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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.
Who needs sleep?
Well you’re never gonna get it.
Who needs sleep?
Tell me what’s that for?
Who needs sleep?
Be happy with what you’re getting.
There’s a guy who’s been awake
Since the Second World War
-Who Needs Sleep, Barenaked Ladies
Whenever my kids (and by kids I mean Anna) are keeping me up at night and I’m feeling a little extra tired this chorus from the Barenaked Ladies song, Who Needs Sleep?, plays on repeat in my head. Like right now for example. It is on constant repeat because Who Needs Sleep? This girl needs sleep.
Anna is suffering from a double whammy of teething, she is working at least 2, possibly 3, molars and has a cold that just won’t go away. This double whammy is keeping her up at night. Several times every night for the past week or so, some nights every couple of hours, I hear her stir in her bed and beginning whimpering and eventually crying. Between the stuffy nose making it hard for her to breath and the pain caused by her molars trying to break through the skin she just isn’t sleeping well and that makes her mad, which makes her cry. Most of the time she isn’t even completely awake, she’s just whimpering and crying in her sleeping (poor thing) and I don’t have to physically get up and go rock her. Other times I have to go pick her up and rock her for a bit to calm her down and get her back to sleep.
This lack of sleep is getting to me. I feel as though I’m operating on fumes at this point. What I wouldn’t give to sleep in until *gasp* 7am and feel rested for a change. Even going to bed early doesn’t help because being woken up every few hours by the sound of Anna’s whimpers and cries, even if I don’t have to actually get out of bed each time, doesn’t make for a restful sleep. I’ve tried tylenol and motrin at night to help with the teething pain, I’ve tried the humidifier and vaporizer in her room to help with the congestion but nothing is working right now. She is uncomfortable and it is causing her to have a restless sleep, which makes her sad and pissed off, so she cries out. Who can blame her? I feel so bad for her and I wish there was more I could do for her (for her sake and mine).
Who needs sleep? I do, and so does my sweet little Anna. For now, neither of us are getting much of it so the chorus keeps playing over and over in my head. This too shall pass and those stubborn teeth will pop through and this endless cold will go away and we’ll both get back to sleeping at night. In the meantime, pass the caffeine.
When Maya was little I used to have so much fun getting her dressed in the morning. I loved picking out the perfect little outfit. My favorite was always a cute pair of jeans (I love baby jeans!) and one of her many adorable shirts. I loved shopping for new clothes for her, finding more adorable little pieces to add to her wardrobe. As I shopped for those new pieces and as I put together cute little outfits for her, I would daydream about how much fun it would be to shop for outfits when she was a bit bigger. I’d look at the clothes in the kid section and imagine what she might wear.
I knew early on that she was going to be opinionated about clothing. She was probably 2 the first time she voiced her opinion at the store as I was picking something out. I had fun with it once she started to show her inner fashionista. I’d let her choose what color shirt we would buy, or which pants. It was fun. Eventually it led to her wanting to pick out her outfits too. And, I was okay with that, it was fun to see what she would pair together. If the outfit was beginning to look a little too crazy I would steer her carefully towards something a little less fashion forward. For a while we went on, peacefully, this way. Me buying new things, with her input of course, and her pretty much picking what she wore each day.
As time went on her opinions grew stronger and I lost all hope of getting to pick out those cute big kid outfits I had dreamed about. I was okay with that. I missed those cute little jeans that I used to love to dress her in, but the dresses she just HAD to wear were pretty darn cute too.
I never would have imagined this happening, but somewhere along the line Maya developed this weird disdain for wearing clothing. She still loves clothing, especially frilly dresses and skirts, but she hates wearing clothing for any length of time and Lord help us if she has to wear pants (which is a good portion of the time since she has to wear them for school). If we are home she is in nothing but her underwear. There is always a pile of clothing at my front door because the second to steps over the threshold she begins stripping down. This has been going on for 2 years now. For a little while, last winter, I got her back into the swing of wearing clothing all the time again, but she has reverted back to her old ways again.
Lately, it has become a big problem, this disdain for clothing. Every time she has to get dressed a battle of epic proportions ensues. I mean, serious epic battles complete with hysterics, yelling screaming (on both our parts) and lots of crying. And, since she insists on stripping down to her underwear every time we come home we can end up having these battles several times a day.
The other day we hit a breaking point. We were trying to get ready for a quick trip over to the park to play for a little bit before dinner. I was working on getting Anna ready so Lorne was helping Maya. I heard the freak out begin when he told her she had to pick out pants and a long sleeve shirt (her two least favorite items). It escalated when he tried to help her get dressed, she only wanted mommy to help so down the stairs she came. At this point Anna was all ready to go complete with coat, hat and mitts. I helped Maya get her clothing on and she had a complete meltdown over the way her pants felt. She was in complete hysterics, screaming right in my face. It ended with her being sent to her room and our trip to the park being canceled.
It was one of her worst meltdowns over clothing, which is saying a lot given how crazy her daily freak outs over clothing can be. Lorne and I talked about it and decided enough was enough, and we started the clothing challenge. Now, she has to wear clothing all day, every day, even when we are home. The hope is that by having to wear clothing every day she will again get used to the way clothing feels on her body and her freak outs will begin to stop. Fingers crossed.
I don’t even care anymore that all she wants to wear are sundresses, even in the middle of winter. I don’t care anymore about the cute jeans and adorable shirts that she absolutely won’t wear. At this point I just want my mornings to not involve any more epic battles over clothing. I just want her to pick out something she will wear and wear it, all day, with no fussing.
So, one week into the clothing challenge and things are…going ok. She will wear her clothes all day, although if she has been wearing pants out she changes into a dress the second we walk in the door. But, every morning is still a huge battle to get her dressed, especially if she has to wear pants. Sometimes I wish I lived somewhere where she could get away with wearing sundresses every single day because then maybe she wouldn’t fight with me every morning.
Today I am incredibly thankful for these three and all the happiness and love they fill my life with. They are my heart.
Happy Thanksgiving! I hope each of you are enjoying a wonderful meal surrounded by those you love.
There are a few toys, among the many that fill our family room, that I can steadfastly say were good investments. Toys that have entertained Maya for years. Old favorites that are still played with. Toys that may collect dust for a while, all but forgotten, but are always returned too eventually. The two that first come to mind are her dollhouse that she got for Christmas when she was 2 and this little Fisher Price tea set that was one of her first non-baby toys. They are the toys that through the years have been played with most, loved most and are returned too often, even now as she is so quickly growing up.
I love watching her play with them. I love watching her imagination at work as her dolls, princesses, or ponies use the dollhouse. I love drinking tea and eating cupcakes with her when she puts on a little tea party with her tea set. And now, I get to watch a whole new person explore these old favorites. Anna has taken a liking to both the dollhouse and the tea set. It is no surprise that these toys are among her favorites since she loves to do whatever her big sister is doing and she has been treated to tea and cakes from very early on her life
The best is when I get to watch them play with them together.
By the time Anna outgrows these toys they will have been loved and played with for a long, long time. They will be well worn I’m sure. I’ll tuck them away somewhere so that one day when my girls have kids of their own I may get the chance to watch a whole new generation play with these toys that have already been so loved.