Two and a Half Years Old

Anna turned two and a half at the beginning of September. Her favorite food is definitely waddyoli (ravioli) and she asks for it for lunch almost every day. She is also happy to eat any kind of candy. Whenever we go to Costco, she always tells me that she needs a soda, which is probably really only funny to me because we so rarely drink soda. But, we had it there once and so now she always tells me she needs a soda.

Her favorite books these days are any of the Olivia books by Ian Falconer. This week she's really into Olivia Helps with Christmas. She also loves going to dance class where they chasse and do somersaults. A few things still seem to mystify her like first position. Getting those heels to touch and her toes to turn out requires just a bit more coordination than she's up to at this point. Along with her love of dance class comes her current adoration of the TV show Angelina Ballerina.

Anything mom does, Anna wants to do it too. I inflamed my IT band with all my running this summer and the PT prescribed walking sideways with an elastic band around my legs in order to strengthen my hips. So of course Anna likes to do it too. She also wants a ring like Mom's, but I told her she has to wait until she gets married. Marriage seems like a pretty good thing to her because she knows that you go to the temple to get married and Anna is still talking about the nice ladies at the temple.

Anna still loves her blankies and is totally addicted to her binky. Whenever she gets especially frustrated or hurt, she'll often wail, "I need my binky" followed by "where my blankies?" She can't go to sleep without either and lately she's been waking up at night, and calling out to me. Often as soon as I get in there she says, "where my binky?" and most of the time she settles down as soon as she has it in her mouth. As soon as she gets potty trained, we're going to work on getting rid of the binky.

Lately she's also started talking a little bit more about her birth mom. I'm sure part of it is just because she's actually talking more and forming her own phrases and sentences and also because I've been talking about it with her. She knows that her blue eyes look like Daddy's but she got them from her birth mom. One day out of the blue she told Dan that she missed her birth mom. She also calls her green blanket her birth mom blanket. Today I asked her if she wanted her birth mom blanket and she said something that sounded like, "Her put me in your arms and said 'here's your baby,'" repeating what I've told her about the day we brought her home. We're so grateful that she's a part of our family.

Eight Months Old

Evie turned eight months old on Monday, but both Anna and Evie were sick with a virus that day, so I totally missed the anniversary. Just yesterday Evie learned how to move across the floor on her hands and knees. She still army crawls often and will often collapse as soon as she gets near whatever she is trying to reach, but it's time to put the gate back up on the stairs. And the books and DVDs on the bottom shelves are no longer safe. Yesterday I found her playing with Dan's copy of Moby Dick and crying. I told her I cry too when I think of reading that book.

We've started giving Evie table food while we eat dinner. She actually did pretty well with the pasta and loves cheerios. More often I use my little grinder, so that the food is more like a paste. She'll eat anything we give her and she often smears it all over her face. I gave her some mashed up black beans a week or two ago and as usual she spread them all over her face. I wiped her face off and then went to put her in the bathtub. After her I got her out of her high chair I realized that I had missed her eyebrows. They were caked with black bean paste.

Her favorite toy these days seems to be the wires hanging down from my computer. She loves to crawl over there and pull on any of the cords she can get her hands on. I try to limit it, but sometimes she's fast!

She still takes three naps a day, but it seems like two of the three naps are usually less than forty-five minutes long. I personally don't think that constitutes a nap, but she's usually pretty adamant that she's ready to get up. A week or two ago I realized that Evie's not much for rocking in the chair before her nap. In fact, there was a time a short while ago when she would start to cry whenever I would try to read to her. I guess she knew that reading a book means nap time. Then after the book, I would try to rock her and sing to her, but she would always struggle against my arms and start to cry. One day I put her straight into bed after reading her a book, and she actually cried less. She usually cries herself to sleep. Even if she's fallen asleep in my arms, as soon as she hits that mattress she will wake up and cry until she falls asleep, but she seems to get less worked up if I don't try to rock her.

No one can make Evie laugh quite like Anna does, but Evie's also learning to fight back. If Anna gets too close to Evie, Anna usually leaves some hair behind. Evie wants to grab or touch anything she can get her hands on. Gone are the days when I can hold her during dinner. She's also quite wiggly and strong. If I try to hold her she usually wriggles and writhes as if she wants me to put her down and then when I do, she refuses to sit, preferring to stand, except that she can't stand by herself. The only way to get her to sit is to lean her back until she's almost lying on the ground and then she'll usually drop her bum and take a seat.

