Sweet Yet Sour

The final weigh-in

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | Anna | 4 Comments

Today we had another weight check with Anna’s doctor.  As you may remember, for the past three months we have had monthly weigh-ins to see if Anna can gain some weight.  I’ve been feeding her plenty of mac and cheese, butter, half-and-half and other fattening things all along the way.

When she was weighed today at the doctor’s office Anna weighed 17.8 lbs.  This means that Anna gained a pound since the last check and has steadily gained a pound a month for the past three months.  This has pleased our doctor enough that we will no longer have to go in every month.  I still need to feed Anna every possible fattening thing I can – since she is still 3rd percentile – but she’s on her own little curve.  Perhaps in a few months she can catch up to the other 1 year olds she knows and weigh the proper 20 lbs to face forward in her car seat.

In the meantime the doctor said that her weight might drop off, now that Anna is walking (see below!) and is “more active”.  Apparently our doctor has not been listening to me about how active Anna is already.  I mean seriously, this is the kid who regularly climbs into her rocking chair and stands there rocking it while trying to climb up the back…

Anyway, Anna is walking more and more every day and more steadily each time.  Pretty soon she’ll be running and then I’ll have to just feed her sticks of butter to keep her weight up – but for the moment the “great fattening up” has worked!

Small girl walking!

Saturday, June 6th, 2009 | Anna | 2 Comments

Although I have no pictures of this phenomenon to post, the small girl is indeed walking.  Anna has been walking with us and taking little steps on her own, but she started walking by herself in earnest last week.  She was playing and then turned and just started walking on her own towards a ball that she had thrown.  Now she does this all the time, sometimes she crawls, because it’s faster and more stable, but most of the time when she needs to get somewhere, especially if she wants to carry something with her, she walks.  It’s still a little tippy when she does this, but she does love to just go for it and gets right back up if she falls.   So that’s my big news from here – I officially have a “toddler”.

I do have lots of pictures of other things Anna has been doing lately.

We went to the park last week and I caught this shot of Mike and Anna while they walked to the slide.

Mike and Anna

I guess it’s good that I didn’t catch him with his pants farther down…

Anna has been going through the drawer where her bibs are kept and every once in a while tries to put one on.  Too bad it’s backwards, but she’s got the right idea.

Backwards bib

Now that Anna knows that she needs shoes to go outside (which is her favorite thing to do), she likes to try to put shoes on to get that going.  This includes any shoes that are lying around:

Anna in Mike's shoes

Last week we had a day where Anna didn’t really nap – she was too excited about going to lunch with daddy.  So in the afternoon I took she and Cash for a walk hoping that she would sleep if I was quiet.  Bingo!

Conked out in the stroller

Anna has been wanting her own plate and since ours are breakable, I got her a new plastic plate at Target and gave it to her for lunch this week.  She thought it was cool until she was done eating and then she decided maybe it could be used as a hat:

Plate or hat?

Too bad it had mac and cheese on it when she decided to put it on her head:

Mac and cheesehead

This week it rained a fair amount which meant I needed to find someway to entertain Anna indoors.  She’s pretty bored of her toys, so I tried putting her on the floor in the kitchen with a bowl of warm soapy water and some water proof toys:

Bubble bowl

If you can’t tell, she’s totally soaked, because she did lots of this in the bowl:

Splashing

Looks like a good time, no?

Anna Update

Friday, May 15th, 2009 | Anna, Updates | 3 Comments

I have been remiss about updates on Anna of late, so I hope to make up for that with this post.  As I type this Anna is in the next room refusing to nap.  I sort of expected this, since I’m trying for the first time to transition her out of fleece sleep wear with feet and into pjs.  Change always is difficult with babies, and I expect it will take a few days to get her used to the new sleep duds. In the meantime, she’s talking loudly to her teddy bears about something very important…

