Last week, Sophie started calling Ray and me “Daddy-o” and “Mommy-o”.

I have no idea where that came from, but it’ll be appropriate, I suppose, at Annabelle’s bowling-themed birthday party Sunday.

(I’m bummed — I wanted to put “We Had a Bowl” on the goody bag tags, but realized in the nick of time that, um, that won’t quite work. Mom, I’ll explain later.

But thanks to my sister, I do think I’ve solved the conundrum over how to decorate the cupcakes with “tiny edible bowling balls,” Annabelle’s request. More on that later.)

Anyhow, the whole “Daddy-o” and “Mommy-o” schtick got so many laughs that Sophie’s tried it out on just about everyone she’s encountered in the past few days: Megan-o, Annabelle-o, Gaga-o, Grandma-o. I’ve gotten some mileage out of telling the story around the office.

I just told a co-worker about it. After she chuckled over what she dubbed “the comedic stylings of Sophie,” I said, “Hey, that went over so well I’ll have to blog about it!”

She looked uncomfortable. “Oh, I need to read your blog! I still haven’t!”

I assured her that it’s best to skip it, as I’m quickly realizing this whole blog thing is putting a damper on live conversation. In the past week, at least three people have said, “Uh, yeah, I know. I read that,” when I’ve tried to share some life detail.

It’s a brave new bungle, this whole blog thing.

I maintain that Sophie’s the best judge of character. If she gives you the thumbs up, I’ll be your friend, too.

So I wasn’t surprised when, within minutes of her arrival, Megan had already been whisked away to Annabelle’s room for a visit with Dr. Sophie, equipped with plastic toys from a half dozen doctors kits we’ve amassed. When I went back to tell the three of them that dinner was ready, Megan was cheerfully rubbing her upper arm. “I’m sick,” she said. “I got a shot.”

Both kids insisted they’d never met Megan, though they’ve each seen her at least a dozen times, on their visits to my office over the last two years. And Megan remembers holding Sophie years ago, when Sophie was a baby and Megan was an intern at New Times.

She wanted to see Sophie one last time before she left town, so we invited her over for curry and a playdate. After her exam with Dr. Sophie, Megan submitted to several games of hide & seek, a dance party and multiple readings of an Elmo book with Sophie, and keyboard practice with Annabelle.

She also endured — with grace — an awkward dinner table conversation:

Sophie: “Ernie died.”

Me: “Yes, Ernie died.”

Sophie: “I die!”

Me: (speechless)

Annabelle (calmly): “Sophie, you’re not dead. You don’t want to be dead. If you were dead, you’d just lay there with your eyes either opened or closed, and you wouldn’t see Mommy or Daddy or me or Megan.”

Me (to Megan): “Hmmm. This is where religion might come in handy.”

I made everyone knock on wood. Megan already had, she said, smiling.

In 15 years at the paper, I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. I’ve said goodbye to some of my best friends and a few of my worst enemies. And in the past five years, as middle management (i.e., an editor), the goodbyes have taken on more weight as the departures either signal relief at losing dead wood or despair at losing a good writer.

But none of the leavings have affected me like Megan’s.

For starters, she quit in an e-mail. That’s akin to breaking up with someone on a Post-It, but by the time I got to the end of the very long note, I was cool with it.

Poor Megan. I don’t think she ever really meant to work at New Times beyond a 6 month fellowship, and from the day she arrived at the paper, I whined that I knew it was just a matter of time before she left me brokenhearted. She’s no dummy. She hates Phoenix. And she grew up in Tucson, which means she’s really not lived anywhere at all, and a couple of semesters’ worth of internships on the East Coast don’t count.

I understand. She wants to see the world — or the equivalent, if you’re a cool twentysomething: Portland, Oregon. I almost called her “hip,” but I’ve banned that word (and the horrendous “hipster”) from much of the writing I’m editing these days, so it’s not fair to use it, but this girl really is hip.

