27 months old

On the heels of the previous post, here is a 27 month picture of Anne. I continue to take pictures of her in the same chair every 3 months. She is such a big girl!

John and I are so amazed at the amount of growth we've seen in Anne the past few months. When she turned 2 she really truly stopped being a baby and started being a toddler. Yes, of course, she was toddler like during her second year, but once she turned two we saw her leave behind almost every single trace of babyhood. Now, three months later, we can't believe how far she has come. I think her talking is the biggest improvement. She speaks in nearly complete sentences all the time. She also adds words we wouldn't expect to hear from a 2 year old's mouth-in the correct context at that! These are words like "too", "I'm" "to" and other little words like that. Her gross motor skills lag behind her others but are still on target. She runs on her tippy toes and brings her knees up high when she runs, like a little horsie. When she jumps she barely gets any air. That is one thing we are working on in gymnastics, jumping. I'm trying to get her to be more confident to jump off of things and to be more coordinated in jumping with two feet together. Her social skills have improved as well. She can do a small bit of pretending and occasionally can focus and play actual toys with us. Her ability to play has always been on her terms. She's always wanted to play alone rather than with someone and she's always wanted to play it her way. If either of us suggest a way to play and she doesn't want to do it, she simply ignores it and does her own thing anyway. There is no forcing her to interact if she doesn't want to. But much to my relief and joy, she is starting to do more interactive play with us. Yesterday we played with the Little People for probably 20 minutes. Anne gave them all time-outs for jumping on the house and hitting each other. It was pretty cute. But little games like that make my time with her so much more enjoyable, enriched and simply brighten my day and time with her.


Lining up all her Little People in time-outs

I am really enjoying this time with her and am excited for the year to progress and do more things with her. I'm looking forward to her getting excited and participating fully in Halloween, doing Thanksgiving crafts with her and of course Christmas. For the rest of the summer, however, we have 2 weeks of swim lessons that start next week (I have high hopes they will be better than last year), Kidzfest, and a visit to the Michigan Dunes and Lake Michigan. 2 is a good time for everyone.