First, the updates on her health – both her weight and the thing on the bridge of her nose.  I say “the thing” because we’re still not sure what “it” is exactly.  When we got the results back from the MRI in December we were told it was a “probably” dermoid cyst and to see the plastic surgeon at Children’s to have it removed.  At the end of April we finally went to see the plastic surgeon and now we’re more confused…  After reviewing the MRI the plastic surgeon said that he thinks the bump is not a dermoid cyst, but a vascular malformation.  Further, he’s not willing to take it out unless we REALLY want it out. He thinks it will bleed a lot unless he does this really gory way of taking it out, the details of which I will save you from.  Suffice to say Anna would have a curvy scar on the top of her head. So we have been advised to simply watch the bump, see if it gets larger and we can review again later whether we want it removed.  At this point it’s apparently not necessary to do anything, and that’s fine.

Last week we had our monthly weight check with Anna’s doctor.  Anna had an ear infection the week before which required a late night trip to an after hours pediatric care place, so the doctor was more focused on her ear than her weight.  When I asked about Anna’s weight, the doctor, who was not the same doctor we saw at Anna’s 12 month check (there are two doctors in the office), said that she had not gained much.  But, she said that Anna is “on her own weight curve” and was much more relaxed about the whole thing.  She wants us to come back in a month and do another weight check and in the meantime continue on with the fatty diet.  More butter and cream please!  “If” Anna’s weight continues not to be okay there is the chance that they will want to do blood tests to see if her kidneys and electrolytes are okay, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it…

Anna is not walking yet, but I expect that to come very soon.  Several times in the past few days she has been taking a few (two or three) steps on her own before plopping down to crawl.  She does love to walk holding onto our hands and with her walker toys.

Otherwise, Anna has been liking playing outside and especially playing in the dirt.  It’s hard to see here, but she has dirt all over herself, including around her mouth, since she tried eating some dirt:

Covered in dirt

Since it’s summer I’ve been trying to get Anna to wear sunglasses, but she’ll only wear them for a few seconds before taking them off.  I had to be quick to get this photo:

So Cool

Anna has been going through my cabinets and playing with pans and bowls and enjoying all the noise that entails:

Making Noise

And she’s been playing on the little playset we have in the backyard a lot, even getting into it all by herself:

Playset

For my birthday we went to Hudson Gardens and hung out in the grass where Anna played and looked cute:

Playing in the grass

And then Anna helped Mike set up his camera for those tulip shots he took at the gardens:

Photographer's Assistant

Wednesday we got Anna’s new car seat and as soon as I unpacked it she wanted to try it out.  Not necessarily the right way, but still, she’s in it:

Car Seat - first try

Later we went out on our maiden voyage with the new car seat and she seemed to like being up a little higher:

New car seat

Yesterday I was unloading the dishwasher and I had some “help”.  I say “help” because I turned away to put the silverware away and turned back to find the helper had gotten in the dishwasher:

Dishwasher

Mike is always disgusted by the fact that I lick my ice cream bowl.  I swear I haven’t done it in front of Anna, but yesterday I let her play with the mac and cheese bowl after lunch and this happened.  This means she’s definitely related to me:

Bowl licker!

It’s genetic, we can’t help it! My mom is a bowl licker too!

Anna’s Latest Activities – In Pictures

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 | Anna | 2 Comments

Our little 1 year old has been pretty busy lately and I’ve been trying to take pictures of it all. Unfortunately, Anna moves pretty fast these days so it’s hard to catch her and get a photo.

As part of Anna’s new fattening diet we’ve been giving her peanut butter.  So far, she’s not a huge fan and it generally turns out to be a mess, as shown here:

Peanut butter mess

Most meals are messy though, so this is not new.  Sometimes Mike makes it home during Anna’s dinner and then he gets to clean her up afterwards.  For some reason he thought it would be amusing to do this to Anna recently (and let me take a picture of it):

Weirdos

Anna is at a stage where she is mimicking a lot of our behavior.  Two Sundays ago she decided she wanted to read the Sunday paper just like daddy:

