Springtime for baby!

What's new? Lots! Read on ...

Easter with the Cousins
We made the trek down to Sunnyvale so Annika could have her first Easter-egg hunt with her cousins. She caught on to the idea really quickly, and though she didn't seem to care about the candy (is this really my kid??), she had an awesome time and came back with several drawings by cousin A., a stuffed sheep (lamb?) that she absolutely loves, and a little bouncy rubber ball that is the Best. Thing. She's Ever Seen.

Tha Yankees Win! ThaaaaaaaaYANKEES win!
R. had the (hapless, lost-looking) Yanks on TV, and Annika pointed to the screen and said "ball!" as is her wont. Yeah, said R., that's the Yankees. She stood there a second, then went to her pile of books and pulled out the one about the Yankees & held it up. (We knew Grandpa would be proud!)

Yeah, Yup, OK
She's known these words for awhile, but lately it is just hilarious how she says & uses them. For example, just now, she dumped all of her crayons on the floor. I said, "You need to pick those up now." And she said, very sweetly, "Yeah, OK." and picked them up! Maybe you have to hear it to believe it, but it is the cutest thing ever.

Letters
She's got damn near all of the letters now, quite a few of them in both lowercase and uppercase. I had her out of the stroller to help me drop some letters through the mail slot in the post office, and she wanted to explore a bit, so I let her. She went straight over to the FedEx drop-off and started calling out the letters to me -- not in order, but all correctly. Just about blew my mind.

WORDS!
cereal
spoon
wet
cold
dry
helicopter
lion
cloud
chair
Darth Vader ("bitu")
ring
finger
circle
bib
wipes
whale
bowl
plate
hairbrush
reach
shirt
pants
water
watch
white
black
pacifier ("pado")

Multi-word phrases
sit down (she'll say that either to direct you to do it, or to announce she's about to)
OK, Daddy
OK, Mama
I love you