Anna, Nana... and Ball

We had a great visit with Nana this past week! Lots of fun times playing around the house, going out to dinner & lunch, going to the indoor playground at the mall, and showing Nana our music and art classes. Anna was captivated by a photo shoot with Nana and this ball. I got a lot of great shots of the two of them, but it's pretty funny that the ball is in every one.

Don't I look pretty in pink?

Well, it turns out that Anna does have a little break in one of her bones after all. While the emergency room doctor didn't see any breaks in the x-ray, he suggested that we see a pediatric orthopedist to make sure. Between the time that we visited the emergency room and the orthopedist Matt and I started to wonder if the problem with Anna's leg was not with her knee, but maybe her foot. Her original x-ray just showed her leg and knee. Why? Well, anytime anyone asked Anna what hurt she pointed to her knee. This, of course, Mom interpreted to be great communication skills by Anna. In reality, I guess she might not have completely understood - or maybe it was her knee that hurt despite the fact that the break was closer to her ankle (near the bottom of the fibula to be specific). Anyway, once we got the right part of her leg x-rayed the doctor saw the small break immediately and prescribed a small two-week walking cast. The process of getting the cast was not very fun for Anna and she did ask me to take it off about 10 times on the first day, but since then it doesn't seem to bother her much at all. Anna chose the color "pink" for her cast, which she proclaimed well enough for the medical technician to understand her. Here are some pictures of Anna in her cast with Grandpa, Grandma, and Great-Grandma Jane, who were all visiting us this week:

First, a shot to feature her pretty, pink cast :)

And some big smiles with Grandma, Great-Grandma Jane, and Grandpa

On the first day with the cast Anna was less mobile than before, but she has gradually improved to the point where she walks around without noticing it now. Here she is showing off her cast walking skills with her latest obsession: Ring-Around-the-Rosie:

Today was actually the first day in weeks that the sidewalks were not snow covered, not ice covered, and DRY! Anna was walking well enough that she was able to take advantage of it by walking up and down the sidewalks rolling a big ball and drawing on the sidewalk with chalk.

The trickiest part of having the cast is taking a tub - an activity which Anna usually really enjoys. She really does not enjoy taking a tub with her foot wrapped in a plastic bag hanging outside the tub so we've moved tub time to a twice a week activity.

We're okay!

On Wednesday when I was watching television a message came across the bottom of the screen that said, "Call family and loved ones and let them know you are okay." Well, I guess this is a bit of delayed information, but, "We're okay." And in case you missed the national news - DC got hit with another big snow storm Tuesday - Wednesday of this past week. I think we got another 7-10 inches of snow, but I'm not sure. Fortunately, the weather since Wednesday has been in the mid 30's and sunny so the roads are recovering and the snow is melting. Matt was off work again on Thursday, and although the federal government was open today, he had the day off anyway - so it's been awesome to have Matt home from work for a full week :)

Unfortunately in the middle of this snowstorm, we had our own little disaster within our house. Let me preface this story by saying that Anna & I are both okay :) But, on Tuesday afternoon I feel down two stairs while holding Anna. We went to the emergency room mainly because Anna was not walking and we also wanted to make sure everything was okay with the baby. The good news is that everything is okay with me and the baby and Anna probably has no breaks and just some kind of sprain or something. The bad news is that she is still not walking. More good news is that she can crawl and it hasn't seemed to have affected her mood at all. She really takes it in stride and has been very creative figuring out ways to do her favorite activities without walking. For instance, you may remember my blog post about pretending to be Marvin K.? I was a little nervous when she asked me to read the book to her. When we got to the skating and skiing part she first forgot she couldn't walk and went to pretend to put on her skis, but then realized that she could have just as much fun making her bears ski and skate around :) I'm glad she's been figuring these things out with little frustration :)

Anna has spent a lot of time "nested" in the past few days:

