Anna's big month

Anna is standing, walking, and crawling (in that order)!

She finally has made the transition from baby to toddler. It's so wonderful to see the pride she takes in her accomplishments. Today she walked across the kitchen to me and was clapping her hands with the biggest smile imaginable, all at the same time. Yesterday she crawled for the first time (and what a an amazingly strenuous mechanical thing it was)

I am not a big fan of labeling our children, but Anna certainly seems the most social of all of our kids. She has this burning desire to communicate, and does so amazingly well for not really being able to talk. She tries to engage anyone that comes along with the baby signs and words that she knows. She points out to me birds (she has a sign for this) when we mention the fact that it is hot (we are in a heat wave) she shows us her sign for hot, and says the word to match. She points to the horse's water trough and does her sign for fish (we have fish in there to eat algae and larva). She points to Paul's weather station and does her sign for fan (because of the wind gauge). When she wants to go outside (always) she does her sign for swing. She has signs for dog, milk, all done, more, hi, bye, and actively looks to me to learn more signs. And will immediately respond back to me with the sign after I show her. And it's not just me, she will do this to anyone she meets on the street. I just don't remember Grayson nor Eme being so driven (but then again maybe all the lack of sleep is catching up to me and I am getting forgetful).

I can't believe how big she is getting. Grayson cried today because he told me he never wanted Anna to grow up. He loves having a baby around and worries that when she grows up she won't play with him as much as she does now. (how adorable is that!) But then again today he also cried for at least 30 minutes about his yellow rubber band breaking, and no matter how many other yellow rubber bands (or other colors for that matter) we offered he just couldn't be consoled.

Life is good in the Dawes household, things are back on track again and we seem to have found balance again. And Anna is a toddler!