Anja is two!

Zero years old:

One year old:

Two years old:



We haven't looked at Anja's height and weight percentiles in a while, mostly because she is obviously a healthy weight and height. But here are some interesting stats:
At birth:
weight = 5lbs 15oz, 7th percentile
Now:
weight = 27.5lbs, 57th percentile

At birth:
height = 20in, 77th percentile
Now:
height= 37.75in, 83rd percentile

At birth:
head circumference: 13", less than 3rd percentile
Now:
head circumference: 19.5", 97th percentile

So, she started out long and thin with a small head and has remained long but normal weight with a gigantic head. She always outgrows her shirts at the neck opening first , and no wonder at 97th percentile for head circumference! At least she wasn't born with a 97th percentile head.

Anja's birthday was Sunday, and we had a little mini party with the three of us. She had a great time opening presents, and even blew out her own candles. She has been busy playing with her playdoh hair-growing kits and molds. She also puts her froggies and other little animals in her new (handmade felted) purse from Auntie Heather and walks around the house with them.

We also went to the zoo and it was a hot day, pretty unusual for around here. I was pretty tired and the heat didn't help, so we didn't make it very far into the zoo. I think her favorite part of the zoo is the petting zoo, where the kids can brush the goats with soft rubber brushes. Anja loves it. And we did wait for about 20 or 30 minutes in line to ride the little train (a fairly mediocre 5-10 minute ride but we did get to see wallaroos), and Anja thought it was pretty good. Then we paid a ridiculous amount of money to eat some probably pretty scary hotdogs and some "juice" that tasted like extra sweet koolaid. Anja also rode on the carousel twice, the second time by request on the panda (a fierce running panda baring sharp teeth and with big exposed claws!). Anja liked it all.

Trips like that are getting really hard for me to do. Any amount of walking or standing longer than about 5 minutes leave me really out of breath. And heat makes everything twice as hard.

She really likes to make jokes and laugh about them. She gets particularly goofy after being given a sugar bomb like birthday cake. I love this one: "I'm looking for something... I'm looking for...my foot! I found it! I'm looking for something... other foot!"

She continues to be pretty fearless for her age. She loves to go exploring in our backyard, in "the woods" with Blue. In the dark with just a flashlight she follows Blue through all the trees and vines that surround our house. Sometimes she roots around in the leaves looking for insects. She will do this for quite some time on her own.

Her language skills are increasing dramatically daily. I'm sure a large part of this comes from daycare, where she is the youngest toddler. Yesterday when Jay was trying to get her to eat her sandwich, she said, "Don't worry Daddy! I will take a bite!" And to me yesterday when I was trying to read her a book and she wanted to play instead she said, "Stop talking Mommy! Pay attention!" Or when she leaves to get another book: "Mommy, stay right there, I'll be right back!" And yes, most of her sentences end with exclamation points.

The funniest thing these days is when she plays Simon Says. She LOVES this game. I think she really likes that she can tell us to do something silly and we do it. Some day soon I'll take a video of it.