She’s the last (or maybe the first AND last) of an all but extinct species of smart, hard working, stylish, witty young women.

And you can add “compassionate” to the pile. I should have known something was up when Megan’s story list this spring only included social causes. I never dreamed she was about to give up journalism (for good, she says) and go to work for a non-profit, although I could have guessed it would be in Portland. But this is a girl (and really, she is — she’s leaving New Times younger than I was when I arrived) with an old soul — she knows what she wants and she figures out how to get it.

I’d like to be just like her, someday.

I wrote Megan a card when she left, and in it I told her I felt like I was signing the yearbook of a graduating student. As the teacher, I’ll stay behind and wait for the next crop. But there’ll never be another Megan. At New Times, she wrote a lot of hard-hitting intestigative stuff, and some endearing profiles, but her best writing was in a piece I put her up to, in which she visited a bunch of plastic surgeons’ offices and wrote about it:

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2007-09-27/news/pimp-my-bod/

If you read this, you will say — after you say, “Shit, that girl can write” — “Shit, her editor’s mean. How could she assign THAT?”

I know. But as always, Megan reacted with good cheer and hard work. And for the record, I don’t think I touched a word on that thing. Beautiful.

As a result of that story, Megan doesn’t want any photos of herself on the Web, so I didn’t snap a shot of her with the girls.

But I did take a picture of my mushroom purse, which she compelled me to buy.

On top of her other talents, Megan’s got the most unique personal style I’ve ever seen. She reminds me often of my grandmother, another stylish broad who decorated her kitchen with orange, lime and yellow stripes and her bathroom with those lucite toilet seats with themes — like “golf” and “Las Vegas”. (I’m pretty sure she had one of each.) Don’t ask me to explain, but somehow, Megan reminds me of Gommy. One day she came to the office with a wooden basket purse painted with mushrooms. I swear, Gommy had the same purse, no doubt in the lime/orange/yellow color scheme.

Poor Gommy, she died in 1992, long before ebay. Not me. Within hours, I had successfully bid on my own mushroom purse. I’ve never used it (it’s navy and red, not really my color scheme) and I debated giving it to Megan as a going away present, but I figured it would just take be crap taking up more room in her car, so I decided to keep it.

It’ll remind me of her.

It’s official. I have to find Sophie some friends.

At least, some play dates — specifically, the therapists tell me, play dates with girls (or very mellow boys) a little younger, 3 and a half or 4. And it’s got to be in a controlled environment:

One on one. For about an hour. Annabelle can’t be there. It needs to be in a setting unfamiliar to Sophie, and an adult needs to facilitate the play, just so.

All this to teach Sophie how to socialize. Which breaks my heart, because Sophie’s the most social person I know; she just doesn’t do it the right way, apparently. At least, not with the right people. (Her peers, rather than, say, the school nurse.)

Her therapists (and teacher, he was in on the discussion, too) love her, and just want the best for Sophie. We met the other day to talk about summer goals for Sophie, and they all but brushed past academics — ironically, that’s not Sophie’s challenge, not at the moment, at least — and moved on to negative behaviors (inappropriate hide and seek, as in, she hides when no one else knows they should be seeking), writing (she can’t now and maybe won’t, ever), and friendship.

Gordon, the teacher, suggested a social service agency in town that could possibly give us names of kids for potential play dates.

Excuse me?

“I don’t want this to come out the wrong way, but I’m not ready to put Sophie on match.com,” I said snottily. “I think I can find her play dates myself.”

So, uh, anyone know anybody?

Somehow, the topic of underpants came up at dinner the other night.

I have written in the past about how I feel, as Sophie’s mother, a responsibility to make sure she always looks her best. That means no overalls or sailor shirts, and I’m still debating the denim dress with star-shaped bandana-print appliques, silver studs and fringe that my mother presented last week.

The panty discussion was much more, well, I guess you could say much more literal. It involves a set of underwear I bought for Sophie as a potty training incentive. She loves Snow White, after hanging with her at Disneyland this year. Each pair of panties has a different dwarf, and its name (Happy, Doc, etc) in big letters across the rear.

There’s been natural attrition. Like her Bambi panties, which had to be sacrificed due to an unfortunate poop accident, one of Sophie’s dwarves, either Sleepy or Sneezy, I believe, wound up in the garbage.

That left only 5, because I’d already swiped — and hidden — Dopey. I couldn’t toss him in the trash, the panties were clean (brand-new, even), but I also couldn’t put them on Sophie. I mean, c’mon, could you?

“What if, god forbid, we get in a car accident?” I asked at dinner. “How would that look, that my kid with Down syndrome is wearing Dopey panties?”

(I admit I’m a little obsessed with the question of Dopey’s diagnosis. To me, it looks like he has DS. I need to Google that a bit. In any event, upon reflection, I’m not so sure it’s nice to put any kid in Dopey panties. Plus, this set has a design flaw: the picture’s on the butt, but Sophie wants it in the front, creating a thong-like situation. This morning the dwarf made it onto the back, but cockeyed.)

My joke fell a little flat. Ray’s only response: “Well, maybe you shouldn’t put her in Grumpy, either.”

In our house, apparently, we don’t play school. We play therapy.

We came home this morning from breakfast with my grandfather. It’s going to be 110 today, so options are limited.

“No TV!” Ray admonished, and since it’s Father’s Day, I toned down my objection.

DIdn’t matter — Annabelle immediately invited Sophie into her room. That’s happening more and more, but not always with good results.

Yesterday Sophie got loose in Annabelle’s room for 5 minutes and wreaked the kind of havoc that convinces an almost 7 year old that life as she knows it is over. (Til the mess is cleaned up, which took another 5 minutes; it mainly involved the strewning about of a collection of Neopet cards.)

But today’s another day, and the girls disappeared into Annabelle’s room. At the end of an hour (after several listens at the door) I thought, “Wow, Annabelle’s able to hold Sophie’s attention longer than any of her therapists.”

Moments later, the two emerged. “Sophie had a successful day at therapy,” Annabelle informed me. (Correction: “Miss Annabelle”.) And she handed me a note:

“Today Sophie had a hard day. But tomaro will be better. She needs to stop this behavyer,” Annabelle wrote (on personalized stationery, a nice touch), in a good imitation of Sophie’s therapists combined with a touch of Alexander’s mom, after his terrible, horrible day. (We saw the play recently.)

The two disappeared again, emerging to inform me it’s time for a field trip “to the computer lab to explore Neopets.”

So I’ve got to get off now, and share.

One day when Annabelle was about a year and a half old, I plopped her in her high chair, shoved the Grinch into the VCR and gave her some orange construction paper and blue paint. She made some lovely, messy finger paintings that I proudly framed and gave away as holiday gifts.

This afternoon, I plopped Sophie in her booster seat, turned on “Bear in the Big Blue House” and gave her paint/paper.

The results are pretty close to Annabelle’s 18-month effort.

Pity party for me! I know Sophie’s biggest challenge is writing/drawing/painting, and really, who cares what a kid’s artwork looks like? Annabelle had a pre-school teacher when she was 3, who sent home remarkable artwork — intricate collages, wooden sculpture, gorgeous tissue paper creations. It wasn’t til Annabelle switched schools that I realized she had made these things herself. Of course that’s what matters, that the kid do the creating and that we celebrate the outcome. And I did, I oohed and ahhed over Sophie’s paint splashes, and didn’t complain when she covered herself with paint, too, despite the smock I made her wear.

We’ll give her work away tomorrow as Father’s Day gifts, and everyone will make a fuss, just as we will over Annabelle’s intricate drawings.

