Maya: Fall 2008

Maya-Girl: (2 years, 8 mos)


This is "Maya-girl". Where this began we're not sure. She truly believes her full name is Maya-girl and heaven help you if she's in a bad-mood and you simply say "Maya"! (As a side note, her younger sister's full and acceptable name is "baby-Alice")

The two pictures above are Maya in a nutshell: Always wearing an accessory. A spunky smile behind which is a great little sense of humor if she's in her comfort zone. A worried little scowl...she was born with that little scowl. She's my cautious little one. I remember it was so hard to take a picture of her as a baby without that little scowl. Nowadays we see it mostly when we are out in public and she's scared or unsure...noises, trucks, cars, strangers, etc.

Freckles:



Can you see them? Maya had the tiniest little freckles pop out this summer. For some reason, as much as I think it's just wrong that I'm 30 and I still have freckles...I still think her freckles are the cutest thing ever!


My little event-planner:

For the first time in her life, Maya is getting a lot of alone time with Mommy! Now that Hayley is at school she and I get to hang out alone for several hours each day while Alice is sleeping. Maya has great ideas of games we can play together. One of her current favorites is Hullabaloo. She got creative and set them up on our little trampoline so we could bounce from one to the next together. What a cutie!

ABC & 123:

For the longest time Maya has had no interest in letters or numbers...wouldn't even sing along with the ABC song. Then one day in September she suddenly became facinated with the alphabet and counting things. Within 2 weeks she basically learned the names of the letters, what they look like and the sound they make plus how to count things! I was amazed. A few resources that were avaiable to her that I love for teaching these basic things are:

• The Letter Factory DVD (Leapfrog)
• Starfall Website (great fun website for pre-readers and readers)
• Lots of ABC magnets
• Mom's extraordinary ability to sing the ABC song and count everything as we drive along!

I love this "sponge" stage that she's coming into. She loves to learn. I love hearing her point letters out to me that she sees as we drive down the road (mostly letters that are in her name or one of our names). I feel so privledged to be the primary care-giver at the age when they soak up anything you give them. Wouldn't trade it for the world!


PB&J:

One cute querk that we love about Maya is that she has a specific way of saying things. Instead of asking for her daily PB&J she tells me every day that she wants a "peanut butter sandwich with strawberry jam on it" (as if I'd ever dare make it with anything else!). And if you ask her what she wants to drink the answer is always "apple juice in a pink cup" (let me assure you it's not worth trying it in a cup of any other color). She's very polite and sweet about it but her little world just has certain rules and things need to abide by them!

Imagine!

Maya is in the height of pretend play! I love how many hours can slip away as her little imagination takes her to lands far away. Her current favorites are Disney Princesses and My Little Ponies. But she also loves to play people using different sizes of pencils and crayons all lined up.

Cleaning Lady:

Since I spend so much time cleaning, I really like to get kids to have fun cleaning with me. It seems like Maya's been less enthusiastic about my great idea than Hayley ever was, but recently she finally started having fun cleaning with me. Hurray! I don't feel as bad because we are spending time together and our house still gets cleaned. This particular day she spent the whole time it took me to deep-clean the kitchen, scrubbing the table and chairs. Wow! Clean table! But when I took a picture of her the deal was that she wanted to take a picture of me doing my chores too. And with my new goal to stop dodging the camera...here I am too!

Aunt Tammy's little buddy:

Soon after Tammy arrived Maya helped her get her car "Bluebell" all cleaned up. We name our cars and the girls talk about them as if they are a member of the family. If anyone is ever leaving, Maya wants to know if Annabelle or Rosie is going (the car and van, respectively). When Tammy moved in, they were happy to learn that her car had a name too. Sometimes I wonder if they care more about Bluebell than Tammy! Whenever we drive up to the house and Tammy's not home, someone always says, "Where's Bluebell?" As we play outside and watch cars driving into the neighborhood they'll call out "Is that Bluebell?" But the truth of it is that they know that if Bluebell is here, so is Aunt Tammy!

Maya also asks Tammy on a regular basis why she doesn't have a home. We repeat the same conversation that we've had many times that this is now Tammy's home. Somehow this is an odd concept in her little paradigm that everyone should have a family and a home. We're hoping she can accept it soon so Tammy won't have to keep explaining. In the meantime, we're glad that Tammy has a sense of humor and loves our little Maya-girl and all her querkiness!