Halloween and pretend play

First, the big news that some of you already know about, Anja is going to be a big sister next June! Here's an 8 week ultrasound of baby #2 (it's pretty hard to decipher, but the x's are at the head and bum). So far things are going alright. I feel yucky most of the time these days, and the fatigue is much worse than last time, but baby is developing well. And as of today we're 10 weeks along, which is 1/4 of the way there! I'll continue to update on progress over time.


I'm a few weeks behind in updates, but we did take Anja trick or treating. I made an adorable costume by buying a brown jumpsuit and sewing a few pieces of fur on it. Unfortunately I didn't check the fit first. I could barely get in on her! But after about a week of trying it on for short periods, she finally decided it was fun to wear, and not just a restrictive furry bodysuit. Sometimes she would forget her costume was a dog and she'd call it a monkey.


Most of the shops in downtown Petaluma were open for the kids for Halloween, so that's where we went. At first she was pretty confused and we had to carry her to each candy spot and hold her bag open for her. After a few stops, she figured it out, but she was very serious about the process. She marched straight into each store with her bag open and waited for her candy. Then she walked straight out of the store and opened her bag to see what they gave her. No smiles and no "trick or treat." Oh, and she didn't understand about waiting in lines, either. She tried to walk around all the taller kids and weave her way straight toward the candy bowl.


We've also had a few other recent trips, one to a wine tasting just down the road when Jay's friend Pete was visiting, and we also went to the beach, where Anja is really beginning to have some fun. She likes to collect small rocks and shells, and hide her toys in the sand, and dig. She also really likes the seagulls and has started to walk just a short distance into the water. We've been a couple of times now to this great beach on Tomales Bay, where the water is shallow and there aren't any waves, so it's a great place to bring kids.


This past weekend we went to the Oakland Zoo. Anja really loved it, and we stayed for 3.5 hours, which is a long time for anything to hold her interest! Here she is just before going into the zoo, wearing her favorite hat with soccer balls on it. She loves soccer balls, even though the only soccer ball we have here is a half-deflated ball that belongs to Blue.


We brought the stroller, but Anja really wanted to run around instead. And I mean run. She really has picked up speed recently. She has a pretty interesting technique, with arms and legs everywhere, but it works for her. Here she is watching the giraffes.


She was also very impressed with the petting zoo and their goats. Actually, she was just mildly amused by the goats until she found out that there were brushes for the kids to use. Here she is, so happy while brushing her goat.


Throughout the zoo were these colorful animals for the kids to climb on. Equally as impressive as the real animals to a 1.5 year old.


Anja really loves to play pretend games. It's so fun to watch, and to make up fun games with her. She loves dressing up, and of course doing everything she sees us do. She's even been pretty good with the potty lately. She uses it at home and has started using it at daycare now too. She helps me fold laundry, which goes about as well as you can imagine it would. Yesterday I laid down on the floor and said, "I wish I had a pillow." She ran into the bedroom, pulled the blankets back and brought back a pillow. Jay let her play with this wrench so she decided to fix her car.


And wow does she like playdoh. She will play with it for a full hour. That is about 50-55 minutes longer than anything else! I am amazed at how good she is at pretending a lump of playdoh is whatever you tell her it is. She told me to make an Ernie and an Elmo, and she's completely happy with the these weird squished pac-man shapes I made instead. And she pretends they are eating snakes and says, "yuck, yuck, yuck."

Eyebrows and hugs

This was supposed to be a mustache...


Anja hugs everything she likes. Hugging means putting it under your chin and rocking back and forth. She hugs her toys, her food, pictures. And then she gives it to you to hug.

Granona Beas!

We have a lot of conversations now. Mainly Anja tells us what she wants, which is actually pretty great. Now she tells us when she wants water or milk or food.

She babbles nonstop about all of her toys. "Elmo? Big Bird? Dollhouse? Big Teddy! Hugs, Big Teddy. Daddy hugs?"

Recent conversations around the house:

(While hiding under the high chair) "Daddy!? I see you! I see you Daddy! I see you Blue. Blue!"

(While reading Goodnight Moon) "Kitty. Bunny. Moon." (Then casually, as Blue walks by:) "Hi Blue." (and then back to the book) "Kitty. Shoes. Brush."

"Look at me!"

"Playground! Playground! Playground! Playground!"
"No Anja, not now, maybe later."
"Noooooo! Playground! Playground! Playground!"

