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This little monkey. This little ball of giggles and snuggles turned 20 months old yesterday. 20 MONTHS! That is two thirds of the way through her 2nd year already. In just 4 short months she is going to be 2. Crazy!
Anna at 20 months makes me smile and laugh on a daily basis. I love this age. Her vocabulary is incredible and her communication skills are stellar. There is rarely a moment of frustration where I don’t know what she is trying to say. She can name at least a dozen or more animals. She can easily tells what she wants or needs. She carries on little conversations half real words, half babble that make complete sense, it is amazing.
Anna is hysterical. Her little Annaisms make me laugh on a daily basis. She is at that age where she will not let you get her on video doing anything. If she sees camera she stops what she is doing and runs away. There are so many things I would love to capture on video to watch later when she is driving me crazy. I need a more sly way to get video of her 
Instead I’ll have to write it all down for now.
A few of my favorite Annaisms at 20 months…
She can name tons of animals. We’ll go through some of her animal books and she’ll know about 80% of them. However, there are several animals that she refers to only by the sound they make, even though she knows the actual name for them. A pig for example is always identified but a nasal grunting sound. A cat is a “meow” and a horse is a “neigh”. She uses these sounds so enthusiastically it cracks me up every time!
The way she interacts with our cat, Louis, is just darling. It is something that needs to be seen to be truly appreciated but I’ll try to do it justice with my words. For starters she calls him “Lou Lou” which is so adorable and has us all calling him Lou Lou now. In the morning he always comes into her room with me when I get her out of bed and she’ll cry out “Lou Lou” when she sees him and then say “mon” (come on) to get him to follow us downstairs. Whenever she sees him doing something she thinks he shouldn’t be doing she’ll say “No Lou Lou” like this little mother. If she catches him on the counter or the table she’ll shout “NOW” (down) at him. She snuggles and kisses him constantly throughout the day. I love it. They are quite a pair.
She loves to sing and dance. If she wants to hear music she’ll bring the remote over to you and dance to tell you what she wants. On and off throughout the day you’ll hear her singing, which is truly just adorable. If she hears a song at the store or on the radio that she recognizes she’ll start singing along. The other day in Target Pink’s Try came on and the whole rest of the time we were in the store she was singing “try try try” 
The girl is funny and she loves to know you think she is funny. If something makes you laugh she gets this look on her face that I can’t even really describe, it is pure pride, and she’ll perform whatever it is she did again. She even seems to understand that things stop being funny after a while and will move on to something else before she hits that point. We may have a little comedian on our hands.
Thanks to her big sister she is surrounded by princesses on a daily basis. She has taken to calling all princesses “lella” (Cinderella). When I put a skirt or dress on her she looks down at it and says “oh, lella, pree” (oh, Cinderella, pretty). It stems from Maya wanting to play real-life princesses with her one day and both of them wearing their fanciest dresses to dance around the living room. Now she thinks she is a princess every time she wears something other than pants
One of my truly favorite Annaisms is how she says goodbye. She used to just say “bye” and wave, then one day she all of a sudden started saying “bye you”. It is adorable. She says it every time. She’ll wave her cute little wave and say “bye you”. It is so cute I love it.
I could go on and on. She is full of adorable little sayings and expressions these days. Her zest for life is contagious. Anna at 20 months is a doll. Now if only I could get her to perform for the camera so I can try to record some of this posterity.
Friday night, for the first time since she was born, I didn’t nurse Anna before bed. At 19 months it was time to be done. She probably would have kept going if I had been willing, but I was ready to be done. As I read her a story and rocked her for a bit before putting her in her crib I found myself feeling a bit sad. Even though I was ready to be done it felt like the last piece of her babyhood slipping away.
The process to get to Friday night when we were officially done breast feeding started about a month ago. Slowly Anna had been dropping nursing sessions on her own since she turned 1. We were down to the last 3, the hardest ones in my experience, for them to give up. The first one we worked on was her before nap nursing session. It was by far the toughest, and although she no longer asks to nurse before nap time it is still a struggle to get her to fall asleep. A few days after we ended to before nap nursing she decided to give up the first thing in the morning session on her own. It was nice not to have to battle her on that one.
