November 2011 - 21 months, turkey, and time off
Annie is 21 months old! I think at some point we'll stop counting by months, maybe when she hits 2 years. We'll see.
She is still a super-sweet and super-stubborn girl. She loves to gives hugs and kisses, and she now says I love you ("I wha-doo"). My favorite hugs are the just-waking-up or welcome-home hugs... she puts her head on my shoulder and just puts all her weight into it. We have had our fair share of tantrums but they remain short lived (mostly). The worst one occurred this week over a pair of green sandals. 
We were realizing that Annie's feet are finally outgrowing her size 4 shoes, and I pulled those out as a reference because they were labeled 4.5. Unfortunately, she had broken them a while back and hasn't been able to wear them. But BOY, did she want to put them on when she saw them! To get her into her other shoes and out the door to school was a big production, followed by an even bigger production of rolling on the floor, kicking, sliding along the hallway screaming... for what felt like an hour but was probably on the order of 5 minutes. I think it subsided sometime in the car. We're crossing our fingers for fewer of those and more like the usual 60 seconds until redirected.
I did sew the broken sandal back together and she happily put them on later.
On a happier note, she has been learning all sorts of new things this month (especially last week!) and amazed us in many ways:
She can climb the stairs at Papa and Gigi's house while standing (not crawling). This was a favorite activity over Thanksgiving week. Her vocabulary keeps expanding exponentially.
She started putting short sentences together. See below.
She can now complete her alphabet peg puzzle (except G and Q, she just hands those to us because she doesn't like them). Some attempts at Charlie's puzzles over the break mostly involved scattering the pieces to all corners of the room.She accidentally did a somersault this week, and has since been attempting it but mostly just rolling over sideways onto her back. She likes having one of us help her so she can do a real one.
She figured out the concept that everyone poops while John was cleaning up after Sadie on a walk. She then had to verify that each one of her family members poops and listed all of them by name, i.e. "Papa poop?" "Dada poop?" "E-na poop?"
She subsequently figured out that she can blame the smell of a dirty diaper on Sadie.
She has started trying to jump, by bending her knees and squatting almost to the floor and then popping up to standing. Sometimes ONE of her feet will actually leave the floor. Not both. :) I think she may have been inspired by Charlie's jumping adventures.
She loves the decorated Christmas tree, but she's especially interested in the nativity sets. She calls them all church. Thank you, Dan and Marilyn, for the Little People set that she can actually play with! Mary is still her favorite "character".
She actually enjoys putting on jackets and hats now. Thank goodness.
She is starting to seem like she's thinking about the idea of using the toilet. She'll contemplate it briefly before saying no. I foresee a potty training tool of some kind under the tree. :)
She still enjoys musical instruments and likes to play Twinkle, Twinkle little star for us on the piano. She also really likes to strum the guitar or play with the Guitar Hero one that otherwise doesn't get much use.
She loves Sadie to pieces, and it's mostly mutual. She's very good about the word "gentle", and we've been using that in other contexts with good results. For instance, if she is hitting a toy too hard against a table, she does it more softly after a reminder to be gentle.
She transitioned out of the baby tub finally, and now takes her baths in the big tub. She was a little sad to see the whale go, but relieved that all of her toys stuck around.
She loves her cousin! We're also looking forward to a new baby cousin in June!
She also loved spending time with the rest of her family over Thanksgiving. We all did. And catching up with old friends!
Annie was not too interested in the Thanksgiving feasts, but we certainly enjoyed them.
Over the break, we ended up getting a new Hyundai Santa Fe to replace John's 1999 Camry. The Camry had been good to us and to the Massini family for quite a while, but it was time to move on. The Santa Fe has much more room but without feeling TOO big, and came with lots of "standard" niceties. John has been enjoying the Bluetooth for the phone and a USB port for music and podcasts on the stereo. I was even able to park it in the Baby Gator lot without much difficulty (and sometimes I struggle with my Corolla in that lot!) As Annie has been saying: "ah, very nice". While the addition of a monthly car payment is not something anyone looks forward to, we do feel like we got a fair deal all around. Sitting in the driveway, John's mineral gray SUV looks like the parent of my mineral green sedan.
All in all, we are doing well, and looking forward to Christmas. Everyday brings new excitement!
