Anna Merriman

Shot five days after the previous clip (making it the 20th of January), here we have Anna engrossed in one of her favourite past times. The top and bottom drawers of the computer desk seem to get the most attention, so they have already been cleared of anything sharp/bad tasting/flammable. Sometimes she takes out one item at a time, plays with it a little, then dumps it on the floor before moving on to the next thing. Other times everything is taken out at the same time, then just often left on the floor. On rare occasions, Anna will even put things into the drawers!

The post title says it all really – after complaining earlier that I hadn’t managed to catch Anna actually grooving away to her songs, I found this video from the 15th of January, where Irina did manage to do so.

OK, so after double checking the YouTube uploads, I can now add recording Anna actually dancing rather than just watching the television to the list of things to record. Walking around should now be easier to capture at least, as she doesn’t require us to be ready to catch her at a moments notice. Normally
Shot on the same day as the previous photos (14th January), these clips are of Anna dancing watching her favourite DVD. We’ve already ripped the audio from the DVD, should she seem in need of listening to her favourite tunes, without the added visual stimulation that may delay bed times etc.

Anna And Irina Smiling Together

This was shot on the 22nd of January, and is just a nice picture of Irina and Anna smiling together on an armchair. You can see the mini Christmas tree still up in the background, though I don’t think it survived until Ira’s birthday. Excuse the low quality around the armchair fabric – the original has a lot more noise, for some reason our camera, even with a decent amount of lighting available, doesn’t like the fabric/colour of our living room furniture!

We hadn’t seen Masha in quite a long time, so on the 15th of January she popped around for a brief visit, to catch up on all the news, see Anna and tell us about her life.

She had to pop off again quite quickly, but I managed to recover an old photo from her camera’s memory card that disappeared more than a year ago, and it was good to see that she seemed to be doing well. Hopefully next time Anna will get a chance to meet Masha’s son again.

Anna’s favourite thing to watch on telly right now has to be the Wheels On The Bus DVD that Mum bought for her back in Britain. Whether it is the bright colours, dancing adults or simple repetitive songs, I’m not sure, but Anna definitely perks up whenever we stick it on. I’ve already made an ISO of the disc, to take to Britain on a thumb drive (customs can give you hassle for optical media if they notice it), so we can burn a copy of it over there for her. The 14th of January saw her boogying away once more, so we took a photo and videos (see a post or two in advance of this one).

The Wheels On The Bus Make You Dance!

The 11th of January saw Anna taking her first few tottering steps between Irina and I, without a hand to hold on to, or reverting to crawling. I think she may have been doing this a few days already to be honest, but this was the first time we had thought to get the camera out. As I write this, she is now very confident walking around the room, without any encouragement, but back when the pictures were taken, Irina and I needed to be a few metres apart, with lots of encouragement for trying to walk solo. This meant I had to try and use the little gorillapod (tripod) JohnK kindly gave us, in conjunction with the shutter delay function on the camera. Unfortunately, this mostly ended up with shots of the living room instead of Anna. In the end I snapped a few shots with one hand, but obviously Anna’s well being came first, so the framing isn’t exactly perfect…

Anna Walking Handsfree!

Anna eating her breakfast in a good mood. http://twitpic.com/zng0c

The 5th of January for some reason saw a quite late tea-time for Anna. She is still at the age when human babies (apparently) don’t discern as much between using their feet instead of their hands for manipulation objects (or humans ) around them, compared to older children and adults. This means that if she wants to grab our attention, or stop the spoon of food from approaching her mouth, she sometimes just nudges her feet into our feeding arm. Cute right now, as long as it doesn’t progress into full on kicking when she doesn’t get her way

Foot Controlled Feeding

Chilling Out Between Spoons

As promised, this post marks the first 2010 photos of Anna. The 3rd of January saw us still at Irina’s parents’ house, with Igor, Losha and Katya popping round to continue the New Years celebrations.

Oh, and “nayelsa” is a Russian informal word for “I’m full”. (Please no more food. Yes it is delicious, yes I love it, but seriously, my belt doesn’t have any more holes to make it bigger). Or something like that

I think is the last photo of Anna from 2009 – 28th December to be exact. The boxes you can see were originally bought from Ramstore as a storage system for all her toys. When we got them home, and screwed the shelves together, and constructed the fabric boxes, we discovered just how petite they actually were. The boxes are used for storing teeth soothers, shoes, small cuddly toys and occasionally work as hats, apparently. Anyway, Anna seems to like them. Her shoes, when not on her feet, are normally found in her mouth, being chewed upon. The next photos and videos of Anna are all from this year

One of my earliest New Years’ memories is being allowed to sit in the living room, watching cartoons on TV, and eating my breakfast cereal at the same time. It now sounds very silly, but back then, this seemed like the most extravagant of treats, and I can still remember watching Road Runner avoid Wile E. Coyote, whilst simultaneously trying not to spill and Shreddies or milk onto the living room carpet. Why this sudden recall of something that happened almost 25 years ago? I was just looking at the photo below, before uploading it, which features Anna having a special treat of watching her DVD and being allowed to eat at the same time

Anna Allowed To Eat And Watch TV (Christmas Treat)

Shot on the 26th of December, here we have another video of Anna not dancing as much once the camera was rolling We have already backed up the Wheels On The Bus DVD, and use the copy, as if it were to break (Anna likes standing on top of DVD cases, I’ve since moved them away from the TV area) I think we would miss the collection of children’s songs a lot. Some of the tracks really get her bouncing around, whilst others seem to just grab her attention with the bright colours on screen. We try to make sure she doesn’t normally stand so close to the screen, though she already has enough independence to ignore us when we make silly requests like “Don’t touch that!” or “Come and play over here please”

Or at least wear something that hides stains really well the next time you are around Anna when she is about to enjoy some pasta and sauce. Regular readers will remember the previous photos of Anna’s mildly inaccurate food placement photos before, but I really think this one catches the moment pretty well. Namely her happiness with having sauce, pasta and meat to eat by hand, without silly Mum or Dad slowing her down, the wide area which such food normally leaves its mark, and also further proof that, despite Anna’s occasional very vocal protests, she really does still need to wear a bib when eating some foods

Do NOT Get In Between This Cutie And Her Pasta!

Oh, the photo was shot on the 10th of January. Another four or five posts and we’ll have once more caught up to real time posting of Anna’s pictures. I’ll wait a few days though, as the last 1/2 week’s posts take up the entire front page, and I know some friends and family don’t always get around to clicking the Previous Entries link to check out the second page.

After saying goodbye to Walton we relaxed for a few hours at home with Anna, and then travelled over to JohnA’s for a delicious Christmas Day meal. This was the first year I wasn’t at home in Britain for Christmas with Mum et al, so I was really glad to be in a friendly and happy atmosphere with Anna and Irina. DanD and his family were there, as well as Innessa’s parents, which meant I wasn’t alone in toasting the day with vodka and beer, rather than wine The food was great, and we even had some entertainment laid on – you’ll need to wait for the video to catch a clip of that…

Anna, DanD and a Dombra T-Shirt Model