Changing Identities Yet Again -- Day 809

Yes, I know I should be posting more, but frankly I have been busy setting up the Ukraine site. And yes, I am sure there are relatives who wonder why I choose to write about Ukraine and not our little toddler, but I guess this is how it will be for a little while yet. Sorry.

Just a short note before I get to the rest of the post. I have put two additional affiliate links in the sidebar to the right. One is for Shutterfly and the other is for CDBaby (Kids music). If you purchase anything from Shutterfly or CDBaby, remember to click through my site and I will get a discount. The CDBaby site is linked to the kids/family section and it has a really good selection of music for children. Anyhow, that is the commercial plug. Just remember all proceeds will be donated to Anna's living and entertainment fund.

I just bought eight children's albums last night from CDBaby after seeing how much Anna loves the 'Caboose' song from the band Lunch Money. The music is really good, but it is a bit hard to describe how Anna 'handles' it. Let's just say it is very high-energy with a bit of ADD in there. She jumps a lot and sings too and runs back and forth from end to end of our house. In other words, she loves it and expresses it in the best way a toddler can -- with lots and lots of energy.

The North Dakota Grandparents came in on Thursday, so Anna is naturally excited to have a larger supply of attention on hand. She also knows that they come with gifts packed into their bags -- sort of like Midwestern Santas. And if there is anything I have learned, Grandparents (both Texan and North Dakotan) never fail in this department.

Well, Anna's identity has been shifting yet again. She went from airplane to the more logical "pilot" last week, but now after hearing the caboose song, she is a conductor. When she was a pilot, I thought it was going to stick for a while -- but it was not to be. You'd think I would be used to not predicting toddlers by now.

Sometimes she even blends identities for added utility. The other day she was trying to pull a newspaper out of a bag and was saying, "Airplane is getting a newspaper out for pilot to read." I guess when they are your made-up identities, you can use them however you wish.

On the other hand, the nice thing is that we can use these changing identities to our advantage. The other day she didn't want to put on her red coat, so I just called it a pilot's flight jacket. Well, it is now a cool coat that she wants to wear.

Anna has a perpetual cold it seems. Before we joined the day school program, she had been sick once in two years. Now she has been sick five times in two months. The good thing for me is that I seem to have built up a super immunity and luckily avoided most of the illnesses floating around in the house nowadays.

The newest funny thing Anna has been doing is her creative bath play. She usually takes a cadre of dinosaurs (2 large and 4 small) along with various miniature dishes and sand pails into the bath. Anna has also named the dinosaurs. One of the big ones is her teacher, Miss Laura, and the other smaller dinosaurs are named after her friends at school. Anna just sits there and reenacts her school days saying things like: "Miss Laura says you need to sit down during story time." "Miss Laura says heels against the wall before going outside." I took a video of it, so maybe in the next week I will try to load something up showing her dinosaur play. I sure wish I had a dinosaur for a teacher when I was little.

The only change to the bath routine recently comes from a gift from the grandparents. They bought Anna a floating pirate island (based upon her previous now-expired pirate identity), but she still loves it so now bath time is a nice mix of dinosaurs and pirates. She will play in the tub until it the water is cold and she is shivering.

A couple of days ago, we tried to go on an excursion to a farm so Anna could see some animals up close and pet them. It was one of those days, where we shouldn't have left the house. Anyhow, we somehow ended up in a traffic jam on a Sunday due to a marathon in DC. Once we finally cleared the traffic and were on our way to the farm, Anna throws up all over the back of the car. We cleaned her up and took it as a sign to abandon our trip. Once the shock of the episode wore off and Anna was all cleaned up she says to Kerry and me: "Anna burped."

Yeah, I guess it was a kind of burp. Now, of course, she talks about her 'burp' in the car and how she 'burped' on her Nya-Nya and got it all messy. We took her to the zoo a couple of days later to make up for the aborted farm trip.

So that is about it for now. Tomorrow is Halloween, and it will be Anna's first one where she actually goes out trick or treating. We tried to teach her how to say, "Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat," but Anna would have none of it. She just proceeded to make up her own version and now says, "Trick or treat, smell my toes, give me something delicious to eat." I guess that will work.

Airplanes -- Day 797

Well, I finally downloaded my recent pictures that include the Texas Grandparents' stay in DC. Anna had a great time while they were here, and visits to the Air and Space Museum and talk of airplane trips has transformed our little girl into an airplane.

It is really interesting to see Anna manage this new identity. She will correct us if we call her Anna and tell us seriously, "Airplane." She even catches herself messing up and will correct herself. Basically, she loves all things related to an airplane right now. This morning she went diving onto the floor. I think she was actually trying to take flight.

