Anna at two and a half

I also owe an update on Anna.  "Anna-at-two-and-a-half" should now be titled "Anna at nearly three" but we'll leave it as is and call it good.

Anna has met lots of important milestones since I last wrote her update.  First off, she potty trained herself in January in a mere three days.  One day she refused to wear a diaper during the day.  Two nights later she refused to wear a diaper at night and that was it.  Just like that.  She's had a few slip-ups (though only during the day) mostly because she gets very excited about whatever she is doing and forgets to go but in general it was as effortless as could be.  Good thing as her parents were rather distracted by other small people.  When she does make it to the potty (nearly always) she says, "I didn't have an accident Mom!" and when she doesn't make it to the potty she says, "I had an accident but that's ok mom, these things happen," with her signature Anna head tilt, hands on her hips and grown up voice.

Anna can do her own "clicks" on her car seat (a HUGE advance for me) and she has also kicked her bottle habit.  She still has milk three times a day (warmed up with a straw) but our mornings no longer look like this:

Anna loves many, many things.  Here's a list of a few:

1) Music and singing: Anna is a huge fan of singing and knows the words to lots of songs. She always asks for music, Cinderella music in the morning and Sound of Music soundtrack in the car.  We might be approaching the world record for number of times listened to "Doe a Deer."  The other day I confessed to Dave that sometimes when I get back into the car after dropping the girls off at school, I forget to turn it off and catch myself half way down the hill singing "Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens..."  Dave looked at me funny until I looked at him funny back and he too confessed to (more than once) singing with Julie in an empty car...  Add that to things we never thought we'd do five years ago.

2) Dressing up and princesses: Anna LOVES dressing up.  She wears the princess dresses we got from Uncle Matt and Aunt Lauri every possible moment from the second she gets up until bed time.  For a while she insisted on wearing them to bed.  When she isn't wearing them (I wouldn't let her wear them to school) she dresses herself in several layers - dress, second dress, skirt and pants.  She went through a phase of never leaving the house without her raincoat and boots, no matter the weather and she can usually be found in her ladybug wings.  When she arrives at school her first stop is the back room where she fetches a particular dress up dress and a pink cat purse.  She puts it on over whatever she's wearing and carries the purse all day.  Lately she's started smuggling Teacher Bari's dress up clothes home under her normal clothes.  I use the word "normal" loosely.  Teacher Alison gave us a big bag of hand me downs from her daughters, size six.  Pretty much all Anna wears.  Here are some of my favorite Anna outfits:

This was taken at 7:03am - it was her third outfit of the morning:

3) Dora, Boots and Unicornio: Every once in a while, usually when someone is sick or we're on a long car ride or plane, we let the girls watch Dora.  Anna LOVES Dora and Boots and given how much she talks about it you'd think she was on a steady diet.  The other day I asked who she wanted to invite to her birthday party.  "Emma and Ella and Dora and Boots."  Every night when I ask her what she's going to dream about she says "Unicornio! How bout that Mom?"

4) Reading and books: Anna LOVES reading.  She can sit still by herself for nearly an hour flipping through books.  No matter what kind of chaos is going on around her (and there is often a great deal of chaos,) Anna can simply disappear into her own world. 

She does it at home and at school.  She gets a bit pile of books and carefully looks at each page.  As I mentioned before we've just started reading a chapter book and Anna is entranced.  She has added Betsy-Tacy to her pile of books and will sit quietly and thumb through every page looking carefully at the little black and white pictures.  When Betsy and Tacy's older sisters call "Betsy... Tacy..." to come to dinner, Anna calls "Betsy... Tacy...."  Anna has a very hard time going to sleep at night (she should drop her nap but the late afternoon gets really ugly.)  Every night when she gets in bed I deliver a big pile of books which she carefully looks through and then tosses on the floor.  Her favorite at the moment is Eloise.  

5) Counting: Anna can count!  And not just recite the numbers in order but actually point to things and count them.  I've heard her get all the way up to 13.  I'm really impressed.  I know someone else that didn't do that until she was four. 

6) Life: Anna thinks just about everything is pretty great.  Here she is, thinking something is great:

Things she thinks great includes "her kids", especially Emma, Ella and Sinjin.  Her teachers (Bari and Alison).  Pickle (Zeke and Grandma's dog, always gets a mention when I ask who she loves.) Her sister (she pretty much tolerates her brothers at this point but SJ is a different story.) Her grandparents.

With three of her favorites:

With another favorite:

She also loves purple, her "poka-da" blankie and her huge "mommy bear." 

Despite all the princesses and dress up, Anna is pretty tough.  Don't mess with this one:

She somehow got a second degree burn on her arm and never said anything.  She thinks running into the wall is pretty funny.  When she hangs out with the four and five year olds at Sarah Jane's school she is always in the middle of the pack and more often than not the center of attention.  If there is a bouncy house, game over, Anna is gone.  See picture of insanely big waterslide containing said two year old as evidence of said toughness:

Anna is very reasonable.  Weirdly so.  I'm always surprised when she asks for something and I say no, bracing myself for a big fight, and she looks at me all stubborn and mad and then says, "ok" and runs off to do something else.  My prior mothering experience has not led me to believe that "ok" is a possible outcome. 

One of my favorite things about Anna is that she always says, "I be 'cused mom?" at dinner and carefully carries her plate to the sink.  Every time that happens I feel like I've added to the universe.  She used to eat her food but she is now entering into a no eating phase.  Sigh.  Cooking for non eaters detracts from the feeling of adding to the universe. 

Despite the non eating, Dave and I have thoroughly enjoyed the back half of two.  We're looking forward to seeing what three will bring.

Sarah Jane at two-and-a-half, and Sarah Jane at three, just for fun.