Toddler Translator

Anna's pronunciation with words is remarkably good, but Matt and I wanted to share a few of her words/phrases that may need a little translating. Granted, her pronunciation and vocabulary is developing more every day so these will probably all be different by next week.

"roda odor" - roll over
"poke techer" - smoke detector (no longer just "beep beep")
"fie yarm" - fire alarm (no longer just "beep beep")
"hoop baw" - basketball hoop
"fowerses" - flowers
"beh doh" - door bell
"pearshauce" - pearsauce
"quesdiya" - quesadilla (or anything that has a tortilla)
"guatmoly" - guacamole (can you tell we like mexican food?)
"TB" - TV
"elmo tree" - the elm trees in the back yard :)
"Anna mootsie!" - Anna's music! (meaning, I want to listen to MY music in the van!)
"Mommy turr" - Mommy's turn ... hooray!
"Anna Banna" - Anna Banana (of course she was going to have this nickname)

We kind of figured that once Anna was talking, she'd give us a running commentary of most of life and, sure enough, she does. A lot of times she wants us to respond to make sure that we understood her, but lately she's been just chatting away to herself in the van, when we're at the grocery store or while she colors.

Though the calendar may say it's spring outside, we still have to wear hats and coats most days. Still, Anna and I like to go to for a walk in the afternoon to the park. She often plays in the rocks for a bit while I sit and rest before we have a grand ole' time on the swings.

Yesterday is was "nice" enough (after our few inches of snow on Saturday night) for us to go on a family hike at the UW Arboretum. This was the first time since last fall that Anna's been in the backpack, and she still loves it. She also surprised Matt and I by walking through the snow, mud, and leaves for about 20 minutes before she was tired enough to ask "carry?" for the last little bit.

Whenever we're outside, Anna always loves to point out the birds and planes she hears, and then try to find them. Matt's been helping Anna learn how to steer a bike (no peddling just yet), but the trips up and down the driveway are often interrupted both birds and planes.

Finally, I had my 32 week check-up last Friday for baby #2. All seems good, but I am definitely reaching the point of discomfort. Some days are better than others, and mornings are definitely better for me than afternoons/evenings. Plus, baby seems to be much more relaxed on some days in comparison to others, but no matter what day it is, she's a LOT more active and forceful than I remember Anna being. I'm pretty sure I've had some "inside bruising" already and that certainly doesn't help any of the discomfort matters. Oh, well. Just a few more weeks/months and then life will become more of an adventure!

What a difference a week makes!

Last week, thankfully, we were able to get back into our normal routines. Matt was still a little under the weather on Monday and Tuesday, but Anna and I were feeling just fine and were very grateful to be able to get out and enjoy the spring-like weather we were experiencing.

In fact, it was warm enough on Tuesday that instead of meeting at church for our weekly play group, we all met at the zoo for the morning. What fun! Anna, Abby, and Henry, who are all about the same age, were just plain excited to see the different kinds of animals that they'd been hearing about all winter, but weren't quite ready to enjoy last summer :)

Needless to say, all the playing and running outdoors certainly has made Anna tired. After running a few loops around the house one afternoon, she decided to simply crash on a nearby pillow.

Besides the normal stuff last week, our weekend was a lot of fun, too. Melissa came over on Friday night to watch Anna so Matt and I could go out for a dinner date. Matt and I had a nice, relaxing time having dinner and going out for ice cream. It made things easier for us knowing Anna was really excited to see Melissa (hi, yissa! hi, yissa!) when she arrived. Anna even asked about her on Saturday morning :)


We were able to spend quite a bit of Saturday and Sunday outdoors. Anna seems to really enjoy running up and down the driveway "fetching" various items. Chasing hoola hoops that we roll was a favorite game on Saturday while carrying an old, empty paint can full of rocks was the favored activity on Sunday.


On Sunday afternoon, we went to a local farm that exhibits their sheep flock during lambing time. As with the zoo, Anna was very interested in seeing (and hearing) all these farm animals that she's seen in books all winter long. She not only saw, and pet, lambs and sheep, but also "experienced" some chickens, a rabbit, a duck, some pigs, and some calves.

When we asked her what her favorite animal was, she said "Bunny!" although at the time she got a real kick out of saying "BAAA!" whenever one of the many sheep made a noise :)

I know it sounds a little silly, but it's already hard for me to remember what life was like when we couldn't get outdoors to go for a walk or to play; we LOVE the outside!

Rough week

Let's hope we don't have another week like last week any time soon! It turns out Anna's cold was more like the flu, thankfully not the stomach flu or anything, but her fever spiked again on Monday night and it definitely took the whole week for her to recover. She's doing MUCH better now and only is coughing a little bit when she runs around a lot or right when she wakes up in the morning.

Matt and I, however, had a rougher time towards the end of the week. We ended up taking turns at night with Anna last week so at least one of us could get some rest, especially since Matt caught Anna's sickness. The strategy kind of backfired, though, because after a few nights of Matt sleeping well, I'd come down with a terrible headache from NOT sleeping (something about listening to both Anna and Matt cough, plus recognizing that baby #2 is extremely active at night, plus just not sleeping well from being pregnant anyway kind of took away any hope of decent sleep for me). Then after me getting a couple of decent nights of sleep, his illness relapsed. I'm finally feeling more like myself today and Matt finally went to Urgent Care yesterday morning while Anna and I were at church to get some antibiotics (who knew adults could get ear infections, too?).

Anna was such a good sport through the whole thing. She started feeling a lot better on Wednesday, which was the first day of my migraine. By Thursday we HAD to get out of the house for a little bit so we just ran some errands. On Friday we were about at each other's throats so we had a playdate with Abby and Jessica ... our first contact with people our own ages outside our family in an entire week ... yikes! The weekend was still rough for Matt and me, with him getting the ear infection and me getting another headache on Saturday night/Sunday, but today is a new day and the start of a new week so hopefully things will be better.

