Springing forward!

We all went to Skyler S.'s first birthday party yesterday, and a good time was had by all -- Annika was surprisingly good at navigating all those legs, and held her own against the three boy toddlers also at the party. Heh.

In other news:

--Proto-reading! Annika is starting to recognize certain letters, and can point them out if you ask her to; her best ones are O, B, D, and S, although she's getting there with A, T, and E. It's pretty awesome.

--Sauce party! We're trying to have as many of these as possible before the band changes membership, so we were down at the Sauce Compound last weekend. Annika had a great time, probably the best part of which was the baseball lesson Diamond Mike was giving his two boys (ages 5 and 7). She toddled around at top speed, dragging a whiffle ball bat with her, chasing down fly balls, and keeping us hopping by wandering into the base path and/or standing in the on-deck circle (behind a kid who might or might not know she was there at any given time!).

--The fridge fascination. Suddenly, she totally gets the refrigerator, and wants to investigate it every single time it's open. She knows her milk cup is kept in there, so she'll pretend she wants milk, but really she wants to stand there and pull stuff out at random. I have had to let the door close on her a couple of times -- she doesn't care. She just wants to get at all that stuff.

--Paper, pens, crayons. The MagnaDoodle, while awesome, is no longer enough. This baby wants to write, dammit. For a couple of weeks, it was enough to give her a pad of scratch paper and a pen with a cap on it, and she'd walk around like she was taking notes. Then she wanted to make marks -- so I let her, as long as she was sitting on my lap. Then I thought, why not let her at this box of washable crayons and some sheets of typing paper? She loved that -- but the problem was, those washable crayons crumble all over the place, and write on skin and cloth VERY easily, which the regular ones don't. So after a day of purple-faced baby, R. got her some regular crayons ... which she loves, but which we won't let her take out of the kitchen. That was the cause of a dramatic meltdown yesterday, and probably not the last. But I can clean crayon off the linoleum; less so the couch or the painted walls, so I'm going to stick to my guns on this one.

--Daddy's oatmeal. Annika can't get enough of her dad's daily medicinal bowl of oatmeal (which he eats without sugar, cinnamon, or anything else good). She stands there alternating bites of it with him, and making these hilarious "yum" sounds as she eats HUGE spoonfuls. She even blows on them first, having learned that from watching us. So funny!

--Brushing teeth. Our dentist gave us a little baby toothbrush, so we've been brushing her teeth every night before bed -- first mama (so I can get the job done!), then baby (she mostly just bites it, especially since her molars are coming in). She understands the concept, too; the other morning, R. was in the bathroom brushing his teeth with the electric toothbrush, and she heard it and pointed toward the door and said "teeth!"

New words!
towel
eyebrow
magnet
purple
belly
flower
blue
wall
door
bread
hat
bag
blueberries