Anna stories

I realize that I am horrible at both journaling and recording Anna's life in more than just cell phone pictures. She is incredible. Her vocabulary, her physical prowess, her impressive height and eating ability are all things that only a select few people know about. So here are a few recent Anna stories to wet your palette.

Yesterday as I was finishing my lunch at the kitchen table and thumbing through a new cookbook, Anna was playing quietly in the kitchen. Lately, she likes to take her white stool and play with water in the sink, so I was not worried. Every once in awhile I would hear smacking noises, but since we don't keep rat poison, nor cleaning supplies in the kitchen, it caused me alarm. However, a few minutes passed and Anna emerged from the kitchen with her hand dripping blood...at least, that is what it looked like to me. Her whole hand was red and wet and I thought she had found a knife and severed a major vein.

Nope, she had found a jar of strawberry jam and had stuck her entire hand it in and was munching away (much like Winnie the Pooh). No wonder there was no scream.

I recently gave Anna a lady bug necklace that had been given to me prior to my mission. She loves this necklace and wears it a lot! So we were sitting in the rocking chair, and she said that I was the mama ladybug, she was the Anna ladybug, and the necklace was the baby lady bug. I turned to her and said, "I love you my precious daughter!" She looked back and me and replied, "I love you my precious mama ladybug!"

Anna doesn't like the smell of poop and gags when I change her poopy diapers. She also will not admit when she has a poopy diaper and will lie or at least blatantly deny she has had a poopy diaper even when there is incontravertable evidence.

Anna likes to play with a small nativity set my mom gave me. There are only three figurines-- Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. But almost on a daily basis, Anna likes to take her stool over to the mantle where they reside so she can take them down. She is always very careful, especially with baby Jesus.

Anna likes us to draw stick figures of the family on her hands and arms. It will start with a baby Anna, and then go to mama and then dada. Each figure has its own distinguishing characteristic. Anna has curly hair, mama has straight hair, and only dada has ears. She likes to tell us to put two eyes and a smile on each one. But yesterday she told Richard (the artist at the moment) as he was drawing "dada" to put in an eye, and then another eye, and then another eye. Pretty soon dada had 4 or 5 eyes going before Anna was finally content with the finished product.

Anna likes routine...her routine. Every morning after I get her up, she follows the same three step procedure-- she closes the door, turns on the light, and turns off the floor fan. If one of these things has already been done, she undoes it so that she can do it. She will open the door to close it, turn off the light to turn it on, and so forth. The same routine goes on at night.

Anna loves graham crackers and milk. She has learned how to separate each sheet of grahams into 4 sticks and dips them into her milk with precision. However, she does not like to drink the milk if she sees cookie "floaties" in them.

She can sing the "Cinderelly" mice song (even going so far as to imitate their high pitched squeakss), "A dream is a wish your heart makes," "Be our guest," and "Beauty and the Beast." Her favorite song to dance to is "Bibbidy boppity boo." And she has, in fact, turned a stuffed duck into a handsome prince.

So there you go.