Anna has been SO excited the past couple of days when we tell her we're doing anything outside of the four walls of our home. She was thrilled yesterday when she picked out a dress for church and kept saying "chuwch", to the point of getting upset when she learned that she had to have breakfast BEFORE we left for church. Then this morning she was extremely thrilled to learn that we were going to the grocery store AND music class this morning. (On a side note, one of my favorite words she says is "mootsie", her version of music ... how fun is that?!)

Hopefully this was our last hurrah of winter sickness before spring sets in. I don't know if I could take another week like last week being any more pregnant than I am now ;)

Sick again!?!?

I cannot emphasize enough how ready we are for cold and flu season to be over this year. Anna came down in a pretty nasty cold on Friday night after being a really fun and energetic toddler during the daytime and evening. She developed a really troublesome cough and a nice, high fever on Saturday before the fever finally broke on Saturday evening.

Since then, her cough has been preventing her (and the rest of the family) from sleeping very well and from doing much that is outside of our house. She and I finally managed to get out this morning to go to the grocery store, but that may be it for awhile. Even though she's been fever free for a few days, the cough is just too much to push her into things too fast. We'll just have to wait and see how the rest of the week goes.

Anyway, it turned out to be a nice weekend to be cooped up indoors as a family. It rained and/or snowed most of the weekend so we didn't miss much outside. Plus, we picked up a few Elmo videos from the library on Saturday morning and watched way too much Elmo's World over our 48 hour quarantine ;) I think Anna might go through Elmo withdrawal today ...

Hopefully neither Matt nor I get what Anna has/had. So far I seem to be in the clear, but Matt seems to be more succeptible to her germs than I do ... go figure! Maybe all those colds I'd get while I was teaching are finally paying off :)

Playing Outside!!

We've had two (that's right, TWO) 50+ degree days this week and have been outside about as much as we can be on both of those days, today included. Granted, an hour or two outside during an entire day doesn't seem like very much once summer comes, but right now it's a huge blessing.


Partly because of the forecast earlier this week and partly because it's really hard to keep Anna out of puddles, we picked up some rain boots for her. We're hoping that she's going to know them as her "puddle boots", meaning if she doesn't have her "puddle boots" on, she can't play in puddles ... we'll see how well that distinction works :)

Looks like we got the boots just in time. Yesterday we had some pretty massive puddles in our yard, ditch, and "auxillary" driveway. Needless to say, Anna was in heaven and probably played in the puddles for a good hour over the course of the afternoon. Too bad most of the puddles dried up by this morning. Oh, well. I'm sure we'll have plenty more opportunities to play in puddles this spring/summer.

Life continues

Now that we're not doing any big trips or home improvement projects and since the weather is still too cold to do much of anything outside, we're just enjoying hanging out for a bit. Partly because of this slower pace, Anna finally got over a lingering cough that developed after her cold in February. We ended up taking her in to the doctor's office last week just to make sure that her lungs and ears were fine (they were perfectly normal), and the doctor reassured us that the colds going around here this year just stick around for 3-4 weeks. Anna finally managed to NOT wake up coughing at night last Thursday night ... hooray!

Speaking of doctor's visits, I had another check-up last Friday. All is well with baby #2 and I'm assuming my glucose test was normal since I haven't heard anything different. The best part of this visit was that my doctor offered the "suggestion" of having a little dark chocolate every day to try and prevent any kind of the elevated blood pressure stuff I had with Anna. She has no medical evidence that this works, but has another patient who tried it successfully so she thought she'd pass along the idea. Even though my blood pressure has been just fine so far, I'm okay with being prescribed a daily dose of chocolate :)

This past weekend we finally moved Anna's crib into her new room (after a few months of having everything set up, but just not having the time/energy to do it). Anna was a little upset when we had to actually dismantle her crib to move it from one room to the next, but seemed to warm to the idea after she got to help Matt with some of the work. Of course, it took her quite awhile to get to sleep on Saturday night, was up pretty early, and then had a rough time falling asleep for her nap on Sunday. Since then things have been a bit better. It's still taking her a little while to get to sleep, but we think she's finally tired enough to NOT play for awhile first :) Matt and I realized yesterday morning that part of the problem was probably the fact that Anna can see a full length mirror from her crib now; perhaps this explains why we heard her saying "hi, hi, hi" a lot when she should have been sleeping :)

Riding in the car with Anna has gotten a bit more interesting lately. Since she can see quite a bit more out the windows of the van than she ever could in the Honda, she's much more observant about the world around her. One of her favorite things to point out is a "yow bus" (yellow bus), but she's also pretty good about finding birds, trees, "ge tuck" (green trucks), water (with all of the lakes around), and ice (of course it's still cold here!). She also will often say "Daddy home" when we get in the van to come home from someplace; she thinks that Matt should always be home when we get there :)

Anna's also mastered people's names in the past week or so. She will confidently say "Anya" if asked her name, even by people besides Matt and I, and she knows the names of several people (mostly kids, though) at church. We also discovered yesterday that she knows and can say the names of practially all the people whose pictures are on our refrigerator, especially her cousins. She also surprised us on Sunday night by knowing that Sadie's dad's name is Peter, and clearly saying his name unprompted. Crazy kid!


Here's a couple of pictures of the silly kid from last week. She seemed to get it in her mind one day that she wanted to sit in one of her toy boxes and play with a musical toy, all while holding "burt" (her blanket).



The second photo is after I asked her to smile ... we're still working on getting her to smile for pictures :) The next day she picked a different color box to sit it, but had the same routine otherwise.