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Thursday, December 2, 2010

Annika at 22 months

I haven't written anything about Annika for a long time and she is so funny, cute and mischievous right now that I must write about her. Annika wakes up at the exact same time each morning no matter how much sleep she got the night before. Putting her to bed later doesn't seem to change anything as we found out over Thanksgiving break when she just kept waking up early even though we wanted to sleep in. When she wakes up she immediately yells, "Ashlin Ashlin Ashlin What!" She wants Ashling to wake up and say What to her. Then she might get desperate and yell for Ali or Daddy or sometimes Mommy. (I am very unlikely to be the one that gets her out of bed in the morning so she isn't interested in me.)


Annika is discovering her love of clothes. She wants to pick out what to wear in the morning although most of what she picks out is actually pajamas. Her favorite clothes are a pair of thermals that are 2 sizes too big that Mandie gave us. She loves to wear these clothes and tries to get you to put them on all day. She also loves shoes and practices putting them on and taking them off all day.

Annika loves her pacifier or as she calls it her "pa fa." But due to the concern of 50 million viewers telling me how her teeth are going to be ruined and how awful I am for allowing this pacifier I have taken it away from her at all but bed time and nap time. This is what she has decided to do instead. Obviously she is not slow to think of new ideas to solve problems. Now she is sucking her fingers and I find myself wanting to give her the pacifier again all the time so she won't get in the habit of sucking on fingers. It is much harder to break.
Annika is happy and loves to make people laugh. She is also compassionate and after pulling hair or kicking me she will say, "sorry momma" if I expressed that it hurt me. She loves to give hugs and the older girls have started fake crying just to get Annika to give them a hug. She says hi and bye to everyone and calls people older people grandma or grandpa. I think this is an especially good idea since they melt and she gets the smiles and attention that she wants.
Annika loves to sing and dance. If there is music on she is responding to it. She dances in the shopping cart, dances in the mall, dances in restaurants and of course dances at home. She loves to sing itsy, bitsy spider, old mc donald had a farm, and twinkle, twinkle, little star. Annika really likes it when her daddy sings her this song while he takes her outside to look at the stars.
Annika recently realized that there is a big world outside of the car. She looks out the windows with such interest. Her favorite things to see are the moon, the lights and down the hill. She says, "I see it. Moont. I see it. Light. I see it. Look Momma, Look. I see it" I don't think she knows exactly what she seems when looking down the hill at the distant city and lights but it is beautiful and she notices it. I like how she says things and wish she would stay this age forever.
Among the troubling aspects of Annika's development is that she has learned that coloring is her favorite activity. She grabs a pencil, crayon, or marker and sets to work making my walls look beautiful with her artwork. I have spent a long time scrubing walls and I am nowhere near done cleaning off her artwork. I have taken all the crayons away from everyone and put them up high. Then when Annika wants to color we put her on a stool she can't get down from and then give her the crayons. The problem isn't totally fixed but hopefully in a couple weeks she will understand where she should draw. I hope time out works for her!
We love having Annika in our family and it is amazing to see what a unique personality she can be when we already have two wonderful girls.

1 comments:

Shar said...

oh my gosh - she is darling! doesn't it seem like the younger ones start doing things way too fast? i feel that way with mila.

so..the pacifier. how old is she? we had the pacifier fairy come when kapria was about 22 months. i think? she gathered all the pacifiers and sent them away. then the fairy brought her a doll to bring to bed. but this was once we had gotten her to only using the pacifier at bedtimes. so...not sure if it will help the finger sucking. but she sure did great. only a little bit of crying, and then we just would remind her that the fairy had taken her pacifiers to other kids who needed them and she got a Boo doll (monster's inc).