North Dakota Trip - Day 593

Here is a picture of Anna with Great Grandma Lillian. She just had her 94th birthday and is doing well. Anna actually sat in her lap for 15-20 minutes, which she rarely allows these days. Needless to say, the immediate grandparents were a bit jealous of the lap time.

Today Anna recited with only a few mistakes her whole alphabet and even did the little song at the end..."Now I know my A, B, Cs...." We were so proud of her that we said, "Anna did it, wow." So of course Anna for the next few times after completing it would say, "Anna did it!"

I also took Anna to see the walking of the elephants here in Capitol Hill. Barnum's Circus marched ten elephants down residential streets holding nozzle and tail. When Anna saw them, she kept repeating, "The OCCs (her word for elephant) are walking on the busy road." She was quite concerned that they might get hit by a car.

Here is a photo of Anna near the elephants. She even noticed the star on the elephants back side.

Anna had a good time in North Dakota with Gammy and Gampa, and she has continued to talk about it several days afterwards. My favorite was when Anna was in the back of the car, she would say, "Slow down Gammy," and, "Watch the road Gammy."

Anna also visited her Great Great Grandma Clausen in Thief River Falls, Minnesota and Great Grandma Thiel in East Grand Forks, Minnesota. We got a four-generation photo, and Anna had ample opportunity to learn the names of many new faces, which she did amazingly well.

I will add one more photo to this entry since I have not been able to keep this site up to date lately and recognize that more photos are usually better. This one is of Anna "playing" the piano at Great Grandma Lillian's place. She had a fun time banging away.

Color Purple - Day 578

I had to crop this photo as the hands were a bit fuzzy due to a low-light camera setting.

Anna has been having a fun time with Aunt Susan here. Today Susan was out taking Anna for a walk several blocks from our house and someone yells out, "Hello Miss Anna." So many store workers in the area know Anna.

We also went to the Old Ebbitt Grill tonight to eat. When the waitress came to take our order she asked if we wanted french fries or apple sauce with the Anna's kids meal, and Anna just looked up at her and said, "applesauce." Of course she also ate everyone else's french fries in addition to the applesauce. At one point, she finished the applesauce, so she took the spoon, scooped up a big dollop of ketchup and put it in her mouth. We all collectively and in mild disgust uttered an, "ooooouuuuhhhh," before we plucked the spoon from her hand.

When we were leaving the restaurant they had some classical-style painting on the wall with a woman lying on a chaise with a polar bear rug on the floor next to her. Anna looks at the picture and says, "Lady sleeping with nya-nya." Apparently, everyone needs a cuddly nya-nya toy to go to bed.

On the way back to the metro, Kerry was carrying Anna and mentioned something to the effect that she was sitting on her bladder. Anna -- being a human word sponge right now -- after that just kept on repeating, "Sittin' on the bladder," over and over again.

New Flower Dress - Day 577

This is Anna's new dress we got at Nordstroms. It has a matching set of bloomers, which Anna appropriately calls "flower underwear."

The weather has been nice out, so she has been able to wear more warm-weather clothes. We like to see the chubby arms and legs come out again.

We have been trying to get Anna to wear hard-soled shoes, but she has resisted. Usually she melts down completely with massive tears if she sees another type of shoe than her Robeez. While we were at Nordstroms, we tried to get her to pick out her own shoes (which she did), thinking that this might help her transition to a different type of shoe, but of course, when the salesperson brought the shoes in her size, she again freaked out. Soft soles it is.

Runnin' and Smilin' - Day 577

This picture was taken just today in front of the James Madison building of the Library of Congress. Anna loves to go up and down the steps and ramp. As you can see...

Today we took her on a long walk and it extended past her nap time, so as things usually go, she walks a lot, has a lot of fun, then begins to trip and stumble a lot too as she gets more tired. Invariably, when we are the farthest point from home, we realize that we should take her home and put her to bed. This is what happened today while walking around the tide pool where the Jefferson Memorial is located.

