Our recent adventures
I keep notes about what to write in these posts and I try to keep up the pace of posting monthly about the kids, but my long winded nature makes it the kind of task I postpone until I have a good solid block of time, like on a plane.
Anna’s ability to comprehend and extrapolate is a source of constant amusement and awe. It’s impressive to see how just in the 3 months since her birthday her comprehension, her ability to follow conversational instructions has evolved. Because of our perpetual binky battles we now have her put her own binkies away in a cabinet each morning. Recently Leigha came to get her one morning and had to step out of the room, and as she was walking out she heard Anna putting her binkies away without even being told. A few weeks ago we were having a new television delivered, and we were telling Anna that at big truck was going to bring the new TV. As we drove out to some function we passed a UPS truck on our street and Anna pointed at the truck and commented “Big truck, new TV!”
Leigha’s mom visits us frequently which provides an interesting glimpse into how Anna’s mind works. We have a name for every room in the house that Anna is used to hearing, except for the office and guest bedroom. The only room that differs from its conversational name is the family room which Anna dubbed “downstairs”. On a recent Mimi visit, Anna also dubbed the guest room Mimi’s room, because of her leading occupancy. In the same conversation, Anna referred to our bedroom as “Mommy’s room”, which meant no room was named after myself. Renee asked Anna “where’s daddy’s room?” to which she responded by pointing at the office.
Anna has for a while now mimicked my shutterbug tendencies, but moreso recently. She has a tinkerbell toy camera that on pushing the pseudo-shutter button goes through a series of three voice remarks and on the fourth push fires a tiny light and makes a shutter release noise. I’d like to get her a real (but not valuable) camera that I can let her lose with and see what kinds of pictures she ends up with. For now she insists on bringing her camera when she sees me brining mine, or interesting, sometimes when we’re going somewhere and even though she doesn’t see mine. We went to the zoo last weekend and while I had meant to bring my camera I had forgotten to prepare it and as we were getting down the driveway she asked where her camera was, so I ran inside and got both of ours. In the same zoo trip we saw some monkeys climbing on rope bridges between raised platforms and she was very quick to remind it to “be careful monkey” clearly sensing the precariousness of the monkey’s present course.
Anna had a good time at the zoo and she got to see every animal she had listed to be of interest, except for giraffe. I though the National Zoo had giraffes at the elephant house but they clearly weren’t inside and outside there was construction, so I’m not sure what happened. It’s a shame because I think she would have gotten a real thrill out of seeing a real giraffe up close. We did however see seals, which weren’t on her list, and she was pretty mesmerized by the seals. That was the last thing we did before she started losing it and we had to head for home. But later in the pool she told me she was going to swim like a seal and started diving into the water (although despite her best efforts, almost entirely unlike a seal).
A few weeks prior we made a trip out to Frying Pan park, which is a nearby county park that has a working farm on it (and hey, it’s free). She calls the farm the ‘e-i-e-i-o’, as per the song. It was a pretty bitter, cold day, especially for April, but Anna didn’t seem to mind, or notice, and was enthralled with the horses, chickens, the baby pigs, and lambs and the cows too. She really couldn’t get enough. One of the other things I think we first saw on that trip was Anna’s impersonation of walking like a duck, it’s she bends forward a ways and sticks her arms straight back and starts to waddle around and quack, very memorable.
Anna for a brief period had a fledgling interest in Spanish. She would ask Leigha what certain things were in Spanish, the problem is that the words she knows, simple English words, don’t always map to simple spanish words. Cheeks for example, don’t translate to a word that’s within her grasp. But we have been focusing on body parts and numbers and she gets a kick out of that. The Spanish isn’t coming along as well as I’d like but I’m still hoping we can get there. Her English on the other hand is moving along well. She had her friend Matthew over a few weeks ago and Leigha reports that they even started having little conversations, along the lines of:
Matthew: Anna! Matthew chase.
Anna: Ok! Anna run.
