We’ve tried to encourage Anna to draw letters before, but she’s never figured it out. This morning she was playing with some letter magenets with Maria, and she declared that she wanted to draw some i’s. Without any instruction, she got out her markers and drew these three wonderful i’s.
I asked her about it as she ate a banana this morning, and she explained how to draw an i.
I’ve got a few random things to share here. First, a couple of shots with Grandma Lolo and Grandpa Dan from Pier day 2014.
And here’s a video of Anna making up a song in the car.
Last weekend we visited Iowa and took lots of pictures. Unfortunately these are all from my phone, but there are some good ones in there. Google also automatically made some animated gifs from the pictures, which is pretty neat.
Tonight Anna treated us to a read-aloud of “Breakout at the Bug Lab,” in which she remembered an almost frightening number of the lines from the book. (Yes, there is a line that mentions how the bugs eat animal poop.)
Anna and I were going through the videos on my phone yesterday, and we thought this one was pretty good.
We haven’t posted anything new about Anna for a while, so here are the important updates.
At the beginning of the month, a stomach flu made its way through our family. Anna got it first, and it was her first time throwing up (an important first, I’d say). She got through it pretty well and enjoyed eating crackers. It really upset the household for a week or so, as we each took a turn and everyone was tired and cranky for a while. But we are back into our normal routine and feeling good again!
Just before we all got sick, Anna said goodbye to bottles. This was one of those changes that I worried about beforehand, but Anna cruised right through without any fuss. We switched her bedtime routine from a bottle of milk to a cup of milk with no problem at all. It has been very nice not having to wash bottles anymore.
Moving on to the next challenge, Anna just decided that she wants to start potty training. Without any prompting, yesterday she wanted to use the toilet, so we’ll embark on that soon.
We’ve always told Anna lots of stories in the car and over dinner, and recently she’s started making up her own stories. Sometimes you have to prompt her to keep going (“and then what did they do?”) but it’s really fun to hear her make up something new. Last night she told me a story about branch falling into a lake and being eaten by fish.
Soon it will be spring, which is good because Anna is outgrowing all of her clothes again. She stood by her 2 year old height line the other day, and she’s a couple of inches taller than she was two months ago. Hopefully we can wait to switch her into 3t clothes until the warmer weather arrives!
Maria put Anna’s hair up in a ponytail, and I feel like she suddenly looked much older. It’s funny to look at these pictures, it seems like you can start to see what she’ll look like when she’s four. Here are a few photos – Ponytail Album.
But she also did this tonight, so she isn’t entirely grown up just yet.
Anna turned two today! We had a great birthday party with all of Anna’s grandparents and our friends Claire, Joost and Soren. Here are some pictures.
I got out the camera because Anna was doing this weird thing where she licks her finger, then uses her spit to draw letters on the leather rocking chair seat. (She does this from time to time, I have no idea where she got the idea.) But we quickly pivoted into building a robot.
At the end of this one, there’s also a round of quiet monster / loud monster, which is one of my favorite games.
Anna likes slides of all sizes.