Also last week, Anna climbed out of her bed for the first time. (We weren't looking forward to this development.) I had heard a big thump upstairs, but didn't worry too much since it wasn't accompanied by crying. Then I thought I heard the stompy little steps of a toddler coming from above. I listened for them again, but didn't hear anything. Then I heard the top of her toy box crash to the floor. Something was up, so I marched up stairs and opened the door. She was just standing in the corner playing with her toys. When I asked her how she got out, all I could muster was, "Anna's an airplane." I guess she flew out of her bed.

Anna still loves singing too, but she only has one volume: really, really loud. And you should never ask her to sing BINGO in a public place. There simply is no soft version.

The new favorite song is Family of the Sun. This is some rather bad tune sung to Farmer in the Dell , and it used to be in an exhibit at the Air and Space Museum. I won't sing all the lyrics for you -- Anna can do that -- but the first verse gets a lot of play at home. It goes:

- Mercury is hot,
- Mercury is small,
- Mercury has no atmosphere,
- It's just a rocky ball.

Well, you simply cannot guess how many times Anna sings this during the day, and she has actually sung it so many times that she decided the consonants are just impeding her. So what we now hear is just a series of looped-together vowel sounds that come out something like:

- Uh-uh-uh-uh aaaaah,
- Eh-eh-eh-eh eeeeeeh, and so on.

Only the last words: hot, small, -sphere, and rocky ball can sort of be distinguished. But that is just the pronunciation issue, the real problem emerged when Pluto lost its status as a planet. The song included Pluto and reference to nine planets, so it was bound to go through some revision, and a few days ago when we went to the museum, the song machine was shut down. Anna just circled the TV monitors saying, "Where's family of the sun?" and "Where's the TVs?" It was sort of sad, but Dad is pretty good now at giving believable baby excuses.

When the Texas Grandparents were here, we also went to Mount Vernon. Anna ran around and we took quite a few pictures. The one at the top of this post is of Anna looking at a sheep at Mount Vernon. They had a lot of animals around the grounds and paths to run on. All in all, it was a great place to burn some toddler energy. Oh yeah, and we also saw some George Washington stuff too.

The photos are mostly of Anna at Mount Vernon and some from her pumpkin patch trip.

Website Changes

Well, I have done a little cleaning on the site. I took off the photo scroll bar because it was slowing the load time of the site.

You can also see that I have added an advertisement in the upper right corner. I will be putting a few ads on the site for specific products that we have used in the past. Basically, if you buy something through the vendor(s) after clicking on my site, I will get a percentage. For Boden it is 8 percent. Both Kerry and shop through Boden and they also have a nice children's section too. If your remember the swimming suit with the daisy on it from July, we bought that from Boden.

Anyhow, if you every want to buy anything through them, you can always use this site. All proceeds will go to Anna's daily entertainment and living fund.

I have also added a link to ukrainelist.com on the right sidebar (Ukraine Travel). This is to the Ukraine site I am developing and this is where I learned about affiliate advertising. Anyhow, it has been sort of a hobby since coming back from Ukraine, but I think it is finally coming around and getting the right polish on it. It has been a good learning experience if anything.

Also, I have signed up for Google Analytics, which in a very big brother way lets me know when and where people click on the site. Now I can confirm that a lot of people are entering this site from Texas and North Dakota. It took Google to tell me that? The good thing is that I check it daily and I can see when the traffic is dying, which sort of pushes me a bit more to write. I actually feel (just a little bit) bad when I see daily visits from Fargo knowing that they may be disappointed at not finding a new picture or story of Anna. Point taken, and maybe this will increase my writing.

Well, that is it for now, and yes, I will be adding more Anna information in a soon-to-come post.

Pumpkin Patch Kid -- Day 788

This will be a short post, but I thought I would send two pictures from yesterday. We went out with the Texas Grandparents to a pumpkin farm in Maryland. It was only 30 minutes from DC, so it was just a short day trip. They also had a petting zoo and offered hay rides, which Anna loved. Halfway through the hay ride, we stopped at a pumpkin patch so we could pick out our own pumpkins. Anna went to the farthest side of the patch and picked up a baby-sized pumpkin. It now resides on our steps. Anna was even in her Halloween garb with her "Little Pumpkin" shirt.

Unfortunately, Anna has a had a cold for the last several days. Though Anna has learned how to blow her nose, she still relies upon her good buddies (the Nya-Nyas) to do most of the wiping. Those cuddly toys aren't so fluffy and cuddly right now.

The Texas Grandparents have been having fun, and so has Anna. They were able to take Anna to music class last Friday. The report back was that Anna likes to jump a lot. Yep, she's a good jumper.

Anyhow, I will end it with that and add a couple of pictures from the pumpkin patch.

Pirates -- Day 781

The pictures for this entry will be on a cake theme. The first is of Anna on her first birthday. The second is of her second birthday, and the third is a cake that Anna helped make for her Nya-Nyas (her cuddly toys). Kerry decided to let Anna help make a cake and give the Nya-Nyas a party. It was a really good idea and Anna loved it, but beware that chocolate will get everywhere and don't let the baby decorate the cake. There is simply nothing you can do. If you put a big pan of chocolate in front of a baby, you should expect what comes next. Chocolate in the hair, chocolate in the mouth, hands in the cake. The last picture is of Anna in her Halloween costume. Guess who Anna is going to be?

Well, Anna is now into pirates. During our Kiev visit, we didn't have many books, so one in particular with a Captain Willie and a dozen pirate mice stuck with her. Actually, it more than stuck, it has become a defining two-year-old moment.

Now, when she wants to give someone a compliment she will call you a pirate. Just recently Aunt Susan was here and at one point Anna confided with us saying, "Aunt Susan is a pirate." But she says it in this very tender and serious tone that really conveys the importance of being a pirate in her life. Pirates are cool.

Unfortunately, 18 September was national talk-like-a-pirate day and it came and went without our noticing (or speaking pirate). Anna loves to talk pirate now. She says, "Walk the plank," "Aye, matie," "Shiver me timbers," and "X marks the spot."

One morning I was listening to NPR on the radio and Anna kept on saying, "They are talking about pirates." Of course they weren't, but she was convinced they were. A couple of minutes later I noticed that the radio newsman said "higher ed" as in higher education and this is what she heard that sounded like the word pirate. Just say it a few times fast and you'll understand.

Basically, every boat is now a pirate ship, and Anna can interpret anything as talk about pirates if there is sufficient enough imagination or vowel and consonant similarities.

One more pirate story. The other day she was trying to look down my shirt to see Daddy's boobies (her words not mine). Anyhow, I informed Anna that I didn't have any because I was a boy. She gave me this serious confounded look; I guess she wasn't quite ready for that level of understanding. The next morning when I picked her up out of her bed she said, "Daddy doesn't have boobies." Of course, I confirmed that was true and asked her why that was. In Anna's words: "Because Daddy is a pirate." Yeah, that's probably a better explanation at this point.

Anyhow, I see a convergence of explanations, and I think I may start leveraging this logic against her. Pirates go to sleep now. Pirates eat their carrots. Pirates don't cry. Ill see how it goes.

The other funny thing Anna has been saying lately is related to potty training. She has only gone once or twice since the last post when I talked about her going potty. If you remember, after a little dribble of success, I scheduled a call from Elmo to congratulate Anna. She thought this was the best thing ever. Now, however, when Anna sees someone going to the bathroom or when we tell her that we are running to the bathroom, she likes to point out that we'll be getting a call from Elmo. Apparently, Elmo gives everyone a call after they finish their business. What a great world that would be.

Anna has started music class again. We tried a different class over the summer because the schedule worked out better, but Anna likes the one we first enrolled her in. Plus the music is better, so we don't mind listening to it during the day. Anyhow, Anna now regularly belts out a song or two in the wee hours of the morning. Aunt Susan was staying in her room during her recent stay and got front row seat at the concert.

Anna also likes to play her xylophone, and she will sit down behind it with both mallets in her little hands banging away. She goes through all the songs she knows, then she even prods us with, "What's another song I know." We tell her a title and the xylophone banging begins again. One time I requested a song and she just looked puzzled and says, "How does that song go?" With just a little reminder from Dad, off she went, banging away and when it came to the point where the bee in the song was supposed to tickle her, she stopped playing and began tickling herself. It's all in the name of art.

The only other story I will tell is one about Aunt Susan. She was trying to take a nap in Anna's room while Anna was supposed to be taking one herself. Well, Anna never really got to sleep, but Susan's first-hand account was quite illuminating. At one point she said, "Anna's going to climb out of the boat (her crib) now." Anna has yet to do this and we are not looking forward to that day. Thanks for the warning.

The other thing Anna said was, "Anna's going to start crying now, then Mamma will come in and get me and we'll read books." Sure enough Anna laid out a blistering last-ditch crying effort; her Mommy came and got her; and they both were soon in bed reading books. Who's playing whom in the relationship? I have my hunch.

Well, that is it for now. She enjoyed seeing Aunt Susan during her short stay, and Anna still loves her day school. I have to work tomorrow. How fun. I asked Anna if she liked it when Daddy comes to school with her, and she said very sincerely, "Yes." I told her not to worry and that that would change one day. Daddy is still hip it seems -- for now.