It’s cute, like little cavepeople or tarzans. She’s also doing better on the phone. Again, Leigha reports that she and Mimi had a conversation where Mimi asked her questions about her day or what she was doing and Anna answered her (and even correctly). Previously when you’d ask her what she ate today, for example, she’d list foods, just not necessarily ones she actually ate. Recently she’s been very accurate in what kinds of things she’s eaten or done in the 1 day time period. Going back more than a day gets you sketchy results. “What did you do yesterday” is not a reliably answered questions, although sometimes she does get it. But two days after we went to the zoo, I asked her what animals we saw at the zoo, and she listed giraffe in the list. When I ask her what she did at school, for a short while her first item in her list of activities was “Anna cry” which probably reads a bit more tragic than it conveys from her. She says it with a smile and sort of an empirical detachment from the observation. We’ve also been working on Anna’s letters. She’s pretty curious about them and likes to point at a letter and either tell you what she thinks it is, or ask what letter it is. Letters she knows she is pretty accurate with, except a lot of letters look like “K” to her. She basically knows the letters from her cereal boxes “K”, “I”, “X”, and additionally, “A”, “B”, “O”, and recently added “E”; she knows “N” but sometimes confuses it with “M” due to visual similarities. There are a few others she knows, or knows with less accuracy, like “X”, or “D”. Leigha walked her through a picture of all the letter and I seem to recall she counted in the 10-12 range of letters she got right, so it’s progress.
The other thing we’ve learned, or suspect, during breakfast is that Anna seems ambidextrous. I wouldn’t expect it to be a lasting thing but she doesn’t particularly show a preference for any specific hand while she eats her cereal. I’ll be curious to see how long it takes for her to develop dominance but I know there was a few days I thought she was a lefty because she ate cereal left handed for a few days, and I mentioned it to Leigha, but the next day or a couple days after she was eating right-handed again. I’d like to do some reading about when that sort of preference develops and if there’s any benefit to encouraging her to continue using both, either subtly or overtly.
Anna can be a rascal and lately she’s been overtly testing limits. When told not to do something she will frequently do something that is similar but not exactly what she was told to desist doing. For example, on an occasion before we started storing her binkies (and largely the source of the rule) she was laying in her bed in the middle of the day playing with her binks and seized upon a moment of parental distraction to put one in her mouth. The short-lived indulgence ended with a stern warning to not put the binkies in her mouth. The response was to, instead, touch tbe binky to her cheek. When this was observed but unpunished, she touched it to her lips. As we watched her sternly, she impishly stuck out her tongue and touched it to the pacifier while very carefully watching our reactions with a sly grin. These sorts of encounters are very thrilling for me, especially in retrospect, at the time I probably wasn’t amused, or at most impressed with her chutzpah but when I think about the pieces of social awareness at work, and the pace at which she achieves them, I can’t help but relish the progress. Other times are less innocently cute, sometimes she’ll just respond with an inappropriately rude “No!” and we try to deal with these swiftly and correctly, although occasionally that becomes a matter of subjective discretion.
Anna and Lexi are also very special to watch together. When Lexi starts crying, Anna will frequently fall in line, start following directions better, be more tolerant of not getting her way. If we’re busy she’ll frequently go to her sister and ask “What’s matter, Lexi?” or sing to her. She will look for a pacifier to give her sister, or let us know that Lexi is upset. Once in a while she’ll offer her own evaluation of the source of frustration “Lexi hungry”, she might suggest. She’s still very tender with her sister and except for the occasional contention over the Bumbo there is harmony and symbiosis.
Lexi is growing of course, and Leigha and I both get giggly over her developing personality. She’s also growing to be very mellow and understanding although she’s not afraid to let us have it when she goes too long without some personal attention time. She’s been smiling easier and on occasion squawking a laugh or some other noise for no reason. She loves being held so she can work out her legs and it almost always puts a big goofy smile on her face. She’s not a big fan of the camera and we’ve been keeping up on the monthly family and individual picture of her, although I don’t find it as easy to capture her personality as I think it was with Anna, or I may just be more picky nowadays. Like her sister, belly time is pure torture and she screams like a banshee so Leigha tries hard to entertain her. The ball popper will keep her quiet for a little bit of time but she gets bored of it after a couple of rounds and belly time doesn’t last much longer after that. She’s still a wonderful sleeper, at night and even during the day she’ll take some solid naps. Lexi still sleeps at night in her papasan by our bed, partially for our convenience, and partially because she’s the pukiest baby we’ve ever seen, and we think sleeping more vertical helps her keep her food down. Leigha has been working on getting her to nap during the day in her crib and that seems to be progressing apace.
That’s pretty much all the news to date. Leigha is looking forward the end of the school year and hopefully the next update won’t take quite as long.
