Favorite Things about Anna

This has been a hard month. After sleeping through the night for six months, Anna decided that wasn't as fun as cuddling with Mom at three in the morning. She's also been resisting naps, so I figure I should note some of the cute things she is doing these days.

Often when I'm cooking dinner or doing dishes, I'll feel little hands tickle the back of my knees as she tries to use my legs to stand up. Right now it's her way of telling me that she wants to be held. Of course that's not always easy when I'm in the middle of cutting up raw chicken, but still it's nice to be loved.

Now that Anna is crawling, she enjoys playing "I'm Gonna Get You" except she likes to do the chasing or more like charging. If we kneel on the ground, she'll crawl straight towards us. This morning Dan lowered his head to touch his forehead to hers and she headbutted him. It was quite the smack, but she didn't cry.

Even at three in the morning she's too cute to be mad at.

Why I Am a Bad Mother

For Christmas, Dan’s parents gave Anna a Fisher-Price CD Player. It’s not actually a CD Player. Instead it’s like the old Speak-n-Play. When you push the orange nose the wheel spins. Then it names the animal that appears at the top, sings a nursery rhyme about the animal, and plays the animal noise.

This toy terrifies Anna. When the wheel spins it makes a loud whirring noise kind of like a growl. Soon after she got it, she tipped it over on it’s face and it wouldn’t stop whirring. I guess that traumatized her.

There are also three buttons on top that let you play the name of the animal, the nursery rhyme, or the sound separately. But the entire thing scares her and I think it’s adorable. Even when I push the top button, the poor thing will start to shake and then she’ll crawl to me, grab my shirt or my hair with her little hands and wrap her legs around me (as much of me as her short little legs can get around). If I'm sitting on the floor with her she'll try to crawl up the side of my head just to get away from it. I love the way she hugs me when it scares her. I guess I like feeling needed and I think it’s pretty funny that she’s so terrified of it. So every few weeks I get it back out to see if it still scares her and as of today, it still does. I guess if I were truly horrible, I'd try to chase her around the house with it. But since I'm not, we’ll try again in a few more weeks.

Wailing, Shaking, and Dancing

Recently Anna has started wailing “mama” with some regularity. I’m not sure if she thinks of mama as my name, but I think she’s started to figure out that it gets a response. The other night when I left Anna with my sister for a few hours, and when she realized that she wasn’t at home and Mom wasn’t around, Jamie told me that Anna started to whine “mama.” Of course I’m looking to the day when “mama” sounds like a happy noise, but I pretty tickled that she says it so often right now. She also says dada, but not quite as often. It’s usually a happy sound when she says it though.

She’s also started to connect shaking her head with a negative meaning. She shakes her head when she doesn’t want me to blow her noise or give her more food but she also shakes her head when she’s not happy with me. Usually it’s when I try to pick her up or put her down. She’ll arch her back, throw her head back, and shake it.

My favorite thing Anna does these days is dance. She’s not walking yet, so she can’t really boogie, but she’s pretty good at shaking her body while kneeling. Sometimes her head will start to bob when I turn on music and then sometimes she’ll move her shoulders back and forth while her head bobs. The other day in the car when she heard her music (Sharon, Lois, and Bram), she lifted up her arms and started to shake them since it’s pretty hard to rock out when your body is strapped to a chair.

She's not actually dancing in this picture, but this is how she likes to kneel when she gets her boogie on.

Lost--Our Tribute

In honor of the season premier of Lost, here is Anna's impersonation of John Locke.

Christmas

We spent Christmas in warm (if not sunny) Louisiana with my family. It was warm enough that Anna spent Christmas morning in a onesie and humid enough that her hair had a bit of a wave and for most of the visit, she had a large curl on the top of her head. It was adorable and untameable. Anna got to meet the family's dog Carter who was quite patient with her. She would put her hands in his mouth and tug on his beard and he never snapped at her. But after a few days, he did learn to keep his distance.

Anna began crawling two weeks before Christmas, so she enjoyed roaming the house with Grandma while I went back to sleep or went running. In fact there was so much to do and see that Anna had a hard time taking naps. With all the extra people around to watch her, I didn't mind too much except that she didn't seem to sleep as well at night, which is why I started going back to sleep after Anna had breakfast.

Even though I have an eleven-year old sister, Anna was pretty much the first one up Christmas morning. While everyone else snoozed away the morning, she ate breakfast and then we got everyone else up. Santa brought her a train that plays music and chugs across the floor and we gave her some wooden blocks and a shape sorter. It was fun to watch her eyes light up when she first saw the train. But like most babies her age, her favorite thing about Christmas morning was the wrapping paper and she was happy to crawl around and play with discarded paper while everyone unwrapped their presents. My brother thought it was pretty funny to stick bows on her back while she was crawling around. She was okay with that until she noticed them and then of course she wanted to play with them.

We were sad to leave the seventy-degree weather for cold Utah. And Dan was even sadder when he got to our car and discovered that it was covered in layers of ice and we didn't have an ice scraper. After driving the car around to warm it up, he found an ice scraper at one of the parking lot bus stops, while Anna and I waited in the comfort of the airport. It was a long night and we made it in the door of our house around two that morning. But it would have been an even longer night if our nice neighbor hadn't plowed our driveway for us.

Two Teeth

Anna still only has two bottom teeth, but she's pretty adept at using them for eating, for keeping prying fingers out of her mouth, and for warding off Dad's kisses. For awhile there whenever Dan would kiss her repeatedly on the cheek, she would turn and bite his chin.

I'm hoping that her other teeth decide to show up by kindergarten. I'm not too anxious for teething, but I think she does need a few more teeth if she is going to fully enjoy life.

Funny Faces

My sweet little girl has learned how to scowl, as you can see in the top left picture. She likes to give me this look whenever I put her in the high chair or when strangers try to get her to smile. I think there's less emotion behind the look than she seems to be expressing, but it is a little disconcerting when she scrunches up those eyebrows and frowns at me as if I have ruined her entire day because I didn't get her the food she wanted fast enough. Mostly I think she's experimenting with facial expressions, but she seems to have successfully linked this one with displeasure.

She also likes to scrunch up her snose and blow air out of her nose. We call it the wild animal look. And usually she's smiling so it's a much more pleasant look, but like many wild animals, it's hard to catch on camera.