Anna, Mike and the Newspaper

Then she tried looking all serious with the paper, but failed miserablely since it was upside down:

Anna reads the paper

Eventually Anna gave up and just did what she normally does with her food. She rubbed it on her head:

Anna wears the paper

I have found another food that Anna simply adores, yet another not fattening food (I can’t get her to eat french fries!).  Watermelon is her new favorite and even though it’s messy it’s obvious that Anna loves the stuff:

Happy Anna with watermelon

Speaking of meal messes, I had to get a picture the other day of when Anna played with some cream cheese and then rubbed her eyes because she was tired:

Anna's cream cheese mask

When my mom was here a few weeks ago she could not resist getting a cup from Walgreen’s that says “Anna” on it.  Anna is not really at the cup stage but I tried it anyway and sometimes she was successful:

Anna holds her cup

And sometimes she wasn’t:

Anna fails at the cup

Last Friday Anna and I ventured out to the zoo with our neighbors.  It was a lovely day for the zoo, except that almost all of the other parents in the metro area thought so too, so I parked 1/2 mile away.  The zoo is not that exciting for Anna at this point and she spent most of the trip looking like this:

Anna at the zoo

We did see some cool things, including the Lorikeets, which you can get right up close to:

Lorikeet

It’s just too bad that Anna can’t really see most things at the zoo.  Once our neighbor Hana held Anna and tried to get her to check out some gibbons:

Anna and the gibbons

As you can see, Anna was not looking at the gibbons and was probably looking at the crowds of people at the zoo.  I left soon after this and because it was hot I drove home with the windows down.  I turned around on the highway to see Anna, arms straight up in the air, her hands waving in the wind singing along to the radio.  I think that was the best part of her day!

This weekend Mike took Anna with him to get the mail and apparently Anna preferred to travel like this:

Anna, Mike and the mail

Once Mike got her upright I got a great picture of the two of them though:

Cute Anna and Mike

After months of Anna only knowing how to take things out (out of drawers, boxes, etc.) she has finally starting putting things “in”.  I’m not sure that I’ll be able to get her to clean up her room anytime soon, but it is a milestone.  Yesterday I got a picture of her putting some chips back into a bowl at lunch:

Chips in the bowl

Problem is, she nows thinks that everything should go “in”.  We’ll have to work on the details of what goes “in” later:

Cup in bowl

And finally, yesterday I tried to show Anna how my camera works and how to take pictures with my camera.  I tried taking pictures of different things and then showing her the results on the camera screen.  She’s not ready to use it yet, but I did get a good picture of her while I was holding her during the lesson:

Anna and the camera

Yep, she’s still cute!

Snow Day

Saturday, April 18th, 2009 | Anna | 1 Comment

It’s been snowing here since Thursday night and as of the writing of this post, it’s still going.  I love snow, especially on weekends when we can just hang out in the house and don’t have to worry about going anywhere. It’s been a pretty dry winter here – we spent most of it under high fire danger – so this is welcome moisture.

This is what it looks like on our back deck right now:

Snowy Deck

Anna kept pointing outside and saying, “Doe” (I’m biased so I’m going to interpret this as my very smart child saying “snow”).  So after Anna’s morning nap I bundled her up for the trip.

Bundled

I think if Anna could say anything about this it would go something like, “I can’t put my arms down!” (I hope other people have seen “Christmas Story”.)

When I got Anna outside we went down the street to where Mike was snow blowing our neighbor’s driveway.  Just to illustrate how much snow we have we stood her in the path where Mike had cleared the snow.

Anna and Mike in the snow

Pretty soon Anna’s eyes started to run and she looked pretty cold so I brought her inside.  This is the kind of hat hair you get when you don’t have a lot of hair in the first place:

Hat Hair

Next winter when she can walk by herself I’m pretty sure it’s going to be hard to get Anna inside on days like this; as it is I took all of her warm stuff off and Anna pointed at the door and said, “dat” wanting to go right back out.

