10 of the latest reasons why we love Anna

Anna dancing around in the rain cover for the stroller.

1. When I was sick a couple weeks ago and would go into coughing fits, every time Anna would say, “Mom. Okay?” And she wouldn't stop until I stopped coughing and said, “Yeah, I'm okay.” What a compassionate girl.
2. This one's a little bittersweet, but when we tell Anna to do something she doesn't want to do (like eat the rest of her food or stop touching the TV), she recoils and yells out, “Ow!” It's kind of cute and funny that she thinks that word means something totally different, but it also gets a little annoying when she repeatedly yells it when she gets upset in public and people stare at you like you're an abusive parent.
3. Anna was playing with a teddy bear the other day and she laid it on the floor and then said, “Change?” She went and got a diaper and brought it to the bear and then basically just laid the open diaper on top of it. It was so adorable to see that she's learning how to play pretend.
4. She plays little jokes on us. Sometimes when she's eating, she'll pick up a piece of cucumber and slyly say, “Cheese!” We'll look at her in surprise and say, “What? Cheese? You're crazy!” And then, with a crinkled nose and a big smile, she'll say, 'Nooooo!”
5. Anna sings herself to sleep and sings when she wakes up in the morning. If we let the singing go on a little too long after she wakes up, she gets insistent and we hear her say, “Come?” (which is what she says when she wants to be picked up) followed by “Okay,” as though her saying it decides the matter. And then she only gets cuter. When we walk into her room to get her up, we are always greeted with a delighted smile and a high, drawn-out “hellloooo.”
6. Anna is completely unfazed by spicy or otherwise strong foods. She loves Polish sausage, hot mustard, hot peppers, radishes, onions, and the like. As Trevor is most often the one getting her to eat all the crazy food, I think she must be her father's daughter.
7. She's an expert at saying “no,” but “yes” has eluded her up to this point. Every once in a while, we'll get a “yeah” out of her, but she usually just says “okay.” It makes me smile because it's like she's saying, “Mom, your offer to get me some juice is satisfactory. I'm not overjoyed, but I'm not sad about it either. Juice will be fine.”
8. She's learning a few Polish words. It makes our Polish friends and the missionaries even more in love with her. She can say the Polish words for bye bye, no (of course), eye, and a casual hey (which is really quite difficult to pronounce — it sounds like cheshch).
9. When she walks into the bathroom, the first thing she does is tear off a tiny piece of toilet paper, wipe her nose, throw it away in the nearby garbage can, and then reward herself by saying “good girl!”
10. Anna calls everyone's bum a “bump.” Enough said.

Anna hanging out with Trevor in the port-o-crib. I love how Anna's hair sort of looks like a wig when she wakes up from a nap.