Anna is 3 and a half!

Another 6 months has gone by in the blink of an eye! Anna continues to flourish. She's personable, imaginative, stubborn, funny, silly, smart, a great big sister, and we love her so much!

Half a cupcake for half a birthday!

Anna is thriving in the Woodpecker classroom at school. She enjoys the "letter of the week" piece of the curriculum and talks to us each week to figure out more words beginning with that letter. Her teachers have complimented her on how many different words she knows. Each Tuesday is "Book Share" day and each Wednesday is "Share Item" day, and Anna really tries to make sure that each of these correspond to the letter of the week. We had a bit of trouble finding items the last few weeks with "v," "x," and "y," but we muddled through!

Speaking of books, Anna has begun reading! She knows lots of common words by sight like "the," "a," "and," "of," etc. She is also able to sound out many short, one-syllable words and quite a few two-syllable words The difficult part is she has had the hundreds of children's books in our home read to her so many times that she has them half-memorized... so she can put up a good front that she is reading the whole book! We're not always sure which words she actually reads versus remembers. So we'll try to take more trips to the library and get some fresh material. It's so fun to see how proud she is when she can get through a whole page on her own.

Anna is quite the social butterfly these days. We've attended seven birthday parties since the new year and still have two more invitations. We've had quite a few playdates with mom's colleagues' kids as well as normal playground friends that she sees on a daily basis.

Lucas' playground party.

Grant's soccer party.

Anna and Kyuree at Yonathan's gymnastics party.

Tessa, Anna, and Gracie... the daughters of the SHP math teachers!

Courtyard play date with James and Kyla.

Plus there's been a lot of great Stanford events for family like ice skating:

Garrison, Molly, Lola, and Anna.

Family fun.

and the Valentine's Family Dance! Anna had a great time dancing with her pals from the courtyard and school.

Anna continues to take ballet, tap, and tumbling. on Saturday mornings. She is actually preparing for a recital in June which she is pretty excited about.

Anna has really flourished these past few months in her role as big sister. She and Colin now meaningfully play together which is just so heartwarming, not to mention gives Mom and Dad a break so we can get some chores done! She helps Colin with his jacket and shoes, tries to read short books to him, and sings him songs to distract him when he is impatient for food or his parents' attention.

It's been a great six months! Can't wait to see what is next!