Anna Merriman

Getting back to photos being posted in the order they were shot, here we have one from the 6th of February, the weekend before we left for Britain. Anna has recently really started liking eating apples (one little bite after another all adds up), as well as ecstatically devouring bananas whenever she spots one. Anna is sat on the new playmat/rug for her in the kitchen in that house. She now wears shoes most of the time she is up and wandering about, though we do also try and occasionally ensure there is some bare feet time

Munching On An Apple At Babushka’s

Following on from the earlier Apple A Day post, we have three videos shot around the same time that the phot was taken, back on the 6th February. And still no one has poked me to re-insert the embed code for Anna’s videos over on her blog – AnnaMerriman.com! Anyway, I’ll need to leave the PC uploading the other videos for the night, so I’ll stop writing for now.

As with most pasta based dishes, pelmeni is always met with a smiling face, and finished with a certain amount of mess on Anna’s face. As it is reasonably similar to the Italian dish of ravioli (being little packets of meat in a pasta envelope), Mum and Irina decided to see how Anna liked it. The main difference is that ravioli (at least the tinned variety) normally comes in a tomato sauce – not normally an issue for Anna. The short story is that Anna loved it, and you can see it being consumed with Anna in her high chair in a picture below. John took the photo sometime after the 14th February I think.

As John drove us back from Heathrow to Clydach, we stopped off at one of the motorway services stations for a chance to stretch our legs (including Anna, who walked the length of the car park!), take a comfort break and grab a bite to eat. As Anna went past the first shop, her eyes were immediately drawn to a huge display of stuffed toys. Cynical marketing (like putting sweets at eye level for children at supermarkets check outs), but it worked, as Anna started making some noise and pointing. John succumbed and bought Anna the donkey she seemed to be most interested in. When we got home, we discovered that Anna loves to tackle the poor thing – she’ll literally dive onto it from a standing position, then roll around on the floor ensuring it can’t escape!

Again, credit to John’s blog for the original posting of this picture. The date was around the 14th February.

I haven’t got around to finding our camera yet, so these pictures of Anna may well be out of sync, if we still have Kazakh photos to post.
Anyway, these were shot on the 13th or 14th of February – I think it may have been the latter (Valentine’s Day)? You can see the original Anna And Her Entourage post at John’s blog, but in case you haven’t got around to checking it recently, here are a few of the shots…

Head on over to John’s blog to catch the recent posts on their holiday, and don’t forget his gallery.

We hadn’t originally planned to have a lot of friends over for Irina’s birthday this year, but quite a few turned up whilst we were at the in-laws’ house. Anyway, here we have a short clip of Anna and friends taken on the 31st of January. Anna behaved very well considering all the faces around her, and the attention she was given. We just hope she behaves as well back in Britain. Speaking of which, we’ll be in Istanbul in less than 24 hours now!

We finally have some good video clips of Anna walking completely solo. Ignore the date Irina gives, I’ve double checked and it was in fact the 30th of January…
It is great to see Anna happy to stand up on her own, decide where to head, and just start walking. She is just as happy changing direction mid-journey, and carrying cups/toys etc. in one hand. There are moments when she is too tired or grumpy, as she will return to crawling, but the moment she first had the confidence to start taking little steps on her own will stay in our memories for ever

The 25th of January must have been a slow news day, in terms of Anna at least, as the photos are again of her cleaning/clearing out the computer desk drawers. Having said that, there is something quite cute about her look of accomplishment, sat like that.

Anna Busy At Work

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!