Nested on the coach with her full crew of friends and a stack of books

Rolling around a nest of blankets and pillows put together for her by Daddy

You may recognize this, from previous pictures, as our backyard. The object on the left is a picnic table. Notice that the snow on the ground is piled just higher than the table:

After a round of snow clearing:

And finally, due to popular request, a "baby bump" shot:

This was taken this past Wednesday at exactly 27 weeks. I think that is about the same point in the pregnancy as the Jan. 19th shot from 2008

Maybe I like the snow...maybe I don't

When I wrote the last post about a huge snowfall in Virginia I imagined that it would be the last time I may see snow like that here. (As Uncle Pete told me today, that was the biggest snowfall in 50 years). Well...that has turned out not to be the case. Starting Friday morning and ending Saturday night was the biggest snowfall in 100 years. I'm not sure exactly how much we got, but I think it was over 2 feet. Matt didn't go to work on Friday for fear that he might get stuck coming home and they have already announced that the Federal Government is closed tomorrow - yah! The metro is still not running above ground and the metro buses are not even running.

Where's Daddy's car?

After a short trip to the grocery store, Matt declared that the roads were not safe enough for us to make it to our super bowl party so we've created our own party here at our pad:

veggies & hummus, fruit, & homemade nachos!

humm, I get to eat dinner in front of the TV, cool :)

Not bad for a party planned in a few hours :)

Now for the title of the blog post: Anna is not so sure what she thinks of the snow this time around. She was sure that she didn't want to go outside while it was still snowing. And today she wasn't really begging to go outside, but I made her give it a try. She liked it sometimes: checking out the snow, toddling around, helping Daddy shovel:

but other times her rating was less than favorable:

The Year of the Baby

For Matt and I, 2005 was the Year of the Wedding - not because we got married that year (we got married in 2004), but because we went to 7 weddings that year!

So far it seems that 2010 will be the Year of the Baby! We have already welcomed the birth of two of our friends' babies this year and are currently waiting the arrival of 10 more between this month and September and that still leaves 4 months until the end of the year...

We're glad to know that baby #2 will have lots of friends :)

Mystery Story Revealed

A few days ago I posted a video of Anna acting out a story with her two bears, Aqua Bear and Yellow Bear. Our intuitive audience members, Tadhg and Nana, figured it out! Yes, the bears are bowling and after each of them rolls their ball Anna is cheering for their success. (Specifically, she is enthusiastically yelling the word, "strike!") Then she does go and retrieve the balls for the bears so they can take their next turn (which was followed by another turn and another turn and another turn in the non-edited version of the video). The interesting part is that the beginning of the story was originally modeled to her by Daddy playing with the bears, but the part where she retrieves the balls she added herself - pretty nifty considering the only real bowling she has ever seen involves an automatic ball retriever.

I want to be like Marvin K.

Earlier this week Anna chose the book Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now! for me to read to her. As soon as I started reading it, she started acting it out - pretending she was Marvin. In the book Marvin goes away on skates, skis, a bike, and a zike-bike (Dr. Seuss creation). For each of these parts of the story Anna pretended she was doing these things. The funny part is that I think she has only seen skates a few times - maybe last summer on one of her friends. And I don't think she has ever seen skis. Yet for 20 minutes Anna pretended to take her skates and skis on and off (and requested I do the same) as she skated and skiied around the family room.

Punky Brewster

Yesterday morning I gave Anna the option of choosing her clothing. She had no interest in choosing a shirt or pants. Her only opinion was about her socks - she wanted one brown and one pink:

So the worst case scenario is that the people who saw us at the library yesterday thought I needed to do laundry or I was color blind. This is probably just the beginning of Anna choosing some interesting options for her apparel :)

Just a fun shot I got while trying to document the socks:

What's your interpretation?

Matt and I and a few others, who have been here recently, know the story line in the video below. I'll reveal the story in a few days, but for now I will leave it up to your imagination:

What do you think?