Kennedy for most of the pictures this month. We’d be in bad shape for our “birthday” post without them. Let’s see… well, Sylvie has learned how to give big kisses — a little TOO well, as far as some people are concerned. And, just as quickly, she’s learned how to wield her power by denying kisses whenever she wishes. She loves books — we’ve even found her “reading” by herself in her room recently. She gets a kick out of jumping, though her feet don’t really leave the ground, and she can do big-girl slides all by herself now. (Check out the photo of her on the spiral-y slide. She looks like she had her hand on one of those electrostatic thingies. Hehe.) Sylvie, a.k.a. “Pig-Pen”, is NOT a fan of baths right now. And, after a big fight over getting a clean shirt over her head this morning, she refused to let me put on her shorts or shoes. She prefers dirty and naked. Oh, and she’s totally irresistable when she says “Peas” (meaning “please”).

We’re celebrating Sylvie’s 18-month birthday this week.  Eighteen months!!! Oh my. She knows lots of words — bubble, hi, bye-bye, up, uh-oh, and baby are among her favorites — and she’s nearly an expert in making farm animal noises. She still LOVES music and dancing. It’s hard for me to listen to NPR in the car these days because Sylvie is always pointing to the stereo buttons, asking for music. She hugs and pats her baby doll and pushes her all around the house in a little stroller. She’s learning how to wash her hands at the kitchen sink and how to feed herself a container of yogurt (with almost half ending up in her mouth!) She’s taking good two-hour naps most afternoons (hallelujah!), and she’s still a good sleeper at night. She’s lost most interest in food lately. All the books tell you that will happen, but it’s been an adjustment for me. There’s something about watching your child eat a big meal that makes you feel like a good mother. Oh well.

I wanted to post some of our favorite photos from the last couple months. We’ll begin with some playground shots from April 19, the day after we picked Sylvie up from her two weeks with GaGa and Poppy. In May, Sylvie had a lovely visit with Grandma and Grandpa Kennedy…thanks to Grandpa for so many of these photos!

We wanted to share a couple of Sylvie’s new-found joys: her dog on wheels and the Swiffer. You’ll notice in the second video that she’s wearing her winter coat. It was somewhere in the 80s outside when we filmed this little clip…probably the hottest day we’ve had so far this spring. I had been packing up Sylvie’s winter and too-small clothes. She pulled out the winter coat, insisted that I put it on her, and pranced around the house in it for a couple of hours.

Also, these videos make it look like she’s all quiet and serious. She’s anything but these days. She’s squealing and laughing a lot (and making us laugh), and she’s saying more words than we can keep track of anymore. We’ll try to get some of her chatter on tape next time…

We spent some time hanging out with our friends Vicki and Mike and Kate and Julian. That meant that Sylvie got to hang out with her friends Alek and Jasper.

Here’s a little video of the action:

Here are a bunch of videos for Sylvie’s fan base. They show how her walking progress is coming, her amazing stair climbing ability, and how much fun a faucet can be.

This first one was taken by Sylvie’s cousin Grace last weekend. Sylvie’s Auntie Jill, Grace, and cousin Ian came down from Boston for the weekend to get some face time with Sylvie.

This is another quick shot of her walking:

A (dark) video of her climbing all over the chair, and a little walking:

Learning to play with the faucet with Jill and Grace:

Climbing down the big staircase at the Renwick Gallery:

Tumbling on the couch and getting ahold of the Flip camera:

I bought a new toy the other day, but I did it for you, dear reader. You see, I know that many of you wish that we made more video available of Sylvie so you can keep up with her adventures. While we have a nice digital camcorder, the problem has always been that the process of moving the video from the camera to the PC to the web tends to be a hassle and takes a long time, even for short videos. That’s why the quantity has been a bit lacking.

So, to get around that problem I recently purchased a FlipVideo Camcorder from Amazon.com. It’s currently on sale for $69.99. The deal with the Flip is that it’s a small, all-digital camera that can record up to 30 minutes of VGA video. Once you’ve shot the video it has a flip-out USB connector that you use to connect it to your computer. Once you connect, it has some basic built in software for editing the video and preparing it for uploading to the web, so the whole process takes just minutes and you don’t have to hunt around for the right cables, etc.

The video below is the first one that I took with the camera. I’m interested to see what you think of the quality. I figure it’s perfect for this sort of thing, sharing random moments of the day with family and friends online. It’s not what I’d use for archival footage, it’s just the Super-8 of the digital age. I’m pretty happy with it so far. I’ll let you know if it continues to live up to it’s promise.

We FINALLY got a few shots of Sylvie and Poppy during GaGa and Poppy’s last visit to DC. I’m also including a few shots of Sylvie in the snow earlier this week. Overall, she wasn’t impressed. Snow is cold and wet, and her boot fell off.

It’s been awhile since we’ve had an update, so here’s a quick synopsis of what’s been going on in Sylvie World:

• Four teeth! She has two new ones, one on the right-bottom and one on the right-top, both towards the back. She’s getting pretty good at using the two front teeth when she eats, too.
• On the walking front she can walk all over the house by “finger walking” with Mom or Dad. She’s also taken up to 5 steps on her own, but that’s a rarity and always ends in a thud. But, unassisted walking is not too far away.
• Her one real word that she knows is “Mama.”

Here are two new videos for your enjoyment: