lizmoved:

  • she is a total mama’s girl. kirsten doesn’t immediately get a job when they move back to berkeley, so she’s basically a full-time parent. (she tells herself it’s not to make up for being such a workaholic with seth, but she doesn’t really convince herself). as such, sophie is incredibly close to her- she loves her dad too, but her mom is her best friend. when she gets to high school, she doesn’t understand girls who hate their moms, because she can’t imagine not telling her mom everything.
  • her big brothers are her heroes. she sees ryan more than she sees seth, initially- but ryan helps sandy and kirsten set up a webcam and skype, so sophie can see seth and summer for their weekly video chats (at least until seth and summer move back to california. then there are a lot of weekly shopping dates with summer and sophie. sophie calls her summ, and it reminds summer of marissa, in the best, most innocent way possible). when her boyfriend breaks up with her in high school, they both offer to kick his ass (ryan almost does, but aunt taylor stops him).
  • she loves being the baby of the family. she’s super spoiled, but she’s also super loved. she plays it up sometimes, but she’s also the only kid in her third grade class to also be an aunt. (she got pulled out of school for that one, because her aunt summer was her favorite aunt. aunt taylor was a bit overexcitable)
  • she loves her aunt hailey. hailey wasn’t around for seth too much as a kid, but with this move to berkeley (close to where hailey has settled down as a yoga instructor), she starts showing up for friday night dinners and babysitting when sandy and kirsten want to go out for date night. hailey lets her have ice cream after eight and they play board games and watch the golden girls (rose is sophie’s favorite- she makes her giggle) (ryan is still her favorite babysitter though)
  • when she’s fourteen, she finds kirsten’s sober chips (her aunt hailey had thrown her mom a big party when she was nine, but she hadn’t really understand what it was for- she’d just known she got to eat all the cake she wanted, and she’d fallen asleep in ryan’s lap). sandy and kirsten try not to talk about kirsten’s drinking around their daughter- kirsten still goes to meetings, but she hasn’t had a drink since her relapse before seth and ryan graduated- they just keep it away from their daughter. but, at sophie’s questions, kirsten sits down with her, and explains it to her simply- that before sophie was born, she’d had a problem with drinking. she briefly touches on her father (caleb nichol isn’t mentioned much in the cohen household), but mostly she just talks about how from the very moment she’d found out about sophie, kirsten’s entire focus had been on her. (it makes sense to sophie, suddenly, why there was no beer in their fridge like at her friends’ houses or wine in the pretty racks above the stove. her mom is looking at her with a look in her eyes that suggests she’s waiting for sophie to say she’s disappointed in her, for something that happened before she was even born. sophie just reaches over, gives her a hug, and says “you know, i think i’d like to come to one of your meetings, if that’s okay”. kirsten just gives her a watery smile and replies with a soft “i think that’d be great, soph”)