Anya is 19 months old!
(In case you aren’t fluent in Anya-ese, at the end of that video when she was “reading” Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? she started talking about what each animal says. When she got to the goldfish, teacher, and children and didn’t know what they said, she made up “Ooh ooh ooh!” As her mom, I thought that was hysterical.)
That’s our Anya, such a big girl (although lately, if you ask her, she tells you she’s a little baby - YIKES!). She’s doing so much and she’s so fun to be around, at least when she’s not sick and cranky (this was a TOUGH week).
Anya’s speech ranges from single words to 8+ word complete sentences these days. Most of the time she talks in 2-5 word phrases. You saw her count in the video. Usually she does “1-2-3-3-4-6-11-12-13!” although this morning she got to eight in the right order. We’re not sure why six seems to be the magic number. She can identify several colors accurately, though she still makes mistakes, of course, but she gets them right much more often than chance would allow. She can tell you her full name and her birthday, too. It’s really neat to see her become more aware of how language works, especially when she self-corrects. One of her biggest misuses is “me/you” - she still says “Rock you! Carry you! Help you!” when she means, “Me.” Now, though you can ask her, “Hold you?” and she’ll say, “Hold me!” I’m also always amused when she repeats things we say. The other day we were talking about something, can’t remember what, and she turns to me and says, rather indignantly, “I said NO!” I wonder where she heard that? 
I was just talking with a friend of ours (her daughter is about 7 months older than Anya) about how crazy it is the way toddlers remember things from weeks or months ago, even if it was something that only happened once and it seemed insignificant at the time. She told me some VERY funny stories about her kid, and one story I had shared about Anya was how last week I was driving her home from day care and she suddenly starts asking me to sing something, but I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. She was getting more and more agitated, and then I finally realized she was saying, “Sing people’s trash!” She wanted me to sing a song I had made up and sang to her once several weeks ago when I was driving her home during the week when everybody puts out their big items for the spring bulk pick-up. I was astounded she remembered that - I didn’t remember it!
I’m sad that baby story time at the library is going on hiatus until July. Anya has the biggest “crush” on the woman who runs it. She talks about Miss Renee all week long, imitates the welcome song frequently, and when we’re there, likes to stand within a foot of Miss Renee whenever possible. I am glad she likes going to the library, though, and I guess it’s not surprising, because she still loves books more than anything else. She can “read” so many of her books. It’s incredible how much of them she has memorized. She doesn’t know every word, of course, but you can tell from listening to her that she gets the basic gist of a page. Almost always she ends a book with “The end!” She’ll still fill in the gaps with babble. Actually, when she’s “reading” or pretending to talk on the phone are really the only times she babbles anymore, though she mixes it with words (Right now she’s pretending to talk to my sister, and she’s telling her “Hello! Samantha how you doing? Come out!” It’s very funny). Another favorite pastime is singing. She can sing parts of several of her favorite songs, and isn’t terrible about carrying a tune, either (she gets that from Lex).
Baby play is so great to observe. I continue to enjoy watching Anya play with her dolls. She’s very motherly to them. She still loves to pull out a scarf or a blanket, lay it on the floor, and put a doll down to sleep (which now involves a lot of talking about it). We just picked up some cool pretend play toys from a garage sale, so now she also gives her babies a bath, puts them on the potty (along with the directive to “wipe the vagina and tushy”), feeds them, takes them for walks in the stroller, you name it. So cute. She’s developed a recent fascination with taking the clothes on and off of her dolls - mostly off. This week she stripped down her Cabbage Patch doll (with help), and after I suggested we put the baby’s clothes back on too many times, she took them from me, put them inside her toy drum, and slammed the lid down. Take that, Mommy! We’ve had a little art renaissance here as well, so there’s been a lot of requests to use crayons, markers, and most recently, paints. Like she said in the video, she likes to make dots (even with her food - gross).
We had a minor setback in potty training a for a little while this month. I think it was because there was a small incident involving taking her off the potty before she was actually done, and she became terrified of using the potty upstairs. It became problematic because she didn’t want to poop in her diaper but also didn’t want to go on any potty, so she was holding it in for 24 hours (not good when she’s used to going 2-3 times a day). Eventually a new Elmo potty seat and hand stamps whenever she successfully went on the potty got her back into the swing of things. She’s actually started telling us she needs to go potty first thing in the morning, too, even if she just has to pee - that’s a major improvement - but she still has a wet diaper more often than not. Our pediatrician’s advice was not to push it and follow her lead.
Anya’s been getting more mischievous and daring lately. Her climbing skills are getting better, which is how she ended up standing on a stool in the middle of the kitchen two nights ago. We’re used to being able to let her out of our sight for a few seconds without worrying that she’ll get into too much trouble, but it looks like those days are quickly becoming numbered. She wants to open, touch, throw, and climb on everything (but at least with climbing we’re not at the get up on a kitchen chair and climb onto the stove phase yet!). I’m sure she’s got lots more in store for us…never a dull moment!
