Anna is growing up

Life is so busy.  And at the end of the day, I find that sometimes the only thing I have the energy for is falling asleep while I watch TV and drool.  But every day there is some new sweetness or breathtakingly memorable moment or frustrating evidence that our daughter is evolving into a superspecies of toddler.  And I don't want to forget any of it-- even the hard moments.  So here is a brief sum up of the past few months of Anna activity.

Our Anna banana is such a sweet, quirky girl!  She is 3 1/2 feet of awesomeness and attitude.  She does not like to be forced into anything.  She is all independence.  She is strong and brave and fast and incredibly girly and feminine all wrapped into one wiggly "don't hug me while I'm on the move" kind of girl.

This is her "ghost" face in preparation for Halloween.

Anna still loves puppets.  Richard and she made sock puppets at the Salmon festival this year.  Anna's imagination has really kicked into gear the past few months so she can supply the details of the stories we play out together.

Anna is growing up.  Sometimes too fast, and sometimes, not fast enough.  She has moved to a toddler bed, that I am really not sure how much she uses.  She sure doesn't nap there, but I think occasionally she sleeps there at night...with the light on.  We think she might sleep walk.  Sometimes we find her curled up in front of our door.  Sometimes she has gotten a yogurt or crackers and will be eating them at 3 am.  Sometimes she comes into our room completely naked, looking confused as to why she is there.  Sometimes we will find her surrounded by books or toys or her dollhouse.  On any given morning, I don't know how much of the previous night she has slept.  I must say, for a toddler who gets much less sleep than she needs, she holds herself together remarkably well.

Anna also started preschool this fall.  We were both SO ready for it.  She didn't look back once we were in the door.  She has made so many friends.  Anna operates under the assumption that people like her, so she is completely confident with other kids, parents, teachers, etc. She will join in almost any activity and she likes to tell everyone around her what she is thinking and what she is doing.

Anna loves going to school.  She loves packing her backpack, putting it on, and heading out the door.  Every day she paints.  I have dozens of Mark Rothko knockoffs to show for it :)  She also spends an inordinate amount of time at the snack table.  One day, one of the teachers told me that Anna had seemed very hungry that day and ate a lot of snacks.  All I could tell her is that she had already had two bowls of cereal that morning.  The kid has an incredible appetite and is constantly moving!

Richard taught Anna how to iron last week.  Anna is interested in whatever we are doing.  She wants to put on makeup when I put on makeup, and she wanted to iron when Richard was ironing (because I do NONE of the ironing in our house).  After she learns how to do something she likes to repeat back what she has learned.  She becomes the teacher.  She will tell you step by step how to do something.  I think it makes her feel very important.

Anna is quite the daddy's girl.  One of the unexpected benefits from having a second child is that Anna has re-discovered how wonderful it is to have a loving daddy.  There have been times in the past when Anna would scream and run away from Richard and only want to talk to me, but now they are practically inseparable when he is not at work.  Richard's dream came true the first time she ran into his arms when he walked in the door.  Now she has graduated to hugging him and asking him how his day at work went (like I said, she picks up on things!)

We woke up this morning to find that Anna had taken care of breakfast!
Her favorite cereal is frosted mini wheats, so she took out some frying pans and poured us a couple of very large "bowls" of her favorite breakfast food.

Lately Anna is obsessed with "Fancy Nancy" books.  She loves them and we have pretty much cleaned out the library of its stock.  I love the series because they teach Anna all sorts of fancy new words.  Like her parents, Anna is a bonafide logolept.
She loves them so much that she has taken to reading them on her own and taking the books with her everywhere.  Richard was putting Benjamin to bed and when he came out to the living room again, he found that Anna had fallen asleep while reading one of her precious books.

Anna loves the outdoors and exploring and has become quite a hiker.  She has learned to watch for things like caterpillars, slugs, interesting leaves, rocks, and water formations.

Anna's favorite souvenir from any trip is a stick.  She loves sticks.  Lets just hope she learns to walk softly as well as carry a big stick :)

Anna is still in a princess phase.  I love the princess phase.  I love watching her in her beautiful gowns and I can tell that she feels really beautiful when she wears them.  She now has dresses for 4 princesses and shoes for 6.  Sometimes instead of stuffed animals, she takes her princess shoes to bed with her-- most notably the Belle slippers.  But she is also incredibly smart and loves to run and play with balls and manipulate playdough, and read read read!  I think she is really well rounded.  She plays equally well with both boys and girls.

Anna hates the sun.  She has told us several times "I hate the sun!!" (usually in her whiny crying voice as she cowers like a vampire). And the southern Utah girl in me cringes every time I hear her say it.  That's what we get for raising our children in the Pacific Northwest.  During the last trip we took with her through the land of the sun, we finally realized the key to happiness was buying Anna a pair of pink sunglasses.  Now she likes it when it is "too bright" (any day that is not completely overcast) because she gets to wear her new shades.

while we were in St. George, Anna decided her hair needed to be shorter so she grabbed some very dull pruning shears and started sawing at her hair.  Luckily, the tuft she got was on the side of her face and it looks like she has some feathery bangs now :)

I love these two videos of Anna.  They show her uninhibited artistic side as well as her athletic determined side.  In the first she sings an original song she created, complete with vibratto.  In the second video, she is running for the sake of running.  I love every power packed inch of this girl!!

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