Anna is spending more and more time self-entertaining lately. Photo by Craig.
All I could think of was Steve Martin in The Jerk when Anna started tapping/stomping her feet to music tonight.
It has only been a couple of weeks since the 21 month post, but I think there's enough going on that I'll do this one now (and another later, if necessary).
Anna & music is really moving along. She's more into singing & dancing than the musical instruments we bought her for Christmas, but hopefully we can incorporate them more with her favorite songs: Bed, Bed, Bed by They Might Be Giants (she also gets super excited about In the Middle), any of the Dean Martin songs we play for her (mostly That's Amore, Everybody Loves Somebody, and Mambo Italiano), Elvis' Burning Love, What's New Pussycat? by Tom Jones, and Hopalong Peter by Jerry Garcia. When we're at home (as opposed to the driving in the car), she'll go stand right next to the speaker during her favorite parts of the songs. I don't know if she thinks she'll be able to see the music or what, but she's really consistent about it. And, of course, in typical toddler fashion, she asks to play each song over and over and over and over again.
I got her Maurice Sendak's Nutshell Library and she loves these little books. Alligators All Around is her favorite right now and she can say clear as day on the Q page: "Quite Quarrelsome." I really ought to try to get that on video because it sounds ridiculous coming out of a 22 month old's mouth! Of course she has no idea what she's saying but one day instead of napping she was repeating this for about 30-45 minutes before she moved on to other things that were bouncing around in her head.
Anna knows letters & numbers but doesn't sing the alphabet song or really do a lot of counting. I'd say she's known these for a few months now so it's not really new, but I don't think I've really mentioned it before. She just loves noticing letters & numbers on things. We've been playing with her shape sorter (Melissa & Doug 12 shapes) and she knows shapes really well: paralellogram, trapezoid, oval, triangle, circle, square, rectangle, star, octogon, but gets pentagon & hexagon mixed up (this is where counting would come in handy!). She had a shape puzzle before she could do the sorter and she learned quite a few from that earlier, but she's finally gotten good at the sorter and we've spent a lot of time this week working on it.
About two weeks ago, Anna really started freaking out with Craig at bathtime. Craig has always been the one to give her a bath since the beginning. We decided that maybe I should give her a bath to try to change things up a bit since we couldn't figure out what the problem was. (We have to bathe her every night or else she her skin gets rashy—eczema.) One night I asked her if she'd rather take a shower and she said "yes" so we've been doing that since. Somehow she now listens to me and lifts her head back so her face doesn't get wet when I was her hair and there are no more freak-outs. Her bathtub has a hose for the shower so we sing the Hokey-Pokey while she showers so it's super fun.
Anna loves to look at herself in the mirror or her reflection in the windows when she is running by.
She is walking up and down stairs (holding the railing and usually my hand) and she can do the two steps to the carport by herself without holding on to anything.
Finally (I am sure that is what you are saying!), Anna really responds well when I say "three more times and then we're done" or "when I count to five we're going to...." It is pretty hilarious as usually when I get to five, she drops everything she's doing in a panic and hurries off to the thing I've said we're going to do.
