Birthday Girl -- Day 731

Though Anna's birthday is on the 12th of August, we started celebrating it last weekend. Since we are heading to Ukraine tomorrow, we thought it might be a bit cruel to give her a bunch of presents only to convince her to leave them all behind. What a fun trip that would be. This way she has had an extended birthday with surprises every day, and it has worked out surprisingly well.

Anna has gotten several dresses, toy trains and boats, dinosaurs, a bunch of cards, balloons, water coloring books, and a little bike, among other things. Now whenever the postman comes, Anna is right on it thinking that surely more presents must be coming. All boxes now are Anna presents and all bills and junk mail are birthday cards. When Aunt Susan's present came, I hid it way up on a shelf, but Anna picked it out within 10 seconds after her nap. I told her that we had to wait for mommy to get home to open it, but she just handed me my mobile phone and said, "Call mommy so Anna can open present." Mommy agreed to let her open it early. That is the one bad thing about the extended birthday: your leverage to make a baby wait is significantly weakened.

Anna has really gotten into dinosaurs as of late. If you ask her what her favorite dinosaur is she will say, "crylophosaurus." And yes, she will pronounce correctly. She also knows supersaurus and the protoceratops. That's more than most people I guess.

Our power went out for a couple of nights about a week ago when it was really hot here in DC, so we had not AC, lights, stove etc. Unfortunately, Anna has this thing right now where she wants all the lights to be on in the house. When we came home to a dark house, she asked us to turn on the lights but we tried to tell her that they wouldn't come on. Mommy (she now regrets this) explained that there was a big fire that 'broke' the power. Anna then cried even harder making sure to squirt out the words "big fire" between sobs. Eventually, we gave her a couple of flashlights and she was none the happier.

We have been building up the trip on the airplane lately. Anna tells us regularly that she is going to go to sleep on an airplane and that she also wants to eat dried fruit -- an airplane treat. I also bought her a book about airplanes, so that has been requested to make the trip too. Though she is excited now, I just wonder how long it will take for her to get sick of sitting in the same chair for 14 hours. My guess is that it won't but an hour or two.

In preparation for the trip, we have pulled out all the tricks. We have new books, toys, stickers, and band-aids (she likes to wear Sesame Street band-aids now) in addition to bringing fun food and her regular crew of Nya-Nyas.

Anna got another haircut on Friday. She was actually a lot better behaved than previous haircuts. We just gave her one of those squire bottles and she just sat in the chair squirting herself in her face and laughing. She wasn't any the wiser that someone was cutting her hair.

The big thing Anna is into now is hanging. She loves to hang on anything she can. Upper body strength is a wonderful thing for a toddler. Now whenever I go down the stairs, I simply ask Anna if she wants to ride down on Daddy's back and she will jump on my back and hang around my neck while I take her down. She is also starting to clime vertically on ladders.

Anna has also stopped saying 'no'. Now if you ask her anything she just uses the 'or' construction. So if I ask her if she wants cantaloupe she will let out this long "ooooor I could have strawberries." I guess that is better, but only when we have the second option on hand.

Another one of Anna's favorite things to do is looking for cats. Or actually, this is just the activity Kerry and I sell her on so we can go on a walk. Regardless, we have pretty much memorized the houses that have cats in our neighborhood and we walk a rather predictable feline path. Anna loves it, and for much of the time she is yelling as loud as she can, "Here kitty, kitty, kitty. Here kitty, kitty, kitty."

Well, I had better go. We have to leave tomorrow and I still have a lot of work to do.

The pictures are: 1) Anna at Georgetown Harbor where she chases birds 2) Anna preparing to blow out her birthday cake candles 3) Anna showing her dinosaur the Potomac River 4) Anna's art and 5) Anna playing dress up with a bunch of her clothes. She looks like a lady Cossack. How appropriate for Ukraine.