The Secret of Sophia

Sophia is definitely different from her big sister. Sophia is interesting. She observant, rough and tumble, ornery, and sweet. But there's something about her. She's different. Her vocabulary is awesome. She just says things. (Reminder, she's approx 21 mos.) Her most frequently used words are, "Daddys," "Babies," "Eyes," "Cheese," "Huh," "Down," " 'Side" (for "outside" or "inside"), "Slide," "Stop" (mostly used when she's getting tickled), "Josh" (my brother), "Emmys," "Mommys," "CeeCees," (her and the "s's" thing...), and "potty" (she's more interested than Cecilia.) But today, she was just spewing words. We went to the horse races, and Sophia was saying "House," for horse, and she said "flowers" (clear as day), "hot," "color," to name a few. Unbelievable. Granted, I haven't seen her in a week, but still!
But, back to my original thought--she's different. She's kinda spastic, she smacks people in the face. She always tries to steal my glasses, and when I tell her "No," she laughs at me. I have yet to smack her hand, but I think she's starting to get the picture. When I was teaching her sister, Cecilia was so responsive. Sophia takes much more doin'. Cee learned quickly.
Sophia is very interested in Lily, which was cute for a minute, but now, all she wants to do is poke Lily in the eye, "Eyes?" She also likes to stick her finger in Lily's mouth when she yawns. When I tell her to be gentle, she looks at me and laughs, "Eyes?" Ugh...exhausting just isn't the word. So, today, with the flowers, I was teaching her to be gentle. I don't think anyone has ever really taught her what gentle means. I can remember sitting with Cecilia in the garden, watching her gently touch the petals. So, I was showing Sophia that today with the flowers in a vase on the coffee table. She would get it, then a while later, she would start smacking them again, so I repeated myself again--I'm pretty sure Sophia and I had a 3 hour cummulative lecture about being gentle to plants and babies.
What a kid.