Good Book

 

Anna's Cell Phone

 

Anna's Cats

 

Crawling

She did it!  All of a sudden, last night, in the middle of NOTHING at all, Anna just started crawling!  She’s been playing on her hands and knees for a few weeks now, but never had any forward movement.  But yesterday it just sort of clicked and she got this big smile and started crawling!  So far she’s just gone short distances around the living room, and she’s still finding it faster to scoot on her bottom everywhere (that way she can carry things with her).  She clearly is very proud of herself, though.  She gets this big grin on her face as if to say, “Look at me, look what I can do!”.  Good job, Anna Banana!

Carrot

 

Third Tooth

Anna’s finally getting some more teeth.  She’s been so crabby at random moments for the past few days and at lunch today, with Terry, I noticed a little nub of tooth coming in on the top.  Unfortunately, she took to chewing on crayons this afternoon to relieve the ache.  When I looked over, wondering why she was so quiet, she had a mouthful of blue waxy crumbles.  Those things are non-toxic, right? 

I’ve replaced her crayon craving with a big carrot from the fridge.  It’s cold and seems to be keeping her happy and still colorful.  Her cheeks and fingers are all orange.  J

15 Month check-up

Anna had her check-up on Monday, and she’s still a healthy little girl.  Her weight picked up much more in the past three months than it has since she was born.  She weighed in at 20.4 pounds, which is all the way up in the 20^th percentile!  Her height has averaged out at the 50^th percentile, so while she’s still skinny, it’s not as pronounced as it was a few months ago. 

Anna now has several words, though sometimes you have to be her parent in order to understand her.  She says: milk, juice, truck, cat, what’s that?, book, mamma and dada.  She also is now proficient at going down the stairs and sometimes gets up on to her hands and knees for a few moments while she’s scooting and rolling around.  The cutest thing to develop in the past few weeks is her new love of teddy bears.  She has two or three that she prefers above all others and one that she sleeps with every day.  I’ve noticed, too, that her understanding has really grown in the past month or so, too.  You can ask her where her hat is, or her book or bear or milk, and she’ll look around and then go get it and hold it up for you to see!   She’s still working on putting hats on, though mostly she just pats it on to her head in a big pile of fabric, she hasn’t figured out to open the hat up and make it fit around her head yet. 

Since she’s still not standing at all or pulling up to standing, the doctor has recommended we take her in for a developmental assessment, just to make sure there are no underlying problems.  He said in most cases where babies have one area of delay in their development, they just eventually outgrow it and we never find out what caused it.  We’ll be doing the assessment later this month and I’ll keep everyone updated on what comes of it. 

Kurt got home late last night from his ski trip and Anna was startled but then very happy to see him again after five days of missing him.  She definitely noticed he was gone, and by Saturday evening had really started getting clingy and shy again, which she hasn’t been doing for a couple months now. Poor Kurt had to go back to work today on just five hours sleep, so we haven’t really had a chance to hear about his ski trip yet, but I’m sure I’ll have pictures to post later in the week!

Stairs, continued

Well, I had a bit of a shock this morning.  While hanging out in the playroom, Anna did her usual giggle and scoot out to the hallway, where she waits for me to “sneak up” on her and then spot her as she carefully and slowly descends the steps. 

Not today!  Today, she giggled, scooted and just started plopping down the steps while I was preparing to pop out from behind the door and “surprise” her.  I rushed over as she quickly slid to the third step down, giggles ricocheting off the walls. I stood back in amazement and just let her do her thing. She didn’t wobble, fall or lose her grip.  In a matter of seconds, she was sitting at the bottom of the steps, smiling up at me, totally in control of the situation. 

Independence is here… I thought I had more time!