Over the past few days, Anna’s verbal skills have really begun to advance. She has begun saying two syllable words, and is getting very good at mimicking noises. She can suddenly say her own name, as well as the names of her favorite Sesame Street characters, Elmo and Abby. She’s also saying lots of other new words like baby, heavy and hippo.

Here’s a quick video showing off some new noises, plus some pretty awesome bug riding skills.

Another thing I recorded tonight is Anna’s new found love of being really affectionate during meals. She loves hugging you while she eats. She and I also sometimes play a game called Smush Face in which we smush our faces together. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Anna is willing to play games like this when her face and hands are covered in food.

Anna was enjoying a delicious snack and I interrupted her to quiz her on her words:

Here’s her getting back to her snack:

Anna’s favorite game right now is trying to sit on her ball and then slide off. She has a pretty good time. Oh, and she’s also a genius.

This second video is pretty unremarkable, but I wanted to share it because of the nice clear “Mama” caught about 27 seconds in.

Anna is really getting good at stacking things! This is her tallest tower yet, and she was really into building it. She cheered when she put pieces on, and then when it fell down she cried a little.

Just because you can’t fall asleep doesn’t mean that nap time has to be a bore. Here Anna shows how to turn a blown nap into a party. The sound gets a little screwed up for the last thirty seconds when she’s yelling at her fan, but you get the idea.

Also, I think I may have captured Anna’s first whistle at the 1:43 mark.

It’s been really fun watching Anna play with her toys lately. She’s starting to have them interact with each other and pretend that they’re doing things. She’ll put her stuffed animals to sleep (then tell you “shhhh” and make snoring noises). She’ll also read to her animals or have them kiss things.

One of her newest games is pretending to pour water from her sippy cup into a plastic cup, then pretend to drink it. She was doing it this morning so I grabbed a quick video.

Anna loves being outside, and on Saturday it was finally warm enough for a walk around the neighborhood. Lots of fresh puddles made it even better.