Life with Ana Kate: August 2009

Ana Kate celebrated her 2nd birthday today, so I thought I should post an update to let everyone know what she's up to. She is learning so much so quickly right now that it's hard to keep up, but here are a few of the highlights:

She is currently approximately 26 pounds and just a hair under 34 inches which puts her in the 40th percentile for weight and the 51st percentile for height. So she is growing well despite not being a great eater. She has started eating a little more and drinking less milk, so she's moving in the right direction.
She is a very active girl, always running, jumping, dancing, and climbing on everything! She has really been riding her tricycle all over the house the past few weeks and is getting pretty fast. She is also quite strong and can walk on her hands when I hold her feet for a really long time. She also can hang on to the pullup bar for a long period of time and swings her feet up to her head. I'm think she has a future in gymnastics....which I'm loving since I did gymnastics when I was younger. I plan on putting her in classes when she's a bit older, so we'll see if she enjoys it.
Ana Kate talks ALL THE TIME....she can really wear you out! But I love it....it's just like talking to a little adult. She has such a large vocabulary and will repeat anything you say (which isn't always a good thing).
She says 'No way!' most of the time rather than no.
When she tells someone goodbye she has to give them a 'hug hug' and a kiss and almost always says 'I'm gonna miss you!' Its so precious.
When I tell her not to do something she will sometimes point to the other room and say 'Go in there Mommy'. It's so funny!
Anytime she sees something she likes she feels the need to tell us. In the car she is always telling me....'Look Mommy, balloons! I like balloons!.' We have some great conversations in the car.
One of her current favorite phrases is 'Did you hear that Mommy/Daddy/Whitney?' Then she has to know what the sound is and where it's coming from. We had a couple of thunderstorms this month and she now insists that she's 'Scared of funder'...then she has to put a blanket over her head.
She now knows almost all of her letters and can recognize them when asked. This really surprised me when she first started doing it. She has fridge phonics and I just randomly asked her where different letters were while doing dishes one day. I knew she would recognize a couple, but she got almost all of the right. She can sing her ABCs with just a few gaps...when we fill in the gaps she will continue on, so she knows the order as well. She's doing well with her numbers too and will count to 10 with me, but won't do it without me....the other day when we finished she said 11....she's such a little smarty pants!
Her current favorite cartoon is Clifford, so that is always her choice when it's TV time.
Ana Kate is still not a great sleeper. She is out of our bed for the most part, but still in our room. She has slept through the night a few times, but is still typically waking up at least once per night. I am SO ready for her to start sleeping better. I'm hoping that will steadily improve.
She has been staying in the nursery at church for a while now, but it's been difficult. This was a huge thing for us because she would cry so hard when we left her. The first couple of weeks we had to go back and get her, but lately she would settle down after 5 minutes and be happy when we picked her up. But this week she went in and didn't cry at all! Yay! Let's hope that continues!

There are probably a hundred more things I could add, but I don't want to bore everyone. This post is getting incredibly long.

We had a great birthday celebration today. We love Ana Kate SO much....she is such a blessing!

Enjoy the pictures (the one at the beginning of this post was edited by Ana Kate's Aunt Lauren and I just LOVE the way it looks!) There is also a video at the end of Ana Kate blowing out her candles...

Pretty girl: