The charms of Anna Summertime

As all good parents do, I have been pondering what it is exactly that makes my daughter cooler than any other kid. No, I'm kidding. I won't go that far. But Anna does have many unique traits that make her a genius, completely adorable, and even hilarious — all at the tender age of 19 months. While this list is in no way exhaustive, here are just a few to bring a little "summer" sunshine to your day:

• She learned to say "happy" on Trevor's birthday, but it usually sounds like "ha-pay." Cute.
• She's so innately girly. I maintain that she did not learn this from me, as I don't think I'm hugely girly myself, and her love of all things feminine started at a very young age. The first time I gave her a ring for a quart jar to play with, she picked it up and instantly put it on her wrist like a bracelet. Even now, she wears a necklace all day and a bracelet if she can find one. Anna wore Trevor's film festival pass for weeks. She will also put anything around her neck that somewhat resembles a necklace, like the phone cord and a gigantic, heavy string of Christmas-tree beads. (True story. She cried when I took them off before she went to bed.) Whenever she puts on jewelry or points to my earrings, she says either "pretty," "nice," or "cute." She also loves to try on shoes, her own or ours. Lastly, she LOVES to carry a purse. She'll go from room to room, carrying a pink toiletry bag, and she couldn't be happier.
• For many months, Anna has loved honking noses. She started out honking everyone else's (squeezing it and making sure you emitted a beep of some kind), and then one day I told her it was her turn and she let out the cutest little "eep." And she still loves it.
  
• She loves to play hide and seek. This mostly started one day when I went to get her after her nap. I opened the door to her room and she quickly laid down and hid her face. I started looking around the room, under the table and behind the couch, calling "Anna... Anna... Where are you?" And then she giggled and I "found" her. This became a daily ritual, and sometimes she'd even do the calling of her name. Now when she hides her face behind anything (a book, her bib), she'll call out "Anna!" to let us know that we need to find her. It doesn't get more adorable than that.
• Like any toddler, she loves to say "no." But she doesn't just say it. Sometimes she whispers it, like when we ask if she has a poopey diaper. (That must be her feminine modesty kicking in.) Sometimes she says it sweetly with a little rise at the end if we're asking her silly questions. Other times, she scrunches up her nose and keeps it scrunched while she grunts "no" when she doesn't want to eat the food I'm trying to get her to eat.
• Many months ago, Anna learned how to blink on command. While it was adorable at the time, it later complicated things when we were teaching her to say "please." Because the two words sound so similar, she started to blink when we'd ask her to say "please." And then it just became funny. If she wanted a treat, she would blink. We thought how funny that would be as she got older, when others wouldn't know what to do with her supposed politeness, but a couples months ago she finally caught on. She now says "bee" with regularity, especially when she wants a bite of your food or when she wants you to read the Polish version of "Beauty and the Beast" 20 times a day.

Now I know we all have our biases, but doesn't she sound like an absolute delight? Mimi, our 16-year-old neighbor from New Jersey, said that if she lived with Anna she would stop hanging out with all her friends because Anna was enough fun to keep her completely entertained. I concur.