The Great Fattening Up

Friday, April 17th, 2009 | Anna | 4 Comments

One of the many new words that you learn when you become a parent is “percentile”.  I’ve heard this a lot lately and I’ve really started to hate that word…

Every time your child goes to the doctor for a “wellness” visit – which are generally every few months in the first year – they get weighed, measured from head to toe and their head circumference is measured.  These numbers are then placed on a chart for their growth.  This chart is then explained by the doctor using percentiles.  The chart and percentiles are averages of other kids.  For example, at Anna’s 6 month appointment her weight put her at the 10th percentile.  This means that 90 percent of the kids (whenever the chart was made) weighed more than Anna.  At Anna’s 9 month appointment her weight had dropped her down to the 3rd percentile.  According to our doctor it’s important for Anna to stay on her “weight curve”, i.e., stay at the 10th percentile instead of dropping down to the 3rd.  We were told to feed her more and try to get her to gain more weight.

When we arrived for Anna’s 12 month appointment the nurse weighed Anna 3 times on two different scales.  She mumbled something about “she’s dropped off her curve again” and then left.  The doctor came in and we spent 80% of the time talking about how Anna had only gained a pound since her 9 month appointment.  Apparently, in order to stay on the 3rd percentile weight curve she needed to have gained 3 pounds.  While Anna was climbing all over Mike and I and making lots of noise I tried to explain that Anna is a very busy girl and she’s just not willing to sit and eat for very long. Anna would much rather be playing than eating and most mealtimes disintegrate into her playing with her food pretty rapidly.

But inwardly I felt ashamed and worried that somehow this is an indication that I am a bad mom.  I feed Anna three meals a day, with snacks in between, try to make sure that she eats fruits, veggies, carbs and protein and try to make sure that she has plenty of water or milk.  And yet still she isn’t putting on the weight that our doctor wants her to have.  Contrary to how I look now, I was a lot like Anna when I was little and Mike’s mother also reported that Mike was slender too – so we do have a family history of small kids.  But still, I felt like the doctor was accusing me of neglecting my child and not feeding her.  It was enough to make me want to cry in the doctor’s office and honestly, I almost did.

The doctor told us that she wants us to feed Anna more fatty foods.  Apparently babies need fat for development. We were told to slather everything with butter, olive oil, ranch dressing or chocolate syrup.  If only my doctor would tell me that same thing!  We were also told to stop giving Anna liquids during meals and start giving her a lot more whole milk.  We were scheduled for a weight check in a month.

So now we are in the middle of what I am calling “The Great Fattening Up”.  If it’s possible to put cheese or butter on a food that I’m feeding Anna – then I pack it on.  Wednesday for breakfast I gave Anna bits of butter croissant with butter on it and yesterday she had a waffle with butter in every possible crevice.  I tried this morning to spray whipping cream on her tray and have her eat it and she just played with it until it all melted.

“The Great Fattening Up” has had two bad consequences.  First, I have a tendency to eat whatever Anna is eating, in part because she seems to want to eat whatever I’m having and partly because if she’s not eating it I don’t want to waste food.  I’m pretty sure if they weighed me in a month I will have gone above and beyond my weight curve…

Secondly, because I am so stressed about Anna gaining weight it makes mealtimes difficult.  One of the things I learned early on with Anna is that for babies and kids your energy makes a huge difference in their behavior.  When I would go to nurse her if I was stressed or upset, she would not nurse and would fuss instead.  If I’m angry about something it will affect her and make her grumpy too.  Since I’m feeling the pressure to have her put on the pounds when she refuses to eat something (which is often) I get stressed and angry.  This makes her get upset and mealtime doesn’t go well after that.  I want her to eat, not play with her food and when she does I get so mad I have to leave the room in order to calm down.  Sometimes Anna throws food and I think it’s partially because she’s figured out how to push my buttons.