"Anja, are you thirsty?"
"Anja water! Anja milk! Anja juice! Anja milk, water!"

She also says please after most things she asks for, which is incredibly cute:

"Granona bease!" (Granola please)

"Akee seem bease" (Ice cream please)

(While putting a puzzle piece down her shirt) "Anja, shirt. Daddy, shirt?"
"No, Daddy doesn't want a puzzle piece in his shirt."
"Blue, shirt"
"No, Blue doesn't want a puzzle piece in her shirt."

She also asks to use the potty. A recent typical scenario:
"Mommy, potty."
"Do you want to use the potty?"
"Nah" (yes)
"Okay"
Diaper is removed. Above child pees immediately on carpet, then runs to living room and pees on her chair, then pees in the potty, and again on the carpet.

Way behind

I'm way behind in blog posts, so here are a few cute pictures from the past several weeks. Here's a sweater from Great Grandma Spaulding that was made for one of Anja's aunts quite a long time ago. We have a large collection of Grandma sweaters that are equally cute that Anja will grow into over time.




We've been pretty busy lately. Last weekend we went to New York for the weekend for a friend's wedding. It was challenging. Traveling with a toddler is much harder than traveling with an infant. Luckily the airport folks are pretty accommodating. They let you skip to the front of the line for security checks and they let you bring any food you want. I was glad we didn't have to deal with a hungry baby waiting while waiting in long lines. We missed our connecting flight for the first long day of traveling and had to stay overnight in Atlanta - that was not fun at all. We stayed in a questionable hotel without a crib and had to go buy milk, diapers, and other baby items at a gas station. That night we didn't get any sleep because Anja tossed and turned and wrestled with us all night on the bed. And I mean ALL night. In the morning we took a shuttle, caught another flight, got our rental car and drove 1.5 hours to the wedding *just* in time. We had to run into a public restroom 10 minutes before the ceremony and throw on our nice clothes AND change a diaper and change Anja's clothes. It's funny now but wasn't at the time. Luckily we borrowed a crib that night for the cabin we stayed in. The ceremony was outdoors and very cold but luckily it didn't rain until after the ceremony. And mice only got into one thing in the cabin - her bag of formula.

A few weeks ago we went to Armstrong Redwoods State National Reserve, about an hour from here. It's a pretty impressive place with a lot of old growth redwoods and not a whole lot of people. Anja was really impressed with the trees. I didn't expect a 1.5 year old to be so excited. She kept pointing up and saying "Trees! Trees!"


Who wouldn't be impressed?


Anja was almost as impressed by the really low railings along some of the trails that she could sit on.


Anja continues to copy everything we do. She is particularly interested in yoga.


She has the general idea, but not the details:


I am continually amazed by this place where we live. We drove down to Muir Beach, a little town nearby this weekend. This was just a little scenic turnout off the highway:


You can see the beach we went to just on the other side of the trees. There are no pictures from the beach since it was way too windy. Not "blow your hair around" windy, but "cover the baby while we all get sandblasted" windy.

doll house

Anja and Jay's legs at Bolinas Beach a few weeks ago. A pretty, rocky beach but no marine mammals that day.


I have been looking for a doll house for Anja since we moved here and really didn't think I was going to find what I was looking for. Since we live in an apartment it isn't practical to build one, and in stores I could only find cheap plastic houses and they all cost at least $100! But last weekend I finally found exactly what I wanted - a great deal on a very big and sturdy wooden house without any breakable parts. Anja absolutely loves it:


It has a roof that opens and a side that swings out and a lot of hiding places for dolls. She likes it even more than I thought she might, and even uses the furniture and dolls that we picked up to go with it. It's the new central focus of her play, adjusted from empty boxes and couch cushions.

Lately she wants to do everything that we do. She likes to help sweep the floor, and brush her teeth ("bush teeth bush teeth!") And she also learned to hold the phone up to her ear and talk to it.

Energy and monsters say rraaowrr!

My mom used to say if we could harness the power of a two year old we could power the world. I think that might be from a Bill Cosby sketch, but it is definitely true. She also used to call my younger sister a perpetual motion machine. Anja has so much energy. Luckily for us, naptime is still easy and so is bedtime. Anja sleeps 11 hours a night and today she actually slept a full 12 hours. She was awake for less than 3 hours after that and then back to bed. In between sleeping she is now full speed gogogogoooo.