Still, like a lot of things these days, it gives me pause, particularly as we continue to test Sophie to see just where her brain’s at. Is there a correlation between IQ and the ability to draw more than a circle?

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve sung the song “Hey Jude” this past year. I’ve sung it into the phone — while in the grocery store, in a Thai restaurant in Orange County, in the car, on the street — but mostly in Annabelle’s room, standing over her bed and rubbing her back, as she drifts to sleep each night.

I’m not sure just how it started, only that Annabelle had trouble sleeping, a few nights running, and “Hey Jude” is the longest song I know (most of) the words to.

Plus Ray and I have a thing for the Beatles (who doesn’t?) in that it’s the one group we solidly agree on. He serenaded me with Beatles songs (don’t gag, it was sweet) on his guitar, when we were first dating. I was really annoyed when I saw the movie “Love Actually” (a truly great chick flick, way better than you’d think, put it on your Netflix queue) because the one disappointment from our wedding was that I didn’t insist on a horn to supplement our walking-back-up-the-aisle music, “All You Need Is Love”.

Annabelle loves the Beatles, too, especially “Hey Jude,” although lately she’s been talking a lot about “Love Me Do”.

Sophie also requests “Hey Jude” from time to time, which made me cry the first time, because I didn’t realize she could hear me singing it to her sister through her bedroom wall, an hour after she was supposed to be asleep.

So you get that the song is sacred in our house. The one place I didn’t expect to sing it was the bathroom. But that happened this afternoon.

In our house, there’s no such thing as privacy. Pretty much everyone hangs out in the bathroom, observing your business. (As the sole male — even Ernie’s gone now — Ray insists on some alone time, but otherwise, it’s a free-for-all.) It wasn’t unusual that Sophie and I were along for the ride this afternoon, as Annabelle battled a case of constipation. I suspected all along that it was fear more than anything else, and Sophie and I were trying to distract her.

We read books, played games, fought, joked. Nothing. Finally, I asked, “Should we sing a song?”

Not thinking about this might play out during future potty trips (Annabelle absolutely will not go to bed til I’ve sung the song or Ray’s played it on his iPod) I started in and — lo and behold — by the “nah nah nah nah nah nah nahs”, success!

Later, I hustled Sophie into the bathroom on our way out to dinner. She settled in for a pee, then looked at me expectantly. “Mommy, sing Hey Jude!” 

And so my sweetest bedtime ritual has been relegated to the toilet.

“Sophie, want to play with my iphone?”

Now that’s a line you’ve never going to hear coming out of my mouth.

It came instead from under a dark green sheet, in the form of Ray, half-asleep and desperate for a few more minutes. Annabelle slept til 9 this morning, and Ray and I would sleep that long, too, but Sophie’s up with the sun, and only willing to put up with “Five more minutes, Sophie! Go back to sleep!” for so long.

I brought her into bed with us, along with New Piglet and the small satin pillow my mother in law made her (or was it Annabelle?) years ago. We lay together quietly for a while (ok, maybe 30 seconds), laughing and cuddling, then she started poking at Ray.

Silently, a hand emerged from the sheet, with the phone. Sophie took it and deftly (better than me, I can tell you that) maneuvered the phone, pulling up the hundreds of pictures Ray’s loaded on. My iphone only has the photos I’ve taken with it; I don’t even know how to use a regular digital camera, let alone load them onto the phone or even access them once they’re on there. Sophie pulled up the digital photos, including a truly hideous shot of me (how good do you look, asleep on a plane?) that I won’t show you, then one of Rosy that I have to post here, by way of comparison with the lame one I posted yesterday.

Sophie snapped a pic of the slumbering Ray. “NO PICTURES!” came from under the sheet. I got one of Sophie on top of the green mass of Dad before he grabbed it back to listen to Radiohead (we’re so freaking hip, huh?).