I can't remember if I have written this before, but as Anna falls down or otherwise bumps herself, we usually offer to kiss her to make it feel better. Anna has at some point interpreted this as SHE should instead kiss US to make things better. We know it shouldn't work this way, but both Kerry and I have no interest in correcting this glitch in the system. Of course there is a broader problem in that if she starts falling down more we get more kisses and a moral hazard may subconsciously exist. My main worry is that the grandparents will understand that more falling down = more kisses. Talk about a moral hazard -- we will be on our watch. Aunt Susan is here, and she has already started taking advantage of Anna's post-fall-down kisses.

In other news, today we were walking and we spelled out banana instead of saying it. Anna then repeated B-A-N-N-A. It was admittedly an imperfect spelling, but she is getting the idea (very quickly). I think our spelling work-arounds will soon be ending. Of course, she has a head start on banana because it has so many common letters with her name, which she can now spell easily. Kerry asked today what the word for banana was in French, and I started thinking of words in Arabic. We have more tools than she thinks.

Fuzzy Green Sweater - Day 574

We just took this picture today. Anna went to watch ice skaters at the Smithsonian sculpture park and had fun walking around. When we tell Anna to smile, she now does this open-mouth expression that is hardly a smile, but it is pretty funny. This picture is one of her "smiles." We bought this sweater around Christmas from some Central American vendors at Eastern Market.

Anyhow, Anna has learned to spell her name. You can now ask her how to spell her name and she will say A-N-N-A. The Ns may have a little reverb in them...it is more like "en-ne-ne" but she is getting her point across and understands the concept.

Anna has a new babysitter named Laura -- she calls her Lola. She is cheaper than our previous one and is really nice and handles Anna very well. The last time she watched Anna, she said that she had to read Skippyjon Jones (her favorite book) many times. I have written about this book in a previous posting, but her Skippyjon language has developed very quickly. Her vocab is now filled with such sayings as: "boogie-woogie tango," "icky-sticky mango," "holy jalapeno," and "pato pato ganzo." No one else understands her, but we know she is doing well.

Anna continues to learn her letters. She probably has a very good command (90% accuracy) of 10 letters, an 80% command of another 5, and about a 60% command of another five yet. She asks me several times a day to play letters with her...but I also get asked to play doll house several times too.

"Sit Down Pandan" - Day 569

Whenever we go to the Museum of Natural History, Anna loves to go into the gift shop and sit with the panda stuffed animals. She calls them "pandan" with an "n" at the end.

Sorry, I haven't updated this for some time as I have been in California with some friends. Updates should be more regular until we go to North Dakota in mid-March.

As for Anna news, she loved the Olympics and every day she reminded us that she wanted to see "ice sayters." I made sure to Tivo the Olympics to have hockey, figure skating, and speed skating for her to watch. When we ask her who her favorite skater is, she says, "Sasha Cohen." She says it really clearly and still this morning she was talking about Sasha Cohen. She likes her ice sayters.

Last week the Texas Grandparents came to visit along with Aunt Susan. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo record from that time, but I will include one from when we visited Houston this last Christmas. It was a bit difficult to capture a photo with everyone looking forward, but this one turned out the best.

I am sure there were a lot of good stories with the family visiting Anna, but one that was brought to my attention was when Judy tried to ask Charlie what the name of a certain animal was in Anna's book. Of course, Anna knew it and told Judy that it was an iguana. That same thing happened to me about a month back when Kerry asked me a person's name. I said that I couldn't remember and Anna interrupts to tell us. I like to think Anna's memory is really sharp and not that mine is in decline.

The other day, I was asking Anna to tell me her letters using those magnetic plastic letters. She handed them one by one to me, and in the end she got 13 of them correct. She can recognize and say: A, H, J, K, M, N, O, P, R, T, U, W, Y. Pretty good, I thought.

Anna is really starting to talk in complete sentences. Most of the sentences are in the imperative. One time I was watching TV, and Anna wanted my attention so she grabs the remote, points it at the TV and says, "Turn off TV, Daddy." I then showed her which button to push to turn off the TV, and she turned it off.

She also interacts with the Nya-Nyas (her cuddle toys). One day last week, she was having a difficult time opening a door while holding one of her Nya-Nyas and said, "Open. Open. Nya-Nya's frustrated," followed by, "I'm sorry Nya-Nya."

She's quite the speaker.