It's fun to see her personality emerge. She's generally easy going, but also quite tenacious and determined. We love her smile and giggle and we love Evie.

Evie has finally figured out how to drag herself across the floor. She's been doing push ups and the plank position for a week, but this morning she saw a cheerio on the floor that she really wanted. I do my best to sprinkle random bits of food and chokeable items all over the floor so that she'll be sufficiently motivated to learn to crawl. Or maybe that's Anna who sprinkles the food and me who doesn't bother to pick it up. Anyway, she wanted the cheerio and dragger herself over there to get it and by tonight she was pretty good and moving across the floor. She still relies mostly on the army crawl, but she'll also push up on her hands and knees and lunge forward.

Anna also learned something new today: if she opens the package of Rolos in the store then Mom will have to buy them. I was in a new grocery store and I made the mistake of parking the cart right by the candy while I picked out some peaches. When I returned to the cart, Anna had the Rolos completely unwrapped, but I don't think she had managed to eat any yet. She was a pretty good sport when I told her she couldn't eat any until we paid for them, which seems a little beside the point since she had already unwrapped them, but saved me more of a mess.

Today I got a Hanna Andersen catalog in the mail and knowing that Anna love to look at catalogs, I handed it to her. Now she makes me read it to her whenever we read stories. It's awesome because I get to read things like, "What if her best friend is a dress?" Riveting. She also likes to quiz me on the names of clothing items. After I had correctly identified the leotard, tutu, and the leg warmers, she pointed to each item again several more times. I don't know if she was quizzing me or just studying herself so that she'll know what to call each clothing item the next time she sees it.

As much as I love reading the catalog, my favorite moments are when she wraps her arms around my neck and says, "I got you!" She's a sweet kid even when she tells me, "You a bad mama."

Adventures with Anna

So Anna has been extra active lately. I feel like she’s reached an all new level of the terrible twos. Last Tuesday we met some friends from law school at the Market Street Grill in downtown SLC. Wow! it was an adventure and probably not the best place to take kids. We wondered if kids were even allowed, but they do have a children's menu. Still I think we were the only two couples in the restaurant with kids. I was sitting between Anna and Evie. Anna kept getting up out of her booster chair and lunging towards me so that she could better reach the tray of butter pats. At first she tried to spread some on her bread, but eventually she just started licking the butter off the wrapper. Nice. Meanwhile Evie was trying to grab anything that came within her reach. Sometimes she actually picked something up and several times in her attempts she knocked whatever it was to the floor. She managed to grab a butter knife and a piece of bread. I felt like every time I focused my attention on Anna to try and manage her, Evie knocked something off the table or was able to grab something I didn't want her to have. The server was great about bringing the kid's food out quickly, but Anna only ate about two bites of her grilled cheese before she went back to the butter. So she was bored before our food even made it to the table. But she got an ice cream sandwich so that made her happy. Needless to say, the adult conversation was limited, but it was fun to see our friends again.

This week Anna has been even more destructive than normal. On Tuesday, while I was trying to cook dinner, Anna was running towards Evie with a cup of water. She wanted to give Evie a drink and I was trying to stop her because Anna doesn't know how to give Evie sips. She just puts the cup to Evie's mouth and keeps pouring until Evie is drenched. Realizing that I was going to catch her and stop her, Anna decided to just fling the water at Evie. So maybe I should have just left her alone. Most of the water ended up on the floor and on Evie's high chair tray since that's where Evie was sitting.

Earlier that day, as we were leaving the library and I was putting Evie in her car seat, Anna was playing on the grass near the car. She then comes waddling towards me complaining about her diaper. I lift up her dress to see that she had tried to take it off. When I went to readjust it, little bits of poop, whopper size, fell out into the parking lot. At that point I was still fresh and full of patience, so I picked the poop up (using wipes of course) and then changed Anna's diaper. You might say that potty training has sort of plateaued and doesn't seem to be going well. I guess I just haven’t found the right motivation for her. I’ve tried to bribe her with fruit snacks, but she’s decided that rather than going on the potty to earn fruit snacks, she’d rather just whine. I don’t give in, but when I ask her these days if she wants to wear a diaper or panties or sit on the potty, she goes for the diaper and has no interest in the potty. I'm not worried. I'll just keep asking her and one day I'm sure she'll decide she's done with diapers. At least she's got the basic mechanics down even if she's not interested.

