thankful thursday

We are so thankful that Anna is a part of our family! She is a really fun girl who seems to be "coming into herself" more and more each day lately. What a blessing she is to us {and to lots of other people as well, I think!}

Well, Anna is learning to count. If you ask her how old she is, she will say "two!". If you ask her any other question that she senses might be numeric, she answers "twenty two". {On a related note, if you ask her any question that she senses might involve color, she will answer "blue".} She is a silly girl.

On another semi-related note, I am completely over my "twos". At least for now. If that doesn't make sense to you, check out this post to catch yourself up! Hope fully "the twos" will stay a memory and not re-appear in my life again!

So, back to Anna . . . she sure is growing up. She gets a little bit more personality each day lately. Also, she is becoming quite fiesty! {which, I suppose, shouldn't surprise me, all things considered.} A couple of her latest tricks are that if any of her siblings say to her, "I love you, Anna!", she will reply with, "NO! I love _____________ {fill in the blank with the name of another sibling -- or sometimes a parent. But never the one who initially told her that she was loved. You get no reciprical love from that girl, that's for sure!} Then she gets a big grin on her face. This is extra funny, because I have been told numerous times about when I was probably her age and would say to my mom over and over again, "I love Mama, no. I love Daddy." Another case of like-mother-like-daughter, I guess. I do adore my mom {and my dad}, and haven't said that to her in over 30 years, so hopefully Anna will grow out of it too. Her next recent trick is that anything I ask her to do or suggest {for example, "Anna, stop hitting."} is met with the phrase, "No, you!" {"No, you stop!" "No, you go potty!", "No, you eat lunch" -- ok, thanks, I will!-- or just the plain old, two-year-old, "NO!"} Nice! I appreciate that so much! I'm not sure exactly where she picked that up. The other kids don't say "No, you." Oh well . . . this too shall pass . . . right?

So, here is a video clip from the other day {I apologize for the fact that it is sideways. I couldn't figure out how to flip it over! You can tip your head . . . or your monitor . . . or you can just watch it sideways. You'll still get the point} of Anna counting. Without fail, she counts like this::"two, one, tree, four, hive, six, sev-y, eight, nine, ten, elev-y, eight, nine, ten, elev-y, eight . . . " and on and on. Every time without fail. She gets caught in a nasty cycle where eight follows elev-y and she just can't break it. Also, she always starts counting at two. It is a very important number, you know!

Enjoy::