its a (late) golden birthday

at least until she is 11 years! I stared this 2 days before her birthday, but somehow I never finished it until a week later..........

Anna has become a mobile bobble this month. She went from 1 leg squat crawling to real crawling to fast crawling to cruising along furniture. Now she will stand unassisted at random intervals throughout the day for a few seconds. Yesterday she was trying to stand up in the grocery cart - a lot less than fun. She is on her way to walking. Her friend zachie loaned her his walker toy - so hopefully this helps along the process. Right now she will push it until she runs into something, then she doesn't know how to get unstuck, so she just gets down and crawls.


She is still making the surprised-circle face a lot. She makes people who don't know that she does that all the time feel really good - like they are really exciting. That is - if she doesn't cry in their face first. She's getting really shy too. She now understands that there are people on the other side of the computer when we talk on skype, and she will get really shy to gma and gpa and hide her face in my shirt. Silly baby.

I am trying to figure out how to keep her happy during 3 hours of church. Its a serious struggle. I don't understand how some babies just sit contentedly on mom's lap! Anna wants to go exploring and bang on the seats! Oh well. She likes our sunday school class and they get grossed out by all her snot and drool and bugger bubbles.

Speaking of snot - anna still has the persistent runny nose. It never stops! There are slime trails all over our house. The brown couch looks like it is infested with slugs. Gross. I can't wear dark shirts if I am headed out because she leaves slime trails on my shoulders. We go to a ENT next week - hopefully they can help us.

I'm trying to get anna back onto a schedule - mostly just to make my day easier. I've instituted something called playpen time - and she hates it. It basically equates to anna screaming for 15 minutes in her playpen - but usually i'm in the shower so its painless for me. So this is how our day usually rolls out: 5:00 anna screaming in bed. feed anna mommas milk and put her back down. 7:00 wake her up and play. 8:00 out for a run (sometimes she naps). 9:30 breakfast (eggs, toast, fruits). 9:45-10:00 playpen time. 10:30-11:30 ish out and about running errands or to the park. 11:30 lunch (mommas milk, veggies and tofu usually) 12:00-1:30ish naptime. 2:00-5:00 hanging around the house or visiting friends. 5-5:30 play pen time 6:00 dinner (whatever we are eating). 7:00 mommas milk and bed. The collage below is anna waking up.

Anna looooves outside. Anytime someone opens a door she makes a bee-line for it (including the fridge door but that's a different subject). She is a little wary of the step down into the garage but my friend was keeping an eye on her yesterday and said she almost went out on her own. She's getting a little too brave. She acts like she rules the backyard and enjoys eating rocks and grass. She also likes to help me water the plants. She's starting to track animals - birds and chipmunks. Its fun to watch her see the world.


Anna is an amazing eater. Her favorite thing lately is corkscrew pasta. She even likes the whole wheat kind (good girl). We've also discovered that she can eat cut green beans. They come out the same way they went in but hey it fills her up! We went to a Lebanese restaurant with her this week. It was perfect because everything was pureed. Anna is a fan of hummus, babaganoush, tahini, falafel and tabouli.

She still loves reading books. Probably b/c besides the farm its pretty much her only toy. She turns the pages and jibber jabbers like she knows what she is talking about. Its the cutest thing ever. She will read with me, but not for very long. Her great aunt Hanna gave her a little people flip book and she loves it. We also rent books from the library every few weeks to keep her interested. Hopefully she wants to continue that throughout her life.

She really loves to watch whats going on out the front window. My neighbor Dorothy says its the cutest thing to look out her front window and see this little baby head bobbing in the window waving her arms. Oh anna. speaking of neighbors, Anna has taken particular interest to the neighbors dog. She loves to see and watch him. We need to expose her to more animals! Also about neighbors - our neighbor TJ came over and read her books one day. It was the cutest thing to see her in his lap reading books.

Lets see what else. Well she's been gettign little diaper rashes here and there (yes we are still doing cloth) so I let her air dry. Problem with that is that the freedom moves her bowels. She's poo pooed on the carpet at least 5 times. Oh anna. another thing about poop is when I see she has to go I hurry and put on the potty. Its weird I know - but a lot easier than cleaning out a poopy diaper! Maybe this familiarity with the pot will train her early? We can always hope.

Anna is a very social girl. She loves her friends. She also loves strangers. Anytime we are at the park she is more interested in watching the big kids play than she is with playing with her mom. Yesterday a little boy saw that she was watching him so he played hide and seek with her on the playground. She loved it. What a little flirt. This is Anna playing with her friend Miki.

I finally put locks on the cupboards because I was sick of cleaning up rags and pots and pans. Its funny that I did not put locks on all the cupboards, but Anna doesn't know because she doesn't really try to get in them any more. We had to move our garbage into closed spaces. Anna likes to be naughty when we let her (:

Anna helps with the laundry. She pushes the baskets out to the garage for me. She also likes to pull the clothes out of the laundry basket one at a time and try to put them on. Its pretty cute. She also likes to help with weeding, but unfortunately she doesn't know the difference between weeds and flowers.

She can sign all done, more, down, bye bye and blow kisses. I've seen her do all of them. Will she always do them? No. I'm not sure what that's all about. I think it may be a bit of stubbornness.

She is absolutely adorable and growing like a weed and I can't wait for her birthday. She is going to LOVE her cake!