I’m struggling to find foods that Anna will eat consistently and that will help her to gain weight.   Of late Anna loves fresh pear slices and canned apricots, not really fattening foods.  She’ll eat mac and cheese and buttered toast, but if I try to feed it to her two days in a row it will be refused.  We’ve started calling her the “Pez dispenser” because Anna will take a food in her mouth and then immediately spit it back out.  This is what she did today with the quesadilla and avocado I offered her for lunch.  And then she pointed at the pear slices and did her “dat” (which we are interpreting as “that”). This has also turned mealtime into me running around in the kitchen desperately trying to find things that Anna might (and can) eat since she’s refused whatever it was that I offered her in the first place.  If it sounds frustrating, it is.

On the bright side, now that Anna is a year old, she can have lots of things she couldn’t have before.  Peanut butter, honey, chocolate and ice cream are all fair game.  As soon as I can get her to eat these things, I think Anna might like them.   But I tried the other day to give Anna vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup and she gave me this look as if to say, “Why the heck would I eat that? It’s cold and it tastes weird!”

Anna’s Birthday

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 | Anna | 1 Comment

I’ve finally tonight had time to off load the pictures from Anna’s birthday (I know – 10 days later – sorry!)

For her birthday we decided to have a small gathering.  There was a snow storm the day before so Mike’s dad did not arrive for Anna’s birthday and my Aunt Diane and Uncle Ted were stuck in Wyoming.  My mom and dad, my sister, brother-in-law, our nephew Brendan and our friend Jen were all present to celebrate Anna’s 1st.

When we presented her with her birthday cupcake I think Anna was a little overwhelmed by the large group of people standing around staring at her…

Anna and her candle

I made strawberry cupcakes with whipping cream for frosting for the kids and mini ginger orange cheesecakes for the adults.  Although, with 22 cupcakes and 12 cheesecakes everyone was able to have at least one cupcake and my sister seems to have had 3 cheesecakes…  Brendan seemed to really enjoy his cupcake.

Brendan and his cupcake

Anna on the other hand seemed more excited about her birthday balloon than her cupcake.

Anna and her balloon

No really, she was excited about it.  She was just so overwhelmed!

But then we gave her some cheese and crackers and she made the traditional mealtime mess.

Birthday Mess

Next year I am sure that she will be more excited about the presents and the cake.  For now, after everyone left Anna was able to get down on the floor and play with her toys and that was the best part of her birthday for Anna.

12 Months of Anna

Monday, April 6th, 2009 | Anna | 4 Comments

Yesterday was Anna’s 1st birthday.  We celebrated with a small gathering of my family at our house.  The star was a little overwhelmed and mostly stared at us all while we waited for her to dig into her strawberry cupcake and whipped cream frosting.  Next year I think she’ll be a little more excited…

I’m working on a post reflecting on a year of motherhood, but for now I wanted to post some pictures to reflect on Anna’s year.  I printed out these photos and put them out for everyone to see at the party how much Anna has changed over the past year.  It’s pretty amazing!

Anna’s 1st day of life was captured by her dad (I was barely able to hold the camera), but even then she was pretty cute:

Day 1

By May she had grown a little and I captured her yawning on her playmat:

Anna in May

In June we stuffed her into a laundry basket full of sheets and she smiled nonetheless:

Anna in June

July brought the ability to be on her tummy and not scream for a few minutes (very small babies hate being on their tummies):

Anna in July

In August I put her in a sweet little dress and propped her up on the futon with the help of her blocks:

Anna in August

September was nice and cool and so gave me the opportunity to try out a new coat and the hat we got from Rena (the hat doesn’t fit anymore sadly…):

Anna in September

October brought us to trying out solid food, which turned out to be pretty messy:

Messy in October

For Anna’s first Halloween I couldn’t resist stuffing her into a pink caterpillar costume:

Halloween Caterpillar

By November Anna could sit up by herself pretty well and did so very nicely for this picture:

Sitting up in November

December brought multiple Christmas outfits; my favorite being this red corduroy dress with the fake fur trim:

Christmas Anna

At 9 months most doctors will tell you that you can give the baby finger foods and of course Anna did this with great gusto, but sometimes she missed her mouth:

Anna in January

In February I took Anna for her first pool swim and she got really excited about it before we even left the locker room:

Swimmer Anna

March had a lot of warm days and very little snow, so we spent a lot of time at the park swinging, which is one of Anna’s favorite things:

Anna in March

Since she loves swinging so much we took her to the park last Thursday and she was again overjoyed:

Anna in April

When she’s at home, Anna’s favorite activity is climbing into and on top of anything and everything.  This includes into the ottoman that we use to store her toys in:

Into the Box

Don’t worry, after I laughed for a while I put down the camera and helped her out, but really, she didn’t seem to mind.

What an amazing transition from the small sleepy baby who could do nothing but cry, sleep, eat and poop to the little girl we have now.  What a difference a year makes!

Dallas made us all sick…

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 | Anna, Updates | 2 Comments

Literally.  Dallas made me, Anna and Mike all sick.  Granted, I can’t blame the actual city of Dallas, but still, I have to blame someone.

I am finally beginning to recover from the two viruses we picked up on our trip to Dallas, and so can finally sum up our trip.

Anna did really well on the trip – I’m so proud of her, she missed multiple naps, never got regular meals, spent far too much time in the car seat and did really well sleeping in the play pen in the hotel room.  All this and she was working on getting her first top tooth.  She also did really well getting held and passed around by multiple people she had never seen before.  She was in constant demand by all of the relatives, and was always a good smiley girl.

She snuggled a lot with Mike’s Uncle Dave, who seemed to have a real soft spot for her:

Anna and Uncle Dave

Of course, wouldn’t you know it my camera battery died right after I took these pictures, so I have no pictures of Anna with Aunt Pat (Dave’s wife) and Aunts Evelyn, Barbara and Becky.  Don’t worry, they did plenty of holding her as well, but without my camera, you’ll just have to believe me.

After I got my battery recharged we spent some time with Mike’s dad and his sister Marylou.  Marylou and Anna played a little as well and did some quality snuggling:

Anna and Marylou

Mike’s dad did a little playing with her as well:

Anna and Grandpa Munhall

The most fun that we had while we were in Dallas was at the house of Mike’s friends Heidi and J.J., who have kids of their own.  There were plenty of toys there and it was babyproofed, a nice break from Mike’s parent’s house and our hotel room, which were not.  Anna and the kids even did a little wrestling – Anna won of course:

Anna with Heather and Graham

It was really good to get home and get back to our normal activities.  We got her straight into the bath and she seems happy to be home in this picture:

Anna after her bath

This was taken before she (and Mike and I) all got the cold and the stomach virus.  We didn’t take any pictures of that – be thankful!

She’s starting to feel better these days and so in a constant search for trying new foods that she can feed herself, I gave her a little hummus to try for lunch.  She seemed to like it:

Anna and hummus

We were even feeling well enough on Monday to head to the park with Rhiannon and Brendan.  Anna loves the swing:

Anna in the swing

And then yesterday we were feeling well enough to head downtown for lunch with Mike.  Anna charmed everyone around us at the Cheesecake Factory and then it was back to work:

Anna and Mike's desk

I think if she could tell us what she was thinking it would be something along the lines of, “Isn’t this child labor?”

Anyway, we survived Dallas, the two viruses we got while we were there and now Anna is working on getting lots of teeth.  There’s still not much sleep around here, but we’re home and that’s what counts…

Tuesday without Mike

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 | Anna | 2 Comments

Mike has been working a lot lately (until 10:30 p.m. on Sunday! – though he was working at home) on a new project and now is in all day meetings.  Poor Mike! Normally Mike works from home on Tuesdays, but instead he had to go into the office for a meeting that involved breakfast, lunch and dinner; you know he’ll hit brain freeze sooner or later…

I thought I would document for Mike what we did today since he won’t see Anna much for the next few days.

