We’re All Here Today!
Anya sang this song non-stop for about 15 minutes before I got out my camera and another 10 minutes after I turned it off. Everyone was here today, including all of the characters from her Where’s Mommy book, Elmo, Ernie, Baby, Anya, Mommy, Daddy, and her classmates and teachers from day care.
Anya tends to sing a lot of different songs throughout the day, but what made this one amusing/exciting to both me and Lex is that we had never heard it before! She must have learned it at day care, probably as part of circle time.
Fun at home
It’s been pretty hot here this past week. Rather than venturing out to the pool or beach, we stayed close to home this weekend. We took advantage of some new toys (many recently acquired from craigslist and Freecycle) and enjoyed our time together.
Anya liked moving the water from her pool to the water table:
Then we trekked up the hill:
Swinging:
Playing on the slides:
Anya tries to ride her new (used) toy:
It was a little small for her. She ultimately decided this was easier:
(Savanna is the little girl who lives a few houses down from us. Diesel is her dog.)
My personal stylist
Tonight while I was sitting with Anya during her pre-bath potty time, she kept trying to grab my face, something I did not want her to do. After several failed attempts despite warnings that I did not want her to, she caught me, and as I was about to give her a firm “No!” she said, “You’re so pretty, Mommy!” I cracked up, which of course made her repeat it, which of course fueled my laughter even more. Then she said it about 100 times more, running her fingers through my hair each time. By the end, there definitely wasn’t anything pretty about me - I probably resembled Cousin Itt more than myself!
Passé Pacis
When Anya moved to her crib, we scattered a bunch of pacifiers in there with her. That way, when she lost one at night, she could find another one pretty quickly just by feeling around.
Within the past couple months, I’ve become mildly obsessed with figuring out how to get Anya to retire her pacis. I’ve worn braces three separate times in my life, and I have read plenty about the negative effects pacis that overstay their welcome can have on teeth. I was fully supportive of Anya’s using pacifiers early on; anything that helped her sleep / feel calm was okay in my book. But now that she’s becoming a true big girl, I was ready to say bye-bye to pacis. It turns out, Anya was too.
First, I removed all but two pacis from her crib. One for the mouth, one to grip tightly in her hand as she fell asleep.
Then, Lauren and I (especially Lauren) talked to Anya a lot about how her big girls sleep with Only One Paci. Eventually: “How many pacis are you going to sleep with tonight?” “ONE!”
Following a few minutes of crying for “TWO PACIS!”, sleeping with one went fine.
After a week or two, we spent several days talking to Ani about how some of her best friends sleep with NO pacis. Anya could successfully tell us how many pacis those buddies slept with pretty quickly, but she was also often quick to add: “I sleep with ONE paci.”
We started telling her that soon she, too, would sleep with no pacis, like a REALLY big girl.
Yesterday was the Big Day. We talked to her (again, mostly Lauren) in the morning about how she would nap with NO pacis. Then, at naptime, Anya traded Mommy her paci for one sticker, and got the promise of TWO MORE stickers after she woke up. The stickers were propped up so that she could see them from the paciless crib.
Anya did actually cry/moan a little bit as she went to sleep for the nap, but only for a couple minutes, and seemingly NOT in relation to the pacifier situation. Rather, she was complaining that Lauren had left the room when she did (rather than read, oh, 347 more books).
She proudly claimed her two bonus stickers upon waking after a nice long nap:
Lauren went out last night. The plan was for me to show Anya a new, secret gift (pom-poms from the dollar store) that she would get in the morning after sleeping all night with no pacis. I decided not to bring up the pom-pom gift unless it seemed totally necessary. I talked very briefly to Anya about how she’d be sleeping for the night with no paci; she had no objection.
After last night’s bed time routine, I put Anya into the crib a little nervously. She immediately did the “check for pacifiers” routine… for less than a second. Then, I watched her brain click as she remembered what was going on. She settled down and went to sleep.
She really is a big girl.
And maybe now, I can keep the pom-poms instead 
Anya is 21 months old!
Anya is 21 months old today! I’m not going to post a complete update since I wrote one fairly recently. Here’s just a few things I’ve noticed:
Potty - There has been a definite increase in the frequency with which Anya tells me she needs to go to the bathroom just to pee, and sometimes when we get there, we discover she had a dry diaper! However, she’s had at least four or five poop accidents in the last two months, all of which occurred at playdates. I figure she was having so much fun that she didn’t want to stop to go to the bathroom.
Books - Anya has been able (and eager) to sit for longer stories these days. We don’t let her have free access to her paper books because she’s a little to rough with the pages, but at naptime and bedtime, she only wants one of the big books from her shelf instead of her baby board books. Some of her current favorites are If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss, and Good-bye Mommy by Bruce King Doman (the last one is an old book that belonged to me when I was little). Anya can be cute when she’s being read to - she often has a comment to make about the pictures, and I enjoy when she does because it shows that she’s really paying attention. On the other hand, she’s been a bit of a pain in the tush at bedtime lately because once we’re finished she wants to hold every book herself, shouting, “I read it!”
Naps - Naptime has been a little frustrating for all of us here. Well, it’s really post-naptime that is the problem. Regardless of whether she goes down at 12:30 or 2:30 and whether she naps for 45 minutes or 2 1/2 hours, Anya tends to wake up in a miserable mood. Screaming, crying, whining…it generally lasts for 30 to 60 minutes until she snaps out of it, and it’s very difficult to get her past it. She absolutely still needs the nap (yesterday afternoon she fell asleep in her carseat before I even started driving!). If anyone out there has advice, we’d love to hear it!
My mutant belly/Mommy is NOT an ice cream cone
I’m 19 weeks along now, and we noticed yesterday that we can see my stomach pop out a bit when the baby kicks! It’s very cool. What was a little bizarre was when we observed that my belly button does this weird in and out thing with some of the baby’s movements. If only Anya hadn’t stretched my stomach out beyond repair!
On a completely unrelated note, I’ve been having a bit of a run-in with Anya over the past few days. She has decided that it is funny to lick me. I have countered with the opinion that this is, in fact, GROSS, but she’s still going with funny. I’m not sure what inspired her to do it the first few times, but now she’s totally doing it for the reaction (and I have to admit I have been reacting). Ignoring her would probably stop the behavior after a little while since there’d be no reaction to reinforce the licking, but I’m not sure ignoring it is the way to go in this case. It really is quite disgusting, and I would like her to stop immediately, not after several times of licking me without getting a response. She’ll apologize after I firmly tell her “no licking” and start walking away from her, and she’ll tell me she’s not supposed to lick, but then she does it again anyway. She doesn’t do it to Lex, just me. Aren’t I lucky?
Sesame Place
We had a very busy weekend! Playdates, time at the pool, dinner with friends…but the BIG event of our weekend was our trip to Sesame Place. Earlier this summer, Lex and I decided we weren’t going to take Anya there this year, but when a friend from my online October ‘06 birth club suggested a few of us meet up there, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity (Thanks, Saina!). To say that Anya had a blast is a gross understatement. It’s two days later and she’s still talking about the trip constantly (”I meet Elmo! I eat breakfast with him! I give a hug to Ernie! I like Telly show!”).
We attended the Elmo and Friends breakfast in the morning (I highly recommend it; you really can’t get face to face time like that with the characters anywhere else in the park). Anya was a big fan of Elmo and Zoe, and eventually warmed up to Ernie and Big Bird. As for Bert, she only liked him from a distance. She was very excited to see him later at one of the shows we saw. Oddly, during the shows, she loved the characters, but the real people freaked her out. Stay away, Mr. Noodle! Anya loved the rides and the water attractions, and we even got her to take a (short) nap in her stroller. We took a lot of pictures; here are some of my favorites:
Anya gets a hug from Elmo:
The carousel:
Anya with Erica’s children (I’m still mad at myself for missing the chance to get a shot of all three families together):
Lex doing the hula dance at Big Bird’s show (see the video for more!):
And, of course, no post from me would be complete without a video:
Anya at her “ballerina class”
This summer, I signed up for a Mommy and Me dance class with Anya, and she just loves it. She talks about it all week!