She can open all the doors in the house now, so the other day she came in while I was showering and stuck her head inside the shower. I gave her a blob of bubbles on her hand and said, "Go show Daddy." She left and came back again 30 seconds later with bubbles gone and asking for more. So I gave her more and she left again. She did this at least 10 times. She would carefully carry her bubbled hands into the living room to have them wiped off by Jay and would then return for more. She loves these types of games:



She also likes to play pretend games and has a sense of humor we are beginning to see. She has a monster puppet with velcro eyes, ears, etc that can be removed. Today she was trying to put "monster hair" on the dog. Here she is modeling the monster teeth herself:


We really do need to get her a rocking toy or bouncing toy of some kind. She's a little too small for most of them still, though, so it may have to wait. Meanwhile, thank you Ikea removable couch arms.




Finally a successful somersault:


And she really loves to go running with Jay in this stroller. It's pretty cushy, so I can see why. There was a recent stroller-related tragedy when her lemur went for a ride in the stroller and she dropped it. This time we didn't find it again. Luckily she's not quite old enough to realize when one of her regular toys is missing. But I think at this point she would be pretty sad if we lost Big Teddy or Soft Teddy (yes, I realize we are incredibly mundane in naming Anja's stuffed animals, we also have two Tiny Teddies and a Small Teddy).


She is really beginning to communicate now. It is SO much easier for us when she can actually tell us what she wants. A few of the more useful things she can finally say are "Finished", accompanied with the sign for finished, and "Ouchie" if something hurts. She also asks for specific foods now, which is great except when she only wants to eat pizza or cheese. Luckily she still really likes broccoli and applesauce and grapes. Here she would rather have pizza than pancakes for breakfast:

12 miles

Yesterday we went on a hike at Point Reyes (where else). It was 12 miles long, which is the longest we've done with Anja so far, and reasonably difficult. It was about 3000ft in elevation gain total, but the trails were pretty easy to walk on, some were even fire trails, which are really just dirt roads. Jay may have a different view of how difficult it was, since he carried Anja in the backpack carrier and I had a lighter backpack with some supplies. We have been out to Point Reyes so many times, but have still only seen a fraction of it.

Anja had a great time. Except for the carsick incident at the end of the day that shall be known as "Extreme Vomit 2009." There was no permanent trauma, except maybe to the car.

Now that she's getting bigger, it's harder to make her sit still in the carrier. She can get both arms out of the harness and likes to hang completely out one side, like a dog sticking its head out the window of a car. This is fine, unless you're the person carrying her. 22lbs is a lot of weight to be lurching from one side to the other.


Part of the reason I wanted to hike this route was to see Wildcat Camp, the most requested camp at Point Reyes (there are only four). Jay and Anja are there in the shade, it's hard to see them.


You can see the camp below next to the ocean on the right side of the trail. There are only about 10 or so campsites. I'm hoping to camp here sometime, but I'm just not sure about being 5.5 miles from the car with a toddler, just in case we need extra supplies (see "Extreme Vomit 2009"). You may also notice in the beach pictures than Anja is not wearing pants while they are hung to dry. This shall be known as "Diaper fail event 2009." You can definitely backpack with a baby, but it's a little more work.


This picture absolutely does not do the scene justice, but here is the view coming down the trail that leads to the ocean, 6.5 miles from the trailhead where we started. If you look closely you can see the tiny dots that are tents.


This is a popular destination for horseback riders. Anja loved the horses we met along the trails all day, "ohses, ohses".


There were groups of sea lions leaping through the surf for the entire two hours we sat on the beach. You can see one sticking its head up out of the water here. There are also two pelicans in the air. Swarms of pelicans were patrolling the surf and diving in after fish. There were also a few ospreys diving into the water. I don't know what they were all after, but it was a very popular fishing spot that day.


Anja was stacking rocks and planting feathers in the sand and burying my feet with sand. I'm glad we're beyond the sand-eating phase, but I still watch closely whenever she has small rocks or kelp in her hands. We need to get her a sandbox at home sometime soon.


I should have taken more pictures of the beach area because it was really pretty. Jay took this one of Anja and me and one of the cliffs that comes right to the ocean.


And in a completely unrelated note, Anja loves Sesame Street. Actually she loves Elmo. She picks up the remote control all the time and says, "Emmo, Emmo" and points it at the TV. Most of the programs out there for kids are pretty pathetic, but Sesame Street is still pretty good.