Let’s see, this week she also scribbled on the rug under my kitchen table with her sidewalk chalk. One morning she got my contacts case while I was in the shower and decided she wanted to try and wear them. They ended up ripped in half, but it was about time for me to get out new ones anyway. During her naptime yesterday she ripped all the pages out of one of her library books. When I told my mom about it, she asked, "Just one book?" So I guess it could be worse, but right now I feel like I've hit my threshold for entropy and distruction.

Yesterday I figured I’d try to spend some time with her so we made lemon poppy seed muffins. She loves to pour things into bowls and stir. So I was letting her stir as much as she wanted. Then I noticed that she had her hands in the bowl and was squeezing the batter. I wasn’t thrilled, but I figured she was just exploring the texture and really it wasn’t that big a deal. The next thing I knew, she was dipping her arms in the batter and had batter up to her elbows. I started focusing on my breathing, trying to take deep breaths, but it was hard not to freak out, especially when she started dripping batter all over the floor. Then today she dumped a bottle of infant ibuprofen into Evie’s sock drawer as I was trying to get out the door for a doctor’s appointment. I think she drank some too, but thanks to a similar incident a few months ago and a call to Poison Control, I now know that I'd really only need to seek professional help if she drank two full bottles of the stuff. And since I think she's working on getting in her molars, whatever she managed to swallow probably helped her feel better.

Seven Months and Three-Quarters

Since Evie's almost eight months old, I figured I had better catch up on my milestones postings. Evie figured out the joys of sitting up a week or two before she hit seven months old. Now she loves to sit and play and most of the time I don't even put pillows behind her. I took her to my hair appointment and she probably sat and played for close to an hour. She's just so easy going and interested in the world, although in the last week or so, she seems to be more easily bored by her toys. In the last week she learned how to pull her knees up under her and every now and then I'll catch her up on her knees, rocking back and forth. Today she just started lunging forward while on her hands and knees. These days I think she's happier on her tummy than sitting because she likes to move around. She rolls lots and she can use her hands to move to her right or her left if there's something she wants over there.

I just started giving her cheerios a few weeks ago and she loves them. I think she enjoys the challenge of picking them up as well as the taste.

Evie is going through a very expressive stage. She likes to make lots of different faces. She has one where she squints and smiles and we call it the scrunchy face. She also has what we call the old man face. She puts her bottom lip over her top lip and stretches it up towards her nose. I think she’s probably sucking on her top lip. These days she also likes shaking her head from side to side as if she’s saying no. I'll also catch her leaning far to the side as if she's trying to see what's under the kitchen table.

Evie's favorite game right now is knocking down towers of blocks. I build the tower and then when Evie knocks it down, I say boom and she giggles. Anna hasn't quite figured it out. She'll try to build "a castle" right by Evie and then get mad when Evie takes blocks or knocks it down.

Evie still only has two bottom teeth, but I'm sure those top teeth are working their way down. Both Anna and Evie have been waking up at night. Sometimes they take turns getting up different nights and sometimes they both wake up on the same night, but so far, not at the same time. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

My camera broke recently, so I'm stuck using my cell phone camera, which isn't much of a camera.

Scrunchy Face

Old Man Face

Family Picnic

After the baby blessing, sealing, and wedding, my dad's side of the family got together for a picnic in the park.

Summer means bare feet on soft grass and chocolate chip cookies. Yum!

Christa Gets Married!

My little sister Christa married Shawn on August 12.

This large piece of equipment was in front of the Salt Lake Temple, making it hard to take photos, but Lauren and I thought we'd seize the moment.

All the sisters except Christa

It was a long day for Evie and then when Uncle Henry held her, she just passed out exhausted, so we let her catch up on her sleep.

Dan was the MC so he decided to let Anna say a few words, like "hey dude!"

I Wanna Hold Evie

Anna loves her Evie and she loves to hold her and roll her around on the floor. As they play I hear lots of "Hi sweet girl," "Here you go, sweetheart," and then when the playing has become too rough, "You're alright." Once when Evie started crying Anna said, "Shh!" because she knew that I was on my way to rescue Evie. Poor Evie. It's hard to be loved so much by your big sister.

Grandpa Sandy!

Dan's parents (known as Grandpa and Sandy around here) came for Evie's blessing and sealing. Anna had a great time with them. They left more than two weeks ago and Anna's still asking, "where my Grandpa Sandy?"

Something's troubling Evie, but I don't think it's Grandpa.

Grandpa and Sandy brought Anna her first Tricycle and then they spent lots of time helping her learn to ride it. She's still working on coordinating the steering with the pedaling, but she loves her bike and she loves the bell they added for her.