Once we were down to just the before bed session I took a break for a couple of weeks from the weaning process and let her adjust to the new normal. I knew on Thursday it was the last time I would nurse her. I had picked Friday because I figured if it was a real challenge to get her to go to sleep it would be easier when we didn’t have to get up early for anything the next day. Surprisingly, she was fine with it. We read a story and then snuggled and rocked in the rocking chair for a bit. She was out within minutes of me putting her in her crib. And, she has continued to do well every night since.
I am proud of myself for making it another 19 months. Breastfeeding this time around was a much easier than last time as it didn’t come with any of the early struggles I experienced with Maya. It wasn’t challenge free but the challenges that did come up were easy to get through thanks to the 19 months experience I had nursing Maya. I’ll miss my quiet time with Anna all snuggled into me that nursing guaranteed daily. Although, Anna loves to snuggle so I’m sure there will be no lack of snuggle time with her.
Anna’s favorite activities are those that require quiet concentration. From birth her personality has been that of quiet observer. As I watch her take in the world I can almost see the sponge within her absorbing and expanding. She is happiest reading books, coloring or building with her duplo blocks. She will concentrate for great lengths of time on these activities, taking pride in her work and gladly showing off what she has created with a very proclamation of “Look!!” as she holds up her creation for all to see.
So, yesterday, since Maya had the day off school and I was trying to come up with an extra fun activity for us to do I decided to let both girls paint. Painting has always been one of Maya’s favorite things to do, but, up until now I had not let Anna in on the fun. I taped together several pages from the big coloring pad Anna got for Christmas and I let her have at it (knowing a great mess was likely).
From the first stroke Anna was in heaven!
The look on her face was priceless. She was so proud of herself
Part way into our painting project she realized that Maya’s pictures were much more colorful than hers and started to ask for more colors. She asked for “boo” and “low” (blue and yellow). Eventually her little paint tray was filled with every color of the rainbow and she was delighted!
I’d say painting is likely going to be a new favorite activity for my budding little Picasso It won’t be long now before crayons no longer cut it and she is asking for paints whenever the creativity bug bits.
Anna sure comes by this love of colorful creation honestly, her big sister is quite the little artist herself.
Our sweet girl is 18 months!
Weight: 21lbs (15th percentile)
Height: 30.5 in (20th percentile)
Head Circumference: 18.5 in (70th percentile)
She had her 18 month well-child check up with her pediatrician this morning and Dr. H confirmed what we already know about our girl…she is perfectly awesome As you can see from her stats above she is still rocking her tiny peanut status. I expected the numbers to confirm that she is still my bitty little girl since at 18 months she still wearing mostly 9 month and 12 month sized clothing. I put an 18 month shirt on her the other day and she was swimming in it. It is kind of nice because I’m getting a ton of wear out of her clothing.
Developmentally, Anna is doing great. Dr. H was very impressed with the incredible strides Anna has made since her 15 month check with respect to walking. She is doing very well with her gross motor skills and is off the charts when it comes to her fine motor skills and her verbal development. Her vocabulary is huge for her age. Our girl is, in the words of Dr. H, “perfectly awesome”.
Anna’s current favorite activities including reading, coloring and playing with her big sister. Her concentration is crazy good for her age. She’ll sit by the book shelf and read books forever. When she is coloring she concentrates very carefully and gets right into. She loves to show off her drawings with a very proud “look” when she is done. Maya and Anna play well together most of the time, which is so nice because Anna really does adore her big sister and loves playing with her.
This is one of my favorite ages. There is so much learning and exploring and growing going on inside their little minds at this age. I love watching it happen. I love watching her explore the world and see what she takes away from it. Every day she wakes up a little bit different than the girl she was the day before. It is wonderful to part of her growth. Love you to pieces sweet Anna B.
Happy 1/2 Birthday Miss Anna B!
Wow, 18 months already! Time flies when you are having barrels of fun.
It is crazy to think we are already halfway through Anna’s second year. I mean wasn’t her birthday just yesterday! Every day she is more toddler and less baby. As she sits and talks to me in her own little way of half real words half baby speak I am in awe of how quickly time is rushing by. But, no matter how big she is getting (in her own tiny peanut way) she isn’t too big for snuggles. And, boy, does she love to snuggle. Where is that pause button?
More to come later this week on her 18 month stats and what she is up to these days once she has her well child check up on Thursday. For now I’m going to go back to snuggling my still sick and teething 18 month old snuggle bug.
Love you baby girl
