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.