My Giant Leap
It’s time for another update! I’m working on getting what little Halloween pictures we took online. Around Halloween the whole family was sick and on the big night Anna was passed out on Leigha before the first trick-or-treaters even came by. The only thing that saved us was that Leigha saw and took us to a Reston Town Center trick-or-treat event a couple of weekends before, when we were all healthy. We got Anna dressed up in her Dorothy costume and took her down there in the middle of the day and took a few pictures.
When we first started trick-or-treating, we weren’t really sure what to do with Anna. We would walk into the shops (they were participating) they would hand me or Leigha candy, we would put it in Anna’s basket and say thank you. That worked for a while but then Anna started refusing to go into the shops. We tried a few shops before we realized it wasn’t a fluke and she was really over it. Then I had an idea and suggested we carry Anna into the shop. That worked. Then the final brainstorm, have Anna put the candy into her basket. Anna is all about putting items into containers, she’s fascinated. That did the trick. After we got her to start putting the candy in her basket (and celebrating when she did), we started encouraging to take the candy from the store’s container and put it into her own. This she understood! She is an expert at this! We have video of the first successful candy acquisition and I’ll post it soon.
Then we all got sick. Anna was pretty tired and pathetic for a long while. Leigha took her to the doctor who prescribed some nasty antibiotic. Maybe it was just mixed wrong, but the solution was supersaturated with whatever granular compound existed before adding water. It would dry almost instantly upon contact with the air and turn into gritty sand. Sometimes it would turn to grit inside the syringe! Nasty. When we finished that she was starting to get better but a few days after the “gritecillin” ran out she started getting worse again. This time at the doctor they said (basically) it’s just a cold, deal. She started running fevers and after a few days of fevers I was getting fed up so we took her again and got a sinus infection diagnosis and a different antibiotic prescribed. This one worked better (she’s done with it now) but she’s still got some cold symptoms, although not the fevers which were the real drag.
Onto cuter things. Anna has been quite the drawer lately. Earlier this month Leigha got her a pack of kid-safe markers. She likes to draw with each one before she’s done. She picks one up, draws a line or a squiggle, puts the cap back on, and repeats with the next one. She is very thorough and insists on using each one. Just recently Leigha got her a little table with drawers that has a chalkboard top. So now Anna can draw whenever she wants without having to requisition paper, although she still enjoys drawing with pens in a pinch. The drawers were put to use to organize Anna’s toys. One for blocks, one for balls, one for puppets, and one for “Little People.” She got the hang of the system right away and knows that the Little People are in the blue drawer and goes and pulls it out, takes it to the middle of the room, and unpacks it to play. She will also re-pack it when instructed (or when she wants to move the party). Getting the drawer back into its home is a trickier proposition that will require more coordination.
Speaking of colors, she’s gotten to be quite the champ at recognizing her colors. I’ve been working with her on this for a long time, originally I was just trying to teach her red, blue, green, yellow. At first she just didn’t get it. She knew what the right choices were but hardly ever guessed the right one. Now she’s very accurate, although interesting some more than others. She never gets purple or orange wrong, those are 100%. She’s pretty accurate with green and yellow. Red and blue are little dodgy. It makes me wonder if this is a developmental thing, much like when they are young the toys are white/black/red for physiological reasons. It certainly doesn’t map to the color blindness profiles.
During the period that Anna was running fevers, we decided to let her have her binky because she was pretty pitiful and it brought her a lot of comfort. The downside, as you can guess, is that now we’re having trouble getting her to detach. It took Leigha a few days of suffering to get her to not constantly beg for it, but even now when she has a major tantrum she’ll start pining for it. Speaking of tantrums, the latest cause of tantrums is changing clothes / diapers. Hopefully this one won’t last long, fortunately the other tantrums (sitting in her chair, shoes, TV) we’ve gotten past pretty quickly. This one is especially frustrating because it isn’t really negotiable.
Among other things she’s obsessed with lately (aside from constantly asking “what’s this?”) is taking baths. She’s quite the fan and we’re using it as a tool to teach her how to undress herself. Maybe she just misses the pool since we closed it. We’ll see next month when we start attending the swimming classes for which Leigha signed us up. Anna is also doing a great job dancing along to her videos (She does best at the Wiggles choreography) and singing the alphabet song and other songs she’s learning in school. The other day she was cracking herself up singing “Ring Around the Rosie”.
When it comes to food Anna is still picky as ever. She still eats basically the same things: yogurt, cheese, chicken nuggets, but we’ve introduced more fiber-rich foods to her to help with her digestive problems so she’s eating bran crackers and popcorn which both are supposed to help. She still has quite then penchant for popsicles although she’s not nearly as obsessed with ice as she once was.
