"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.