Sep 13 2011
Life by Annada
Here are a few more stories that show how Annada views the world.
A couple of mornings ago Marc pulled out several boxes of cereal for Annada to choose from. She grabbed the one pictured and exclaimed, “I want the one with the spoon about to make the girls all wet!”
She started laughing. Marc was a little confused so he asked her what she meant. She pointed to the box and said, “The giant spoon is going to pour milk all over them. They are hugging because they are scared!” And she burst into giggles again.
Chinese Buffet dinner with the YearOners to celebrate Aaron's birthday.
Isn’t this supposed to start in junior high?
2 days ago Annada and I were driving to pick up vegetables at a farm when she suddenly yelled out, “I want pink hair!”
“Why do you want pink hair?” I asked her.
“So I can dance loud! Please, please, please, please Mommy can I have pink hair?” Annada replied. A couple of the YearOne interns have streaks of color in their hair.
“Annada you can dance loudly or softly with any hair color you have,” I said. “You have beautiful blonde hair.”
“But I want Hannah pink hair,” Annada started to cry (not a whiny cry, but a real sad cry), “So I can dance. I don’t like blonde hair. I need pink hair!”
(Already she doesn’t like her hair?!)
Celebrating Marc's birthday with breakfast in bed.
Adult Earrings
I was singing to Annada before bed tonight and she was playing with my earrings in a sleepy self-soothing way when she suddenly sat up.
“You have adult earrings,” she said. “My earrings pull off. Do your earrings pull off, Mommy?”
“No, my earrings go in a hole in my ear,” I replied.
“My earrings clip on and pull off. They are kid earrings. I want adult earrings,” she said. (Annada has started objecting to the word kid. She wants to be called a big girl. NOT a little girl.)
“When you are older, if you want to, you can get a hole in your ear and get adult earrings,” I told her.
She was silent and grabbed her ears and she thought about what that meant.
“Okay Mommy, tomorrow I will be big and I can get adult earrings.”
Annada's favorite part of our birthdays.
Be Respectful
I have been trying to teach Annada not to talk when people are praying. When she was an infant, the YearOne interns nicknamed her Holy Spirit baby because whenever someone started praying she would begin babbling loudly.
Now that she uses words like “dehydrated (May I have some water? I am so dehydrated!), douse (I am going to douse you with water, Mommy) and catapult (I catapulted my toys out of my bed!), it is no longer so cute when she decides to give personal speeches when others pray. There is no mistaking it for praying along.
So when I pray with her before bed I say, “Are you ready to be respectful while I pray for you?” Sometimes she says yes. Sometimes there is one more thing she wants to talk about first, so we talk.
Tonight when I asked her, she put her hands up and grabbed mine to hold them together. “Mommy, are you going to be respectful while I pray for you?” she asked.
Of course I was. So Annada began, “Dear God, thank you for Mommy. And… thank you for me!”
She paused. “Okay, Mommy, are you ready to be respectful while you pray? I will do your hands. Be patient.” (She likes to fold my hands for prayer.)
I prayed.
“Now, be respectful and pray for Doaa and Daddy,” She said. 4 times she told me people to pray for and each time she reminded me to “be respectful Mommy!”