Anna likes slides of all sizes.

In the great childhood tradition, today Anna did her first thing with her eyes closed. She ate peas! With her eyes closed!

We shot this this morning right after Anna woke up. The lighting is super weird, but Anna does some cute stuff.

Here’s an album with a few pictures from the last month: September, 2013. (You can tell that Maria’s been taking all of the pictures lately.)

And also a video of finger painting on the back porch! Don’t mind the cicadas.

Here’s Anna playing the piano and Grandma and Grandpa’s house (or Lolo and (G)Crack, as she now calls them). I’ve got to say, she needs more practice.

Anna is still drawing a lot, and it’s helped her learn her colors very well. She and Maria were having a really good conversation while drawing, so I grabbed my camera. Unfortunately I missed the part where Anna explained that Elmo was wearing a orange bowl as a hat, but I did get her lecture on Snuffleupagus sneezing his meatball off of his plate.

Shoebox!

Anna and I were looking at some pictures on my phone and she almost fell asleep. I turned on the camera that faces the front of the phone and got these nice videos. In the first one you can sort of tell when she figures out that the video on the screen is live.

 

After we got home from all of our trips, it was time to play around the house! Anna cooked some fresh pies with Mommy.

 

And then we played this weird game where she pulled her toys into her house. (Which she had earlier upended.)

Anna learned lots of names during our visit to Iowa, including her Aunt Rae and Uncle Jon. She practiced by identifying whose water bottle was whose.

 

One of our new favorite songs is Wheels on the Bus. Anna is learning the words and the moves!

 

And here we are playing in a fountain on a very hot afternoon.

Here’s a video of Maria reading to Anna early one morning. A little quiet time.

 

And here we are at the beach with Grandma and Grandpa Ryan!

I got lucky and captured three good videos over the past 24 hours! You’re going to hear Anna yell her name a lot in these. She seems to do this a lot while I’m recording her, so I think she might know she’s on the screen? Or it’s just good self promotion, maybe.

These are a pretty good snapshot of what Anna is like at 1 year, 5 months old.

High Heels
Anna and I were home alone for a bit last night while Maria attended a work function. Anna went in and got these high heels from the closet and apparently knew just what to do with them. This came right after we spent fifteen minutes putting a balloon in the bathroom, closing the door, opening the door, taking the balloon out, closing the door again, and repeating.

 

Couch Monster
Anna got up on the couch by herself once a couple of weeks ago, but hasn’t been able to again since. This morning she climbed right up there several times. The last growth spurt must have given her just enough leverage with that knee. We have entered a new era – one that will bring some bumps on the head.

 

Letters
We’ve been working on letters and colors with Anna for a few weeks, and dug out these letter magnets to play with this morning. She’s able to identify some letters now, and she can usually pick out colors if you ask her to (which one is red?). We’re still working on saying colors though; she still says almost everything is blue.