Dori Sprinkle -- Day 716

Anna really likes Dora the Explorer, though she has always pronounced her as Dori instead. I bought from Target a couple months back the Dora sprinkler and it whirls around and shoots water in the air. Anna love it, but admittedly she gets just as much pleasure from me hosing her down directly. Water is water.

The whole water theme as been prominent since our trip to Texas in early July. Now she is not just a train but a boat too. When I asked her what she was, one time she said, "Part boat and part train." I also sense that she could become part airplane one of these days too. Maybe after our long-haul trip to Ukraine in August, she will make that transformation too.

You can see from the photo above that Anna has a new swimming suit. I picked it up on sale, and Anna really likes it. She would often wear it as her everyday clothes if she could. It is a little big as it was meant for next year, but the diaper fills it out enough for a good game of Dori Sprinkle.

Anna has been having some trouble getting to sleep lately. Basically, she feels that despite being tired it is much better to stay up and play. We are now on a strict bedroom confinement plan where we basically ignore her demands during nap times. The other day, she was calling out for me to give her the wooden play knife from one of her Melissa and Doug sets. It is a tray of food with meat, bread, corn, asparagus, milk, utensils etc. all laid out on a place setting. She must have gone on for an hour saying, "Want the knife. Want to get out. Dadda, geeeeeet meeeeeee thuuuuuu knife." Then came the silence; it only lasted for about five minutes, but when she resumed she had added to her demands: "Dadda, want knife (short pause) ...and corn." That went on for another 30 minutes. Basically, I was a short order cook.

We finally bought Anna a growth chart so we can begin charting her life in inches. We found a really nice wooden one that mounts to the wall and we can take it along with us when we move. This is better than marking up a door or wall. My Great Aunt, Eva, once had so many markings of family members' height on one of her doors that when she moved she had to take the door with her. Later on, whenever we would go to one of her residences, she would have this curious, isolated door mounted on brackets occupying open floor space. One time I helped her move and had to move the famous door, and it just felt sort of silly packing up a heavy door.

Texas Grandma, Judy (a.k.a. Mimi), came in for a few days while I was taking a three-day course and Kerry was working. Anna always loves visitors, and future visitors should be warned that she expects bags coming from the airport to contain presents and maybe even a dress or two. Of course, Mimi didn't disappoint and played numerous water games during the hot days, keeping her happy and well entertained.

It is hard to keep track of Anna's developments nowadays. No longer can we say that she learned her ABCs or her colors or can now walk up and down stairs. Now her development is much more subtle. Learning the word constructions such as using "anymore" and "or." She is fully able to tell us that she no longer likes something. It usually comes in the form of, "Train doesn't like this book anymore," or "Train wants peaches or strawberries." I guess from now on we will have to live with the fact that Anna will have preferences -- and tell us about them.

I guess the main problem is that as her ability to prefer things has increased, her openness to reason on the part of her parents has decreased. This inverse relationship is probably most appropriately characterized as the 'terrible twos', but for all its traps and surprises, it is still a great time to spend with Anna.