Monday Mike didn’t see Anna at all, but this morning they were able to spend a few quality moments together, even if it was over laundry:

Anna and Daddy

After that, Anna felt it was time to show us her Popeye impression:

Popeye!

After Mike left we had breakfast, which lately always includes Cheerios (or rather the organic version), since they are a good finger food.  They also look really good pasted to your face:

That's 1 Cheerio on my chin!

I’m trying to get Anna to work on her spoon skills, and have found that the best way to do this is to put some cream cheese on the working end of the spoon:

Yummy Cream Cheese

Who wouldn’t like to eat cream cheese off the spoon?

After breakfast there was a little play time followed by the morning nap.  When she woke up I bundled Anna up for a walk with Cash.  It was a little cold, so I brought out the fleece…

Warm and ready for the dog walk

When we got home Anna found the phone and decided to make a few phone calls:

Phone Call

I’m not sure who she called, but if you know anyone in the “774″ area code, they apparently got a call from our house this morning.

Just for fun Anna taunted Cash for a little before we let him in from the backyard:

Cash Taunting

And then it was time to taunt that baby that was stuck outside in the cold:

Outside baby

My parents dropped by this morning that on their way out of town. They are driving up to British Columbia to spend a month in my uncle’s house on Vancouver Island.  I’m so jealous! Anyway, Anna got to snuggle with Nana and Grandpa before they left for Canada.

Grandpa and Anna

She thought Nana was especially fascinating today:

Nana and Anna

And then it was on to lunch time.  At lunch we worked on Anna’s fork skills with some macaroni and cheese.  I don’t think she gets the whole fork concept just yet:

Fork skills need work

After lunch we did a little time with Anna’s walker toy, which she’s slowly learning to use properly:

Walker Time

Anna has a little diaper rash and the best way to help this is to do a little time without a diaper.  Since this means I have to generally do a little clean up (accidents happen!), I thought I would try putting her in the laundry basket at first.  But Anna had other plans:

I'm not staying in here!

This is what happened when she accidentally tipped over in the basket – she landed in laundry jail:

Laundry Jail

After a little more play time it was time for the afternoon nap.  It was short, but Anna woke up cheery and after letting her talk and play for a while I went to get her out of her crib and was greeted with this:

I'm up!

Cash likes to get two walks a day, so we bundled up again and headed out.  As we started to walk it began to snow:

Snowy Walk

It was cold on the walk and when we got home Anna wanted to watch the snow from the comfort of inside where it was warm.

Watching the Snow

We were invited to go over to my sister’s to hang out and so packed up and headed over (it’s 5 minutes away) to Aunt Rhiannon’s.  Anna’s cousin Brendan had gotten out a toy that he thought Anna might like to play with and briefly (he’s 2 going on 3 after all) he allowed her to play with the toy, but only with supervision:

Brendan and Anna

Then Anna and Rhiannon spent some quality time on the couch with a snack while we watched Top Gear.

Rhiannon and Anna

When we got ready to leave Brendan wanted to walk us out to the car, but wasn’t able to find his own shoes.  He opted for a pair of Rhiannon’s, but I think he will regret that later when he’s 17 and I drag out this picture to show to his prom date:

Nice shoes buddy!

I put Anna and her two snack cups (we had left one at Rhiannon’s on another day) in to the car and we headed home.  Sadly, sometimes the snack cups have a way of trapping your hands and not letting go.  I think that’s what happened here:

Snack Trapped!

For dinner we had various finger foods including green beans, banana and goat cheese crumbles. Anna especially likes the goat cheese and pointed to the package every time she wanted more:

Dat!

Some people may like an after dinner mint, but Anna prefers an after dinner sock:

After Dinner Sock

The sock is probably less fattening than the mint, even if it is a little fuzzy.

After such a busy day it was time to get in the bath and do some quality time with the ducks and the frogs:

Rubber Duckie you're the one...

Anna was pretty tired and I ended the bath when she stood up and reached out for me.  I think she was trying to say, “Get me to bed!”