They say money doesn’t buy happiness, but I’ve gotta say, when Ray bought me an iphone days before Sophie’s last heart surgery, it was a godsend. Of course I had to get him one for Christmas, and now we’re both screwed with the new, better ones coming out, but even with all the times that phone dumps on me, I love love love it.

Now if someone’ll just make one in a toy version that’ll distract Sophie. Not much chance of that.

Poor Rosy.

If Ernie hadn’t died, she would have been headline news much earlier this week. She’s been the topic of discussion in print before — I once sold a piece about her to salon.com for enough money to buy a red Kate Spade organizer, which I carried for years. (You can read the piece here: http://archive.salon.com/mwt/feature/2002/03/08/pet_names/index.html)

But instead I pretty much ignored her — in writing, anyway. Ray says I ignore her in real life, and it’s true that I don’t spend as much time with my 12 (at least) year-old spaniel/retriever as I should. I think part of it is that in Ray’s family growing up, where normal things happened like camping trips and music lessons and chores and spending a lot of time with an assortment of pets that over the years included a turtle, cats, at least one enormous snake and, like Rosy, a black dog, my family was a little different.

Just a little, but as we raise kids together I notice the differences more. In our family, the pets did not sleep with the humans. We did not camp all over the country, we went to San Diego each summer. My sister and I were perhaps a teeny tiny bit spoiled — no forced music lessons (maybe Jenny took a minute of piano) and not a lot of chores, although I remember ironing a lot during my preppy phase in high school. My choice, I’m sure. (I haven’t ironed since.)

I think Ray and I both turned out just fine, thank you very much, but yeah, a little different.

I digress, as usual. The point here is that last week, Rosy licked herself a big sore (stemming from these yucky cysts she’s been getting — sign of old age) and so Sophie and I (and this part’s big, I kept them both alive together, out of a controlled environment, for more than an hour) took her to the vet, at Ray’s behest.

Rosy took a dump in my car on the way there or on the way home, I’m not even sure, and also rubbed her bloody butt on the inside of the back seat passenger door — neither was her fault, but it was still pretty gross. Sophie found it hilarious.

The vet gave Rosy what my friend Tim once called an “Elizabethan” collar. I like that reference. I also smiled when I heard Rosy referred to this week as a “vacuum cleaner” and an “ice cream cone”. No smiling on Rosy’s part, she’s adjusted to the collar the way she’s so graciously adjusted to the other unfair parts of the Dog’s Life, but that doesn’t mean she likes it.

I find the collar comes in handy when I give Rosy her pill, twice a day. I wrap it in a piece of cheese or hamburger bun (she turned down whole wheat bread, smart dog) and hand it to her. If the pill falls out of her mouth, she catches it in the collar and I retrieve it and try again. Nice and neat and it makes a cool sound like a roulette ball.

The collar also serves as a reminder that I do need to spend more time with my dog, my first real pet, the dog (I’m not proud) I threw a first birthday party for. She used to be all black; now her whitening muzzle gives away her age, and so does the way she struggles to get up off the ground.

Annabelle’s middle name is Rose, per the salon.com piece. Sophie’s is Rae, but lately she’s been announcing she wants it changed to Rose. Actually, she’s been saying that for weeks, now.

An homage? Or just copying her big sister? Sweet, either way, like our dog.

Ray told the girls about Ernie last night before bed. I didn’t know it was coming.

I walked into the living room to find the three of them on the couch, Ray and Annabelle in tears. Ray had told them simply that Ernie got sick and died (no gory details), like our dog, Elliot, who met his maker two summers ago.

Sophie didn’t get it.

This morning, Sophie said, “Ernie is sick.”

“No Sophie,” I said. “Ernie died.”

“Ernie died,” she repeated. “Elliot died.”

“Right.”

“Annabelle died.”

“NOOOOOOOOOOO!” I said, pointing. “Annabelle’s right there.”

Sophie immediately changed the subject.

Turning to me, she said, “You farted.”

I swear, I didn’t. Not that time.