We spend this past weekend with my parents up by Eau Claire. Matt and I greatly appreciated being "taken care of" for a few days and Anna absolutely loved being the center of Grandma and Grandpa's world for awhile. Sometimes, however, it's hard to determine who enjoys these visits more, Grandma or Anna.
We got to play outside in the woods a fair bit both on Saturday and on Sunday. Not only did Anna play with sawdust and leaves, but she found most of the items on the deck very interesting. She was pretty wiped out by Sunday, though, and almost fell asleep in the backpack when we went for the final walk through the woods.A few random stories I need to share, too, at this point. Anna is getting more and more comfortable with her music class. We have such a great teacher who knows exactly what toddlers need to keep engaged in music, dancing, and singing. Anna especially enjoys all the instruments and other manipulatives she gets to use on Monday mornings.
Anna has also started being pretty affectionate with her stuffed animals, particularly a teddy bear we picked up last spring that has stone washed overalls (go 90s!) that say TED and a hat with a spinner. She likes to give him hugs and pretend to feed him some of her food at meal times or even have me put a diaper on him. She also usually wants to see him right away when she wakes up, whether from a nap or in the morning. Finally, she'll sometimes put him in her rocking chair and rock him while singing/humming. What a sweetheart!
This affection for stuffed animals has transferred over to "puppy" from story time. Puppy usually starts each Wednesday by singing "hi, hello, and how are you?" to each child at story time. When he makes his way to Anna, she gives him a big hug and pats him on the back. Then she often does the same thing right before we leave storytime, too.
