Dog, binoculars or camera

Every time I go for a walk through the marsh, I have to decide whether I will bring the dog, the binoculars, or the camera. I already have the baby, so I'm limited in what else I can bring. If I don't bring the dog, she will watch with sad sad eyes when we go past the patio. If I don't bring the binoculars I may miss telling a swan from a white pelican, or similar. If I don't bring the camera how will I ever take amazing photos of wildlife?

So today I brought the dog, and therefore have no exciting new photos to put up. But here is some fabulous peekaboo video instead. It is so easy to make Anja laugh. She laughs at peekaboo, and splashing in the tub, and getting dried off really fast with a ducky towel.



We read so many books before bedtime today, I finally had to stop her. She just kept bringing more. She loves books and is understanding more and more words. Today I read a sentence that had the word "nose" in it, and she touched her nose, then turned around and touched mine. When I read a sentence with "fingers" in it, she picked up my hand and touched my fingers. Recently I asked her where the flowers were, outside, and she ran to the patio door and looked at the geraniums in the pot outside and smiled.

I try to expose her to the names of as many things as possible everywhere we go. By kindergarten she may be the only kid who can identify avocets, teals and black-necked stilts.

Another new post!

Jay is gone this week for work, so I'm trying to update with lots of pictures and videos, since he will have internet access.

Here's Anja running around with her pirate doll. Until she finds something more interesting.


And here she is trying to sit in her already occupied bunny chair, but she is too tired to figure out the problem.


And some of our newest food adventures. She has shown a lot of interest in the spoon lately, and eating with her fingers. Not bad for a kid who was such a poor eater for so long. She has been a great eater lately. Sometimes she doesn't eat very much, but she never completely refuses to eat anything. Except for maybe the beet greens I tried to give her once. We've tried to give her some of everything we eat too, and so far she loves Chinese and Mexican food, and even ate my mildly spicy veggie chili. I want to get her started on Indian food soon, but we don't have a cheap place around here and that's one food genre I can't seem to conquer at home. We've also started to give her whole milk products, which she loves (imagine yogurt that tastes like ice cream).


Anja has also learned recently that if she brings you a book, you will read it to her. We read 5 or 6 books in a row this morning as she kept bringing me more. And she sits so patiently by herself and flips through books for maybe 20 minutes at a time. It is very very cute.

Butter and Egg Days

We went downtown Saturday for our city's Butter and Egg Days Festival. It's like most other small town festivals with a parade and food vendors and games for the kids. The only difference is the dairy and egg theme. And the cow chip throwing contest. Petaluma was once the egg capital of the country, and shipped its eggs down the Petaluma River 12 miles to the bay and San Francisco. It is still a big dairy town. Petaluma reminds me a little of the town I grew up in, if its Main St area had been kept alive, and if it was 45 minutes from the ocean :-)

Anja loved this orange she got from one of the floats sponsored by a grocery store:


At first she was a little scared of some of the floats, but eventually she thought the parade was fun.


She likes going anywhere she can see a lot of people and things. Especially other kids. And balloons. This little square where she's running has a store that always has balloons outside.


She opened a few more presents lately, including this handmade sweater from Aunt Mary - very cute!


And this dress-up pirate doll from Aunt Heather. This is her new favorite toy to carry around. She sleeps with it and then plays with it when she wakes up in her crib. She seems impressed by the pirate's sewn-on bellybutton.

Visits, 1st birthday, babbling

It's been a while since I've had time to put up anything new here. Meanwhile we've had Grandma R visit for a week and had Easter and a first birthday. We also took a short trip to southern Oregon with some friends on Anja's actual birthday. And Anja has really been "talking" a lot lately.

She says a few things that are recognizable to us, but definitely not to anybody else. She says things likes "Bayee Buh" (bellybutton) and "Dah!" (daddy) and "Fowowowlow" (flower), and "Bawowowl" (ball). She has also learned to repeat sounds and noises that we make as a fun game. She definitely understands a lot of what we say, though.

Here we are on a hike we did a few weeks ago by a massive eucalyptus tree overlooking the ocean.


And here we are on the nearby beach. Anja has gotten a lot better about not eating sand, although you do still have to watch her really closely.


We drove up to the top of Mount Vision at Point Reyes to see the view:


We also drove to Goat Rock in Jenner and watched some seals or sea lions swimming in the surf.


Anja had a fun Easter, getting some fun new toys and cute new clothes.


She is currently fascinated by shoes. She wants everyone to put on shoes.


She is almost always in a good mood and thinks a lot of things are funny. She knows it's funny to run away from you when you call her.


Here she is with Grandma at a winery in Sonoma, having a good time even though it was her nap time.


She was not very impressed by her birthday cake. Maybe a little scared.


She picked up the entire cake and dropped it straight into her lap.


After we pulled it back out, she realized it was pretty fun.


On the beach in Oregon, watching tiny shrimp-like creatures in the water.


Still trying to eat some sand...


...and some shells.


Climbing on some rocks.


And taking a first hot tub.


Cooling her feet in a stream in a redwood forest.


And just being cute.

Anja is a funny kid

We didn't make her funny, she just came this way. We didn't start her fascination with her bellybutton:


... or with laundry:


We didn't make her an MSU fan (well, maybe we did that one):


We don't make her climb up chairs and onto windowsills...


We don't make her catapult herself into furniture:


Although she probably got this kind of laughing from Jay:

More beach, more climbing

Anja has been really vocal lately. She "talks" all day long, all the time. Not really any words that we can understand, though. She does say, "Dah!" for Daddy, and "Daw!" for dog, and "Tah!" for taggie. Of course she makes those sounds at other times too...

We've been on a few more trips recently. We visited two more beach locations at Point Reyes. Here is the trail on the way to Abbott's Lagoon:


Grassy dune hills near Abbott's Lagoon.


It was a fairly short walk to the beach near Abbott's Lagoon, maybe 45 minutes, but it was surprisingly empty.


Anja likes the beach, but she tries really hard to eat sand. Hopefully she outgrows that soon. Even if you keep her sandy hands out of her mouth, she can still dive face first into the sand with her mouth open. Also Jay says don't try to change a diaper on the beach.


She's probably looking at shorebirds here. She doesn't pay too much attention to the water but she loves watching birds.


Walking on sand is hard but she did a pretty good job.


We also went to McClure's Beach, also at Point Reyes, to check out some tide pools. Lots of really great anemone colonies:


A very rare photo of the three of us:


Jay and Anja tidepooling on the rocks.


And she still loves to climb into the orange chair.

Shoes, climbing and energy

Here are the shoes we picked for Anja last week. Cute. Despite evidence to the contrary, most baby shoe manufacturers still think stiff heavy shoes are the best for baby feet. These are pretty good though.


Anja really likes to climb now. She can get into chairs and apparently on top of boxes.




Every so often Anja switches into a "high energy" mode and runs around crazily for about 5 minutes. It reminds me of late night kitty fly-by's (if you have a cat, you know what I mean). She runs in circles and barrels into toys, falling down. And then she's done.



This weekend we went to the Point Reyes lighthouse. I've been once, but Jay had never been. And the actual lighthouse was closed when I was there. It was REALLY windy when we were there. Luckily it was about 60 degrees.





We did see a huge elephant seal swimming below us, but we didn't see any whales this time. We also saw common murres, surf scoters, and both brown and white pelicans. That reminds me, we saw a red fox on the trails behind our place on Friday!