Anna has hit that stage of development that leads children to fixate on their favourite song and replay it until their parents go mad. Anna is on a full-on kick for Feist's fantastic "1-2-3-4." It was bad enough when all she knew was which CD to insist on and which buttons on the stereo to stab at until the song would play. Then, this being an multimedia age, we decided she might like to see the video on YouTube. (Anna doesn't get to watch any TV at all, so we indulge her love for kitties and horses and puppets and goofiness by letting her watch wee bits and snatches on YouTube.)
Now, after playing the song twenty or fifty times in a row on the stereo, she stands at the bottom of the stairs pointing up to where the computer is, humming the tune and doing a special Feist dance. She loves the video, with lots of people dancing to her favourite song in happy colours.
After her daily Feist-ival, she spent the remains of the day eating potatoes (she can eat a whole one even when I can't) and changing the diaper on her doll, who apparently was full of pee for a non-wet-ems type of doll.
Another milestone: she helped her mom make cookies for the first time today. She whisked the dry ingredients and hardly got any strewn around the kitchen, and she poured in the chocolate chips. She was very proud. She brought several cookies to her dad to show off her helpfulness. (Of course, she also memorized the location of the chocolate chips and snuck a handful later in the day when we weren't looking, but that's another story.)
The weather has been dreadful, dreadful this winter, going from bad to worse and back again, and she has been as prone to cabin fever as any of us. When she wants an adventure or just to get out of the house, she takes your hand and leads you to her snowsuit or sits on the floor putting on her boots.
She likes longer and more sophisticated storybooks now -- the kinds with actual stories in them, rather than just short rhymes and rhythms. She tells stories, too, though still not in so many words. She tends to save words for special occasions, such as "cheese" and "shoes" and "kitty" and "eyes" and "yay" and "yippee." Her favourite word is still "daddy," though she throws in a "mommy" now and then when the occasion demands. Her bottle is a "bobby" and her dollies are "babies." She has had lots of opportunity to watch snowplows and salt trucks this winter, and she loves them. She stands in the window saying "vrmm." She can pick pictures of large snow-moving machines out of the tiniest, blurriest pictures in the newspaper before we even notice them.
Anna has extra teeth, too -- at least fourteen now, with two new incisorry types on the bottom. (That might explain some sleepless nights a while back.) We assume she's growing, because she's eating like a horse. Today, when offered her favourite pasta casserole for lunch, she said "yay" after every bite. When I called home from work, I could hear her raucous celebrations.
She's up to so much these days, it's impossible to keep up. We're sure she'll really bloom when spring arrives and she can get out of the house more and enjoy the yard and the world's blooming things and returning birds and sunshine